STRATFORD, usually designated Stratford-on-Avon, a market-town and municipal borough of England, in Warwickshire, near the Gloucestershire border, is pleasantly situated on the Avon, and on the Great Western and Midland Railway lines, 26 miles south of Birmingham and 8 south-west of Warwick. The Avon is crossed by a stone bridge of fourteen arches, built by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VIL, and widened in 1814; by a bridge of nine arches, built of brick in 1826; and by a foot-bridge erected in 1867, at a cost of £500, on the site of a footbridge originally erected in 1599, and rebuilt in 1812. The streets are wide and regular, crossing each other generally at right angles, and, says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, “with the exception of a few diffused buildings, scarcely one of which is in its original condition, there is no resemblance between the present town and the Shakespearean borough” (compare article Shakespeare, vol. xxi. pp. 741 sq.). The church of the Holy Trinity occupies the site of a Saxon monastery, which existed before 691, when the bishop of Worcester received it in exchange from Ethelred, king of Mercia. It is a fine cruciform structure, partly Early English and partly Perpendicular, with a central tower and lofty octagonal spire. It was greatly improved in the reign of Edward III. by John de Stratford, who rebuilt the south aisle. He also in 1332 founded a chantry for priests, and in 1351 Ralph de Stratford built for John’s chantry priests “a house of square stone,” which came to be known as the college, and in connexion with which the church became collegiate. The present beautiful choir was built by Dean Balshall (1465-91), and in the reign of Henry VII. the north and south transepts were erected. The mural monument of Shakespeare, ...

STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, Stratford Canning, Viscount (1786-1880), diplomatist, was the first cousin of George Canning the statesman, and the youngest son of Stratford Canning, who, having been disinherited for marrying beneath his rank, settled in London as a merchant in Clement’s Lane, where young Canning was born 4th November 1786. Shortly afterwards the father died, and the family removed to Wanstead, the boy attending the village school and afterwards a school at Hackney until 1794, when he went to Eton. Ultimately he became captain of the school, and he also manifested his literary predilections by publishing, in conjunction with Wellesley and others, a collection of essays entitled The Miniature. In 1805 he was elected scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, and, while still attending the university, became in 1807 précis writer to his cousin, who had been appointed foreign minister. At the close of the year he went to Copenhagen as one of the secretaries of a special diplomatic mission, and after his return he was appointed in June 1808 first secretary at Constantinople. On the removal of his chief Mr Adair to Vienna in July 1810, Canning remained minister plenipotentiary, making use of the opportunity to give indications of that overmastering purpose and bold yet subtle diplomacy which were to have such an important influence on the history of the Eastern question. In 1812 he succeeded in effecting the treaty of Bucharest between Russia and Turkey, which was signed on the 12th May, shortly before the arrival of his successor. This was properly the inauguration of that English influence in Turkey which did not cease until within recent years. The treaty was also of immense immediate advantage by freeing the Russian army to act against Napoleon, and on his ...