record of this very period, and the solution of the difficulty is palpable: In John Strype's Memorials Ecclesiastical under Queen Mary I,' under the date of 1558, we find this passage: "It is certain that one Edward Horne suffered at Newent, where this Deighton had been, and spake with one or two of the same parish that did see him there burnt, and did testify that they knew the two persons that made the fire to burn him; they were two glovers or FELLMONGERS." A fellmonger and a glover appear from this passage to have been one and the same. The fellmonger is he who prepares skins for the use of the leather-dresser, by separating the wool from the hide—the natural coadjutor of the sheep-master and the wool-man. Shakspere himself implies that the glover was a manufacturer of skins Dame Quickly asks of Slender's man, "Does he not wear a great round beard like a glover's paring knife?" The peltry is shaved upon a circular board, with a great round knife, to this day. The fellmonger's trade, as it now exists, and the trade in untanned leather, the glover's trade, would be so slightly different, that the generic term, glover, might be applied to each. There are few examples of the word "fellmonger" in any early writers. Glover" is so common that it has become one of the universal English names derived from occupation,-far more common than if it merely applied to him who made coverings for the hands. At Coventry, in the middle of the sixteenth century, (the period of which we are writing) the Glovers and Whittawers formed one craft. A whittawer is one who prepares tawed leather-untanned leather-leather chiefly dressed from sheep skins and lamb skins by a simple process of soaking, and scraping, and liming, and softening by alum and salt. Of such were the large and coarse gloves in use in a rural district, even amongst labourers; and such process might be readily carried on by one engaged in agricultural operations, especially when we bear in mind that the white leather was the especial leather of "husbandly furniture," as described by old Tusser. We may reasonably persist, therefore, even in accord with "flesh and fell" tradition, in drawing the portrait of Shakspere's father, at the time of his marriage, in the free air,-on his horse, with his team, at market, at fair-and yet a dealer in carcases, or wood, or wool; or skins, his own produce. He was a proprietor of land, and an agriculturist, living in a peculiar state of society, as we shall see hereafter, in which the division of employments was imperfectly established, and the small rural capitalists strove to turn their own products to the greatest advantage. * Vol. v., p. 277-edit. 1816. IN the eleventh century the Norman Conqueror commanded a Register to be completed of the lands of England, with the names of their possessors, and the number of their free tenants, their villains, and their slaves. In the sixteenth century Thomas Cromwell, as the vicegerent of Henry VIII. for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, issued Injunctions to the Clergy, ordaining, amongst other matters, that every officiating minister shall, for every Church, keep a Book, wherein he shall register every Marriage, Christening, or Burial. In the different character of these two Registers we read what five centuries of civilization had effected for England. Instead of being recorded in the gross as cotarii or servi, The history of the old font represented above is somewhat curious. The parochial accounts of Stratford show that about the middle of the seventeenth century a new font was set up. The beautiful relic of an older time, from which William Shakspere had received the baptismal water, was, after many years, found in the old charnel-house. When that was pulled down, it was kicked into the churchyard; and half a century ago was removed by the parish clerk to form the trough of a pump at his cottage. Of the parish clerk it was bought by the late Captain Saunders; and from his possession came into that of Mr. Heritage, a builder at Stratford. the meanest labourer, his wife, and his children, had become children of their country and their country's religion, as much as the highest lord and his family. Their names were to be inscribed in a book and carefully preserved. But the people doubted the intent of this wise and liberal injunction. A friend of Cromwell writes to him, "There is much secret and several communications between the King's subjects; and [some] of them, in sundry places within the shires of Cornwall and Devonshire, be in great fear and mistrust, what the King's Highness and his Council should mean, to give in commandment to the parsons and vicars of every parish that they should make a book, and surely to be kept, wherein to be specified the names of as many as be wedded, and the names of them that be buried, and of all those that be christened."* They dreaded new charges;" and well they might dread. But Thomas Cromwell had not regal exactions in his mind. The Registers were at first imperfectly kept; but the regulation of 1538 was strictly enforced in the first year of Elizabeth; and then the Register of the Parish of Stratford-upon-Avon commences, that is, in 1558. Venerable book! Every such record of human life is a solemn document. Birth, Marriage, Death!-this is the whole history of the sojourn upon earth of nearly every name inscribed in these mouldy, stained, blotted pages. And after a few years what is the interest, even to their own descendants, of these brief annals? With the most of those for whom the last entry is still to be made, the question is, Did they leave property? Is some legal verification of their possession of property necessary? "No further seek their merits to disclose." Stratford that are interesting to But there are entries in this Register-book of us to all Englishmen-to universal mankind. cious legacy from one whose progress from the cradle to the grave is here recorded a bequest large enough for us all, and for all who will come after us. Pause we on the one entry of that book which most concerns the human race : Thus far the information conveyed by the register is precise.+ But a natural question then arises. On what day was born William, the son of John Shakspere * Cromwell's Correspondence in the Chapter-House. Quoted in Rickman's Preface to Population Returns, 1831. + The date of the year, and the word April, occur three lines above the entry--the baptism being the fourth registered in that month. The register of Stratford is a tall narrow book, of considerable thickness, the leaves formed of very fine vellum. But this book is only a transcript, attested by the vicar and four churchwardens, on every page of the registers from 1558 to 1600. The above is therefore not a fac-simile of the original entry. who was baptized on the 26th of April, 1564? The want of such information is a defect in all parish registers. In the belief that baptism very quickly followed birth in those times, when infancy was surrounded with greater dangers than in our own days of improved medical science, we have been accustomed to receive the 23rd of April as the day on which William Shakspere first saw the light. We are very unwilling to assist in disturbing the popular belief, but it is our duty to state the facts opposed to it. We have before us An Argument on the assumed Birthday of Shakspere: reduced to shape A.D. 1864.' This privately-printed tract by Mr. Bolton Corney, is one of the many evidences of the industry and logical acuteness with which that gentleman has approached the solution of many doubtful literary questions. It is to do injustice to the force of his argument that we can here only present the briefest analysis of the points which he fully sets forth. In the original edition of this Biography, we stated that there was no direct evidence that Shakspere was born on the 23rd of April. We added that there was probably a tradition to that effect; for some years ago the Rev. Joseph Greene, a master of the Grammar School at Stratford, in an extract which he made from the register of Shakspere's baptism, wrote in the margin "Born on the 23rd." The labours of Mr. Bolton Corney furnish the means of testing the value of this memorandum. It was first given to the world in the edition of Johnson and Steevens in 1773, of which edition Steevens was the sole editor. After giving Greene's extract from the register, he says that he was favoured with it by the Hon. James West. Up to the publication of Rowe's edition in 1709, the writers who mention Shakspere merely say, "born at Stratford-upon-Avon." Rowe says "he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, in April, 1564"-a fact never before stated. Of the date of the birth Rowe says nothing. The particulars of Rowe's life of the poet, prefixed to the edition of 1709, were furnished by Betterton, the actor, who, to follow up the information which he might have derived from the traditions of the theatre, made a journey to Stratford to glean new materials for his scanty stock of biographical facts. If the day of Shakspere's birth were not a tradition in Shakspere's native place ninety-three years after his death, it is not very credible that a trustworthy tradition had survived until 1773, when Greene wrote his memorandum which Steevens first published. In the second edition of Johnson and Steevens' Shakspere, in 1778, Malone makes this note upon Rowe's statement that Shakspere died in the fifty-third year of his age: "He died on his birthday, 1616, and had exactly completed his fifty-second year." In the edition of Shakspere by Boswell, in 1821, Malone, whose posthumous life was here first given, doubts the fact that Shakspere was born three days before April the 26th. "I have said this on the faith of Mr. Greene, who, I find, made the extract from the register which Mr. West gave Mr. Steevens; but quære how did Mr. Greene ascertain this fact?" Lastly, there arises the question whether the theory that Shakspere died on his birthday is to be traced to the inscription on the tomb : OBIIT AN. DOM. 1616. ÆTATIS 53. DIE 23. ap. : Mr. Collier has said, in his edition of 1844: "The inscription on his monument supports the opinion that he was born on the 23rd April. Without the contrac tions it runs thus: Obiit Anno Domini 1616. Ætatis 53, die 23 Aprilis.' And this, in truth, is the only piece of evidence upon the point." Mr. Bolton Corney thus somewhat triumphantly meets this interpretation "The inscription contains no evidence in favour of the assumed birthday. It refutes the assertion sans réplique! As Shakspere died on the 23 April, in his fifty-third year, he must have been born before the 23 April, 1564." Oldys (who died in 1761), in his manuscript annotations upon Langbaine's 'Account of the English Dramatic Poets' (a book now to be seen in the Library of the British Museum), has an interpretation upon the inscription on the monument which he finds in Langbaine. Mr. Bolton Corney thus disposes of the worthy antiquary's theory: “Oldys, in some non-lucid moment, underscores die 23 Apr.subtracts 53 from 1616--and writes down 1563. He assumes that the words anno ætatis 53 are equivalent to vixit annos 53, and that the words die 23 Aprilis refer to anno ætatis, instead of being the object of Obiit. Such is the process, never before described, by which the birthday of Shakspere was discovered!" We turn back to the first year of the registry, 1558, for other records of John Shakspere's family; and we find the baptism of Joan, daughter to John Shakspere, on the 15th of September. Again, in 1562, on the 2nd of December, Margaret, daughter to John Shakspere, is baptized. In the entry of burials in 1563 we find, under date of April 30, that Margaret closed a short life in five months. The elder daughter Joan also died young. We look forward, and in 1566 find the birth of another son registered :-Gilbert, son of John Shakspere, was baptized on the 13th of October of that year. In 1569 there is the registry of the baptism of a daughter, Joan, daughter of John Shakspere, on the 15th of April. Thus, the registry of a second Joan leaves no reasonable doubt that the first died, and that a favourite name was preserved in the family. In 1571 Anne is baptized; she died in 1579. In 1573-4 another son was baptized—Richard, son of Master (Magister) John Shakspere, on the 11th of March. The last entry, which determines the extent of John Shakspere's family, is that of Edmund, son of Master John Shakspere, baptized on the 3rd of May, 1580. Here, then, we find that two sisters of William were removed by death, probably before his birth. In two years and a half another son, Gilbert, came to be his playmate; and when he was five years old that most precious gift to a loving boy was granted, a sister, who grew up with him. When he was ten years old he had another brother to lead by the hand into the green meadows. Then came another sister, who faded untimely; and when he was grown into youthful strength, a boy of sixteen, his youngest brother was born. William, Gilbert, Joan, Richard, Edmund, constituted the whole of the family amongst whom John Shakspere was to share his means of existence. Rowe, we have already seen, mentions the large family of John Shakspere, "ten children in all." Malone has established very satisfactorily the origin of this error into which Rowe has fallen. In later years there was another John Shakspere in Stratford. In the books of the corporation the name of John Shakspere, shoemaker, can be traced in 1580; in the register in 1584 we find him married to Margery Roberts, |