CHAPTER I.

A CALLING.

WE have endeavoured to fill up, with some imperfect forms and feeble colours, the very meagre outline which exists of the schoolboy life of William Shakspere. He is now, we will assume, of the age of fourteen-the year 1578; a year which has been held to furnish decisive evidence as to the worldly condition of his father and his family. The first who attempted to write "Some Account of the Life of William Shakspeare," Rowe, says, "His father, who was a considerable dealer in wool, had so large a family, ten children in all, that, though he was his eldest son, he could give him no better education than his own employment. He had bred him, it is true, for some time at a free-school, where, it is probable, he acquired what Latin he was master of: but the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his further proficiency in that language." This statement, be it remembered, was written one hundred and thirty years after the event which it professes to recordthe early removal of William Shakspere from the free-school to which he had been sent by his father. It is manifestly based upon two assumptions, both of which are incorrect :-The first, that his father had a large family of ten children, and was so narrowed in his circumstances that he could not spare even the time of his eldest son, he being taught for nothing; and, secondly, that the son, by his early removal from the school where he acquired "what Latin he was master of," was prevented

attaining a "proficiency in that language," his works manifesting "an ignorance of the ancients." Mr. Halliwell, commenting upon this statement, says, "John Shakspeare's circumstances began to fail him when William was about fourteen, and he then withdrew him from the grammar-school, for the purpose of obtaining his assistance in his agricultural pursuits." Was fourteen an unusually early age for a boy to be removed from a grammar-school? We think not, at a period when there were boybachelors at the Universities. If he had been taken from the school three years before, when he was eleven, certainly an early age, we should have seen his father then recorded, in 1575, as the purchaser of two freehold houses in Henley Street, and the narrowness of his circumstances" as the reason of Shakspere's "no better proficiency," would have been at once exploded. In his material allegation Rowe utterly fails.

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The family of John Shakspere did not consist, as we have already shown, of ten children. In the year 1578, when the school education of William may be reasonably supposed to have terminated, and before which period his "assistance at home" would rather have been embarrassing than useful to his father, the family consisted of five children: William, aged fourteen; Gilbert, twelve; Joan, nine; Anne, seven; and Richard four. Anne died early in the following year; and, in 1580, Edmund, the youngest child, was born; so that the family never exceeded five living at the same time. But still the circumstances of John Shakspere, even with five children, might have been straitened. The assertion of Rowe excited the persevering diligence of Malone; and he collected together a series of documents from which he infers, or leaves the reader to infer, that John Shakspere and his family gradually sank from their station of respectability at Stratford into the depths of poverty and ruin. The sixth section of Malone's posthumous "Life" is devoted to a consideration of this subject. It thus commences : 66 The manufacture of gloves, which was, at this period, a very flourishing one, both at Stratford and Worcester (in which latter city it is still carried on with great success), however generally beneficial, should seem, from whatever cause, to have afforded our poet's father but a scanty maintenance.” We have endeavoured to show to what extent, and in what manner, John Shakspere was a glover. However, be his occupation what it may, Malone affirms that “when our author was about fourteen years old" the "distressed situation" of his father was evident it rests "upon surer grounds than conjecture." The corporation books have shown that on particular occasions, such as the visitation of the plague in 1564, John Shakspere contributed like others to the relief of the poor; but now, in January, 1577-8, he is taxed for the necessities of the borough only to pay half what other aldermen pay; and in November of the same year, whilst other aldermen are assessed fourpence weekly towards the relief of the poor, John Shakspere "shall not be taxed to pay anything." In 1579 the sum levied upon him for providing soldiers at the charge of the borough is returned, amongst similar sums of other persons, as unpaid and unaccounted for." There are other corroborative proofs of John Shakspere's poverty at this period brought forward by Malone. In this precise year, 1578, he mortgages his wife's inheritance of Asbies to Edmund Lambert for forty pounds; and, in the same year, the will of Mr. Roger Sadler of Stratford, to which is subjoined a list of debts due to him, shows that John Shakspere was indebted to him five pounds; for which sum Edmund Lambert was a security,—“ By which,” says Malone, "it appears that John Shakspeare was then considered insolvent, if not as one depending rather on the credit of others than his own." It is of little consequence to the present age to know whether an alderman of Stratford, nearly three hundred years past, became unequal to maintain his social position; but to enable us to form a right estimate of the education of William Shakspere, and of the circumstances in which he was placed at the most influential period of his life,

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it may not be unprofitable to consider how far these revelations of the private affairs of his father support the case which Malone holds he has so triumphantly proved. At the time in question, the best evidence is unfortunately destroyed; for the registry of the Court of Record at Stratford is wanting, from 1569 to 1585. Nothing has been added to what Malone has collected as to this precise period. It amounts therefore to this,—that in 1578 he mortgages an estate for forty pounds; that he is indebted also five pounds to a friend for which his mortgagee had become security; and that he is excused one public assessment, and has not contributed to another. At this time he is the possessor of two freehold houses in Henley Street, bought in 1574. Malone, a lawyer by profession, supposes that the money for which Asbies was mortgaged went to pay the purchase of the Stratford freeholds; according to which theory, these freeholds had been unpaid for during four years, and the good and lawful money" was not "in hand" when the vendor parted with the premises. We hold, and we think more reasonably, that in 1578, when he mortgaged Asbies, John Shakspere became the purchaser, or at any rate the occupier, of lands in the parish of Stratford, but not in the borough; and that, in either case, the money for which Asbies was mortgaged was the capital employed in this undertaking. The lands which were purchased by William Shakspere of the Combe family, in 1601, are described in the deed as "lying or being within the parish, fields, or town of Old Stretford." But the will of William Shakspere, he having become the heir-atlaw of his father, devises all his lands and tenements "within the towns, hamlets, villages, fields, and grounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." Old Stratford is a local denomination, essentially different from Bishopton or Welcombe; and, therefore, whilst the lands purchased by the son in 1601 might be those recited in the will as lying in Old Stratford, he might have derived from his father the lands of Bishopton and Welcombe, of the purchase of which by himself we have no record. But we have a distinct record that William Shakspere did derive lands from his father, in the same way that he inherited the two freeholds in Henley Street. Mr. Halliwell prints, without any inference, a "Deed of Settlement of Shakespeare's Property, 1639;" that deed contains a remarkable recital, which appears conclusive as to the position of the father as a landed proprietor. The fine for the purpose of settlement is taken upon; 1, a tenement in Blackfriars; 2, a tenement at Acton; 3, the capital messuage of New Place; 4, the tenement in Henley Street; 5, one hundred and twenty-seven acres of land purchased of Combe; and 6, "all other the messuages, lands, tenements and hereditaments whatsoever, situate lying and being in the towns, hamlets, villages, fields and grounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, or any of them in the said county of Warwick, which heretofore were the INHERITANCE of William Shakspere, gent., deceased.” The word inheritance could only be used in one legal sense; they came to him by descent, as heir-at-law of his father. It would be difficult to find a more distinct confirmation of the memorandum upon the grant of arms in the Heralds' College to John Shakspere, "he hath lands and tenements, of good wealth and substance, 5007." The lands of Bishopton and Welcombe are in the parish of Stratford, but not in the borough. Bishopton was a hamlet, having an ancient chapel of ease. We hold, then, that in the year 1578 John Shakspere, having become more completely an agriculturist—a yeoman as he is described in a deed of 1579— ceased, for the purposes of business, to be an occupier within the borough of Stratford. Other aldermen are rated to pay towards the furniture of pikemen, billmen, and archers, six shillings and eight-pence; whilst John Shakspere is to pay three shillings and four-pence. Why less than other aldermen ? The next entry but one, which relates to a brother alderman, suggests an answer to the question :— "Robert Bratt, nothing IN THIS PLACE." Again, ten months after,—“It is ordained