NOTE ON THE AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN SHAKSPERE.

WE printed the fac-simile of the signatures of the corporation of Stratford some time since in 'The Store of Knowledge' and 'The Penny Cyclopædia.' It has been objected, we understand, that the register from which these fac-similes are copied is itself a copy. That assertion is not correct. The original council-book in which this entry appears is in the possession of W. O. Hunt, Esq., town-clerk of Stratford; and by his permission the entry was copied for us with the minutest accuracy by Mr. Fairholt. The entry is not only an original one, but it is one of the most remarkable in that ancient book. It bears date the 29th of September, the 7th of Elizabeth, and it is for the especial purpose of directing, in a somewhat peremptory manner, John Wheler to take on him the office of high bailiff, to which he had been "pricked" by the Earl of Warwick. John Wheler probably considered this pricking to be an exertion of arbitrary power; but the corporation resolved that the will of the great Earl should be obeyed; and for more solemnity they individually attest the order by the signatures of so many as were present at the common hall. "John Shacksper" was among the number. So unusual was it for members of the corporation individually thus to sanction the general proceedings of the body, that, although John Shakspere continued in the corporation fifteen years after this, his name never again occurs as a signature in the entries of the common halls, although he is very frequently entered as an attendant upon those halls. Now it is in the books of the corporation that the signature of John Shakspere, whether made by writing his name, or by a mark, is to be sought for. The old council-book, which records the proceedings of the corporation, is entire, and has no such signature; and yet Malone, in his desire to support his assertion that "among the twelve marksmen is found John Shakspeare," adds the following note:"The mark of John Shakspeare is considerably below his name, in consequence of the town-clerk's having written it so close to the name immediately above, that, if he had made his mark directly opposite to his name, it would have intrenched on that of the person who preceded him. It was, indeed, his usual custom to set his mark lower than his name. In the latter part of his life he contented himself with making a cross instead of the A which he had formerly used." Where are the examples to be found of his “usual custom"? Where is the document to show us that "in the latter part of his life he contented himself with making a cross"? It is the usual custom, Malone pretends, of a man that cannot write his name to place his mark opposite the name of another man; and John Shakspere, also, having adopted one distinctive mark at one period of his life, changes it at a later period for the commonest of all marks. The subject of marks is a very curious one. The great body of the people were no doubt accustomed to use the mark of the cross; but amongst many in the early times who could not write, and did not find it necessary to write, it was a very common case for an individual to adopt, in the language of Jack Cade, a mark to himself, possessing distinctness of character, and sometimes almost heraldically alluding to his name or occupation. Many of these are like ancient merchants' marks; and they were so identified with the individual in many cases, that, in old deeds, the mark of the landowner who alienates the property corresponds with the mark described in the conveyance of unenclosed fields to be cut in the turf or upon the boundary-stones. Not to do injustice to the intentions of Malone, we are constrained to suppose that, from the inspection of documents which do not now exist, he was warranted in saying that John Shakspere changed his mark in the latter part of his life. But we must also suppose that he might have mistaken the mark of some one else for that of John Shakspere. His assertion is altogether incredible, because it is opposed to the invariable practice of the contemporaries of John Shakspere. There is not only no evidence for the assertion, but it is contrary to all other evidence. There can be no doubt, we apprehend, that, looking at the fac-simile we have given, no one could think of asserting John Shakspere's inability to write from the evidence contained in that document. We must therefore, believing with Malone that John Shakspere "would not neglect the education of his children," refer his parental care to a higher motive than that of feeling himself, and lamenting, "the want of this useful accomplishment,”—the ability to write.

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 sevententh 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 the present owner, 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."

But there are entries in this Register-book of Stratford that are interesting to us-to all Englishmen to universal mankind. We have all received a precious 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 :

1564

April 26

Enlielmus filius Johannes hakkpore

William, the son of John Shakspere, baptized on the 26th April, 1564.† And when born? The want of such information is a defect in all parish-registers. Baptism so immediately followed birth in those times, when infancy was sur

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.

rounded with greater dangers than in our own days of improved medical science, that we may believe that William Shakspere first saw the light only a day or two previous to this legal record of his existence. There is no direct evidence that he was born on the 23rd of April, according to the common belief. But 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." We turn back to the first year of the registry, 1558, 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 1574 another son was baptized,—Richard, son of Master (Magister) John Shakspere, on the 11th of March. In 1578 another daughter was born,-Anne, daughter of Master John Shakspere, baptized on the 28th of September. The register of sorrow and blighted hope shows that Anne was buried on the following 4th of April. 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 1586; in the register in 1584 we find him married to Margery Roberts, who dies in 1587; he is, without doubt, married a second time, for in 1589, 1590, and 1591, Ursula, Humphrey, and Philip are born. It is unquestionable that these are not the children of the father of William Shakspere, for they are entered in the register as the daughter, or sons, of John Shakspere, without the style which our John Shakspere always bore after 1569—“ Magister.” There can be no doubt that the mother of all the children of Master John Shakspere was Mary Arden; for in proceedings in Chancery in 1597, which we shall notice hereafter, it is set forth that John Shakspere and his wife Mary, in the

20th Elizabeth, 1577, mortgaged her inheritance of Asbies. Nor can there be a doubt that the children born before 1569, when he is styled John Shakspere, without the honourable addition of Master, were also her children; for in 1599, when William Shakspere is an opulent man, application is made to the College of Arms, that John Shakspere, and his issue and posterity, might use a "shield of arms," impaled with the arms of Shakspere and Arden. This application (which appears also to have been made in 1596, as the grant of arms by Dethick states the fact of John Shakspere's marriage) would in all probability have been at the instance of John Shakspere's eldest son and heir. The history of the family up to the period of William Shakspere's manhood is as clear as can reasonably be expected.

William Shakspere has been carried to the baptismal font in that fine old church of Stratford. The "thick-pleached alley" that leads through the churchyard to the porch is putting forth its buds and leaves. The lime-flowers are sweet in the morning breath; the chestnut hangs its white blossoms over the

grassy mounds of that resting-place. All is joyous in the spring sunshine. Kind neighbours are smiling upon the happy father; maidens and matrons snatch a kiss of the sleeping boy. There is "a spirit of life in everything" on this 26th of April, 1564. Summer comes, but it brings not joy to Stratford. There is wailing in her streets and woe in her houses. The death-register tells a fearful history. From the 30th June to the 31st December, two hundred and thirty-eight inhabitants, a sixth of the population, are carried to the grave. The plague is in the fated town; the doors are marked with the red cross, and

It is supposed that such a green avenue was an old appendage to the church, the present trees having taken the place of more ancient ones.