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living in the small village of Snitterfield, about four miles from Stratford. Richard owned no land himself, but was a tenant on the estate of a wealthy squire, Robert Arden. The farm that he cultivated is thus described by his landlord: "All that messuage, with its appurtenances, in Snitterfield, which are in the tenure of the said Richard Shakespeare; and all those my lands, meadows, pastures, commons, with their appurtenances, in Snitterfield aforesaid, belonging and appertaining to the same messuage, which now are in the tenure of the aforesaid Richard Shakespeare." His dwelling in Snitterfield is described as "lying between the house which was sometime the house of William Palmer on the one side, and a lane called Merrel Lane on the other, and doth abut on High Street."1 No doubt it was an ordinary thatched farmhouse, not unlike that occupied by the Hathaways at Shottery.

Of such an inconspicuous person the records preserved are naturally accidental, and for the most part trivial; yet even so they are of interest to students of the poet, and deserve at least brief citation here.

In 1528 Richard was presented by John Palmer, tithingman, for owing suit of court.2 In 1535 he was fined 12d. for obstructing with his own stuff the village commons. In 1543 he was the recipient of a generous benefaction from Thomas Atwoode, alias Tailor, of Stratford, who mentions him in his will as follows: "Unto Richard Shakespeare, of Snitterfield, my four oxen, which are now in his keeping." In April, 1559, he was associated with the wealthy "Mr. William Botte" in making an inventory of the goods of Roger Lyncecombe. In July, 1550, and again in May, 1560, Robert Arden, in legal documents, makes mention of the farm at Snitterfield as then

1 C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Environment, pp. 32, 66.

2 C. C. Stopes, Shakespeare's Environment, p. 16. There are frequent subsequent notices of him by Palmer down to 1542.

being "in the tenure of Richard Shakespeare." In October, 1560, his name appears in the proceedings of a View of Frank Pledge. But shortly after this he must have died, for on February 10, 1561, letters of administration of his goods were issued to his son John (the poet's father), who is described as a farmer (agricola) of Snitterfield. The formal inventory of his goods reckoned their value at £38 175.; but such estimates were commonly much below the actual value of an estate; for example, the inventory of the goods of Annes Arden in 1581 appraised "five score pigges" at 13s. 4d. — a trifle over a penny and a half each. Nor was the estimated value of Richard's possessions small for a man in his position. W. Stafford, in A Compendious or Brief Examination (1581), writes: “In times past, and within the memory of man, he hath been accounted a rich and wealthy man, and well able to keep house among his neighbours, which, all things discharged, was clearly worth £30 or £40." If this be true, the inventory of Richard's goods, some twenty years earlier, at £38 175. indicates that he was at least a well-to-do husbandman, occupying a respectable position in the little farmingcommunity of Snitterfield.1

Besides his son John, just mentioned, Richard left also a son named Henry, who spent all his life in or near Snitterfield, tilling a farm of considerable importance. To his neighbors he was generally known as "Harry Shakespeare"; and though our records of him are scanty, they are sufficient to show that he had a strongly-marked personality. In 1574 he engaged in a fight with Edward Cornwell (who had married his brother's wife's sister), in which "he drew blood to the injury of the said Edward

1 Sir Sidney Lee, Life, p. 3, states that the estimated value of Richard's estate was £35 175., and Edgar I. Fripp, Introduction to Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1921, p. xlix, gives the estimate as £38 7s. The correct sum, however, is £38 175.

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