Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/390

 no sooner succeeded to his father's lands than he, with a neighbouring owner, Arthur Mannering, steward of Lord-chancellor Ellesmere (who was ex-officio lord of the manor) attempted to enclose the common fields, which belonged to the corporation of Stratford, about his estate at Welcombe. The corporation resolved to offer the scheme a stout resistance. Shakespeare had a twofold interest in the matter by virtue of his owning 106 acres at Welcombe and Old Stratford, and as joint owner—now with Thomas Greene, the town clerk—of the tithes of Old Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton. His interest in his freeholds could not have been prejudicially affected, but his interest in the tithes might be depreciated by the proposed enclosure. Shakespeare consequently joined with his fellow-owner Greene in obtaining from Combe's agent Replingham in October 1614 a deed indemnifying both against any injury they might suffer from the enclosure. But having secured himself against loss, Shakespeare threw his influence into Combe's scale. In November 1614 he was on a last visit to London, and Greene, whose official position as town clerk compelled him to support the corporation, visited him there to discuss the position of affairs. On 23 Dec. 1614 the corporation in formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare imploring him to aid them. Greene himself sent to the dramatist ‘a note of inconveniences [to the corporation that] would happen by the enclosure.’ But although an ambiguous entry of a later date (September 1615) in the few extant pages of Greene's ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tortured into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part at Combe's conduct, it may be inferred that, in the spirit of his agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to lend Combe his countenance. Happily Combe's efforts failed, and the common lands remained unenclosed (Shakespeare and the Enclosure of Common Fields at Welcombe, a facsimile of Greene's diary, now at Stratford, with a transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited by Dr. C. M. Ingleby, 1885).

At the beginning of 1616 Shakespeare's health was failing. He directed Francis Collins, a solicitor of Warwick, to draft his will, but, though it was prepared for signature on 25 Jan., it was for the time laid aside. On 10 Feb. 1616 Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, married, at the parish church, Thomas Quiney, son of an old friend of the poet, four years her junior. The ceremony took place before a license was procured, and the irregularity led to the summons of the bride and bridegroom before the ecclesiastical court at Worcester and the imposition of a fine. According to the testimony of John Ward, the vicar, Shakespeare entertained at New Place his two friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, in the spring of 1616, and ‘had a merry meeting,’ but ‘itt seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.’ A popular local legend, which was not recorded till 1762 (Brit. Mag. June 1762), credited Shakespeare with engaging at an earlier date in a prolonged and violent drinking bout at Bidford, a neighbouring village (cf., Shakespeare, 1821, ii. 500–2; , Confessions, 1805, p. 34; , Legend of the Crab Tree, 1857), but his achievements as a hard drinker may be dismissed as unproven. The cause of his death is undetermined, but probably a recurrence of illness led him in March to sign the will that had been drafted in the previous January. On Tuesday, 23 April, he died at the age of fifty-two. (The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to 3 May in the new; Cervantes, whose death is often described as simultaneous, died at Madrid ten days earlier—on 13 April in the old style, i.e. 23 April 1616 in the new.) On Thursday, 25 April (O.S.), the poet was buried inside Stratford church, near the northern wall of the chancel, in which, as one of the lay-rectors, he had a right of interment. Hard by was the charnel-house, where bones dug up from the churchyard were deposited. Over the poet's grave were inscribed the lines: Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare To dig the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. According to one William Hall, who described a visit to Stratford in 1694 (London, 1884, 4to), these verses were penned by Shakespeare to suit ‘the capacity of clerks and sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of people.’ Had this curse not threatened them, Hall proceeds, they would not have hesitated in course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to ‘the bone-house;’ the grave was made seventeen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive his wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried with her husband.

Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was drawn up before 25 Jan. 1616, received many interlineations and erasures before it was signed in the ensuing March. Francis Collins, the solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas Russell, ‘esquier,’ of Stratford, were the overseers; it was