Page:Mr. Sidney Lee and the Baconians.djvu/15

 Mr. Lee in his "plain and practical" Life fails to give a copy of Shakspere's will. Has he read it? He tells us that the testator devised the tenement in Chapel Lane—which is never mentioned in the will—to his daughter Judith, and all the lands except this tenement to his other daughter, whereas he left no tenement to Judith. What he did was to leave £50 to Judith on condition that she abandoned to her sister Susanna her right to a "tenemente" in "the mannour of Rowington." Then Mr. Lee asserts that he left the Henley Street house to his sister Joan. He did nothing of the kind. He left the two Henley Street houses to Susanna; and all he left Joan was a "tenemente," place not mentioned, for her life only at 12d. rent.

Mr. Lee makes the following bold statement: "When attesting documents he [Shakspere's father] occasionally made his mark, but there is evidence in the Stratford archives that he could write with facility." This can be flatly contradicted, as there is no such evidence. Halliwell-Phillipps, who went minutely through the Stratford records, and who, after Malone, according to Mr. Lee, "has made the most important additions to our knowledge of Shakespeare's biography," says:—"There is no reasonable pretence for assuming that, in the time of John Shakespeare, whatever may have been the case at earlier periods, it was the practice for marks to be used by those who were capable of signing their names. No instance of the kind has been discovered amongst the numerous records of his era that are preserved at Stratford-on-Avon, while even a few rare examples in other districts, if such are to be found, would be insufficient to countenance a theory that he was able to write. All the known evidences point in the opposite direction, and it should be observed that, in common with many other of his illiterate contemporaries, he did not always adhere to the same kind of