Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/370

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. OCT. IG, 1920.

property by the purchase of the neighbour- ing lands and tenements of Richard Rush by (in 1519) and John Palmer (in 1529). John Palmer may have been his brother-in-law, and Adam Palmer of Aston Cant lo we, pre- sumably John's son, whom Robert Arden made trustee to his daughters, may have Deen his nephew. If these conjectures are sound, William Shakespeare's grandmother on his mother's side was a Palmer, and his great grandmother on the same side a Trussell : but they are only conjectures.

Richard Shakespeare's grandfather took the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses, and was rewarded by Henry VII., probably for services at the Battle of Bosworth (Aug. 22, 1485), with lands and tenements in Warwickshire. These may have been inherited by an uncle at Wroxall, Balsall or Rowington. Richard Shakespeare had namesakes if not kinsmen in all those places. He himself was a tenant-farmer, occupier of the main portion of Robert Arden 's land in Snitterfield a messuage with lands and meadows and their appur- tenances. The two lesser portions adjoin- ing were held by Richard Henley and Hugh Porter the former a messuage with three quartrones of land (land yielding three- quarters of a pound rent, i.e., 15s. per annum), the latter a cottage with garden and orchard. Besides this cottage Hugh Porter had lands at Snitterfield and Barford and was the valued friend of his landlord, Robert Arden, who made him trustee, with Adam Palmer, to his daughters in 1550. Hugh Porter's daughter married Robert Meads, son of Richard Meads, and had a son named Porter after his grandfather. To this grandson, Porter Meads, and his father, Robert Meads, Hugh Porter left his lands at Snitterfiold and Barford on his daughter's death. During the last years of his life Hugh Porter was a widower, living with an illegitimate daughter Eleanor, whom he loved and made his sole executrix in 1554. He was a friend of W r illiam Bott of the Wold Farm. Richard Henley, tenant of the messuage adjoining Richard Shakespeare's farm, had a son (or brother) John Henley, who lived to be an old man and said in June, 1582, when his age was fourscore, that he had known Richard Shakespeare's farm for about sixty-six years. John Walker de- clared the same time, when his age was sixty or thereabout, that he had known the successive occupants of the farm, as fol- lows : Richard Shakespeare, Margaret Arden (sister of Mary Arden and aunt of William

Shakespeare) and her two husbands, Alex- ander Web be and Edward Cornwall, and heir son, by Alexander Webbe, William Shake- speare's cousin, Robert Webbe. There was thus an interesting continuity of family tenancy.

Richard Shakespeare, we might assume from John Henley's testimony, was in- occupation in 1516. He was certainly there in 1529 when his name appears as a defaulter in the roll of the manorial court, being fined his 2d. for non-suit, on Thursday after Hoke-day, i.e., Thursday, Apr. 8. He was fined again the year following, on Apr. 28, 1530, and again on Apr. 27, 1536. Of his two sons, John and Henry, the elder (the poet's father) was born about 1529. If the mother, whose name we do not know, was a native of Snitterfield, she was doubt- less married, as her children were doubtless baptized, in the Church by Master John Donne, who was vicar from 1515 to 1541. From Master Donne or his successor, Master Thomas Hargreave (who was appointed on Donne's death in 1541 and continued until his own death in 1557) John Shakespeare may have acquired that modicum of learning which enabled him to become a good man. of business, a maker of inventories, the trusted and emcientChamberlainof Stratford? Bailiff and Chief Alderman of the borough and a keen litigant in the Court of Record. The John Hargreave, it is perhaps worth, noticing, who succeeded Hugh Porter as tenant of the cottage and garden and orchard adjoining Richard Shakespeare's farm, and who co-operated with Richard Shakespeare in appraising the goods of Henry Cole, the Snitterfield blacksmith, in June, 1560, was perhaps son to the late Vicar Hargreave and a fellow of John Shakespeare.

About the age of 14 John Shakespeare entered the service and household of a glover and whittawer in Stratford, binding himself as his "covenant-servant" or apprentice for the regulation term of seven years. For his master we look for a well- to-do townsman able to assist him to friends and a place subsequently on the Borough Council. Just such a one was Thomas Dickson alias Waterman, later Proctor of the Gild of Stratford, an instru- ment of Squire Clopton in the indictment of Squire Lucy's parson of Hampton, Edward Large in July, 1537, a resident in Bridge Street, all among the leather dealers, Bridge Warden from 1541 to 1543, a frequent jury- man at the View of Frankpledge, a Master Constable in 1546 and other years, one of