Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/371

 12 s. vii. OCT. IB, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

303

the Aldermen nominated in the Charter of 1553. His wife had a shop for the sale of salted goods. Their family consisted of two sons, Thomas and Richard, who were about John Shakespeare's age, and four daughters, Julia, Alice, Margery and Joan, who later married well and held, with their brothers, a good position in the town. John Shake- speare may have been learning his craft under the most favourable circumstances, with Thomas Dickson when Thomas Atwood alias Taylor left his father " four oxen in his keep- ing " at Snitterfield on Oct. 21, 1543. In any case we may be confident that he was an apprentice in Stratford in the last years of King Henry VIII.

A FRIEND or SHAKESPEARE'S GRANDFATHER.

WHO was Thomas Atwood alias Taylor of Stratford-upon-Avon, who bequeathed, four oxen to Shakespeare's grandfather, Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield in 1543 ? His alias Taylor was probably in consequence of his trade. He was a woollen-draper and no doubt a tailor also. He seems to have belonged to a family of tailors. His will dated Oct. 21, 1543, and proved May 10, 1544, is an extremely interesting document to Shakesperians, and tells us not a little about the man and his friends, his occupa- tion and possessions. He made bequests of cloth of various qualities for " gowns "- 15 yards of the value of Is. a yard to five poor townsmen, 3 yards of the value of 4s. a yard to his sister (wife of Henry Lee of Knowle in Warwickshire), and 3 yards of the value of 5s. a yard to his curate, Sir John Bartlet, one of the witnesses of the will. It took 3 yards, then, to make a man's or woman's "gown," and 3^ yards to make a priest's. Five shillings a yard would work out at about fifty shillings a yard in our pre-war money. Atwood had drapers among his friends, members of his craft, Richard Sharpe and Richard Hill, both of whom lived in Wood Street. Other friends were Hugh Reynolds of Collis Farm in Old Stratford, gentleman ; Thomas Whateley, a vintner in the High Street and a next-door neighbour in the same street, William Smith the mercer ; Richard Quyny of Bridge Street, and Richard Symons, scrivener and lawyer and Town Clerk, who lived near New Place in Walkers Street. These were leading men in Strat- ford, of whom we shall hear again. Atwood 's house in Corn Street was occupied by

J^'rancis Harbage, - the skinner, another Drominent townsman. Atwood himself iived in a house which he leased, probably from the Gild. Children are not mentioned- in his will, but he had relatives in S ratford, Solihull and Beoley. He had a young kinsman at Oxford, Humfrey Taylor, who- had graduated in February, 1542, from Brasenose College and was elected the same? year a Fellow of All Souls'. Atwood, who was a good Catholic, wished him o take orders. He left him bedding and 3L6s. Sd. and, if he entered the Church, h best silver cup, to be given to him on the day he sang his first mass- which cup, if he did not become a priest, was to be sold and the money given to the poor. His bequests- included no less than four gowns, probably his robes of office in the Gild, the Borough- and the Skinners' and Tailors' Company. To Oliver Francis of Warwick went his- "best gown furred with fitchews," to Richard Symons aforesaid his "Kentish tawny gown furred in black lamb " (tawny was a dark yellow), to Daniel Taylor "his black gown furred in black lamb," and to Robert Taylor of Beoley, one of the exe- cutors, his "violet gown furred with fox." Silver was scarce in 1543, but Atwood' possessed, beside the cup conditionally left to the Oxford student, plate which he bequeathed to his wife, a silver goblet, and spoons, three "pictured with Apostles 'J and twelve "pictured in Maiden Heads." The last, representing the Virgin Mary, were not uncommon in Stratford. A speci- men is in the Birthplace Museum bearing the town-mark of Leicester. At- wood left money for the Bridge and for highways, five spinning-wheels to five poor townswomen and five pairs of woollen cards to five more. The poor benefited con- siderably, receiving 51. at his burial, II. on the Good Friday following his death, 1Z. at> his "month's mind," and for seven years the partial proceeds of a barn and garden. Part of the rent of his house in Corn Street went to a yearly obit on Assumption Day (Aug. 15), part to the Almsfolk and other poor. He died committing his soul to Almighty God, the Blessed Lady Saint Mary and all the Holy Company of Heaven, and his body to be buried in the Parish Church, " at the end of the seat where I did use to kneel and sit," with full service by the priests, clerks and choristers of both the College and the Gild, followed by "month's minds" for a year, "year's minds " for seven years, and mass for his soul for a twelvemonth