Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/467

 i2s. vii. NOV. is, i92o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

made his will on Sunday, Aug. 12. The simple preamble more than suggests that he was a Protestant and that because of his heretical views he was not made Vicar by Queen Mary on the death of Anthony Barker in 1553. "I bequeath my soul," he said, " to Almighty God ; my body to be buried in the chancel of Wotton Warwen." His heart was in Stratford, where he had been Sub warden of the College from 1545 to its dissolution in 1548, and had fulfilled the Vicar's duties in the absence of Barker from 1548 to the appointment of Roger Dyos over his head in November, 1553. The lease of the Vicar's House he seems to have parted with to his curate, William Brogden, but here with Brogden and other clerics he may have lived, on his pension and by taking pupils, until February, 1557. He bequeathed I2d. to Wootton Church ; 40s. to his brother William ; a chest " in the parlour by the bedside," two pair of sheets and his best short gown to a sister Katharine, wife of Robert Garrett, together with a bed in the parlour with its appurtenances, and his best gown, a skull, his bill and his Camelot jacket. The skull perhaps was to remind lier of his death. To a brother clergyman, Henry Beardsmore, he left his black gown faced with worsted, his best sarcenet tippet, his clerical cap and "pair of portuis " or breviary. To Thomas and Margery Mount- ford of Stratford, he bequeathed a cow, and to their child, Elizabeth, who may have been his godchild, household stuff, including linen and bedding, his best chest and all his painted cloths, with proviso that "if the child die the father and mother shall have the whole." Residuary legatee was Francis Harbage the skinner, who received among other things, a horse worth 21., a ewe and lamb worth 2s. 4c?., forty books (unfor- tunately neither catalogued nor priced) and "a limbeck and a stillitory." The titles of the books would have enabled us to know definitely of their owner's religious opinions. "A limbeck " is an alembic, a retort, as in
 * Macbeth '(I. vii. 63ff) :

His two chamberlains Will I with wine and wassail so convince That memory, the warden of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only ; and in Sonnet CXIX. \-^-

Siren tears

Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within. A "stillitory " is a still, as in 'Venus and Adonis,' 443 f. :

For from the stillitory of^thy face excelling Comes breath perfumed.

His reverence evidently distilled his own. strong waters. Stratford friends witnessed his will, and helped to make the inventory of his goods on Oct. 29, which Richard Symons wrote. The summa totalis, exclusive of the books, was 18Z. 5s. 4rf.

Alcock was unmarried and safe from episcopal interference on that score. A poor married sacerdos was in Stratford at this time and in great straits, named Rafe Hilton. He had five children in Mary's reign and a sixth early in the reign of Eliza- beth. On Oct. 1, 1557 he was fined S|6d. for a theft of firewood by his wife. John. Shakespeare was on the jury of Frankpledge that day, a junior member, his name appear- ing between those of Richard Hill and John. Taylor, at the bottom of the list, when the case came before them ; and in Richard Symons ; s handwriting as Town Clerk is the pathetic entry: "6d., Rafe Hilton, for his wife being a hedge -breaker and tearing and carrying away of Nicholas [Lane's] hedge at Greenhill Street end, he stands amerced." Hilton was no doubt a deprived Protestant minister, who may have officiated at the Parish Church, or at Bishopton or at Luddington in King Edward's time. The present assistant to Roger Dyos was William Brogden, a Master of Arts of Oxford (determined B.A. 1541, incepted M.A., Feb. 8, 1546). He lived at the old Priest's House, now the Vicar's House, and as lessee was fined I2d. on Apr. 29, 1552, and 4of. on Apr. 7, 1556, for neglecting the stream in Chapel Lane. In November, 1556, he was sued by Alderman Cawdrey, the Bailiff, for the large dabt of 81., and later had a capias served upon him for non-fulfilment of his promise to pay.

Adrian Quyny remains to be spoken of. In 1554 or 1555 he filed a petition in Chancery against Master John Combe. The latter, he complained, had got possession of deeds relating to his freehold tenement called Barlands House, with a garden, an orchard and a barn, in Stratford and was selling certain portions of the property secretly to the disinheritance of himself as owner. This John Combe, whom we will call John Combe the First of Stratford, had served on a commission in Latimsr's time with William Lucy of Charlecote and Edward Greville of Milcote, had purchased Priory lands in Coventry, leased College lands in Stratford from Latimer, and acted as steward to the Gild estate. He had a son John, John Combe the Second, who had married Joyce, daughter of Sir Edward Blount, and whose