Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/87

 12 s. vni. JAN. 22, 1921] NOTES AND QUERIES. 67 his departure, upon agreement for bonds to save him harmless of the fifteenth and tenths and all -other duties." Salaries were paid at Lady-Day and Michaelmas, and we conclude that Dyos had received nothing since Sept. 29, 1558, the last pay-day under Mary. He evidently contemplated "departure " when the magis- trates wrote on Oct. 14, 1559, and when the Council were assured of it they gave him a por- tion of the amount claimed. He asked for 30Z, they paid him less than 20Z ; and seventeen years afterwards he sued for and recovered the balance 1 3Z. 17s. Qd. This sum they had probably spent on Protestant preachers, and felt justified in deducting from the stipend of the Vicar, whom they had never wanted and whose services they considered to be dispensed with at Mary's death. Protestants, we may be sure, officiated in the interval between the "departure " of Dyos and the appointment of a new Vicar, Master John Bretchgirdle, in Jan. 1561. We know something of the personnel of the Stratford Chamber at the time of the -dispute with Dyos. The Court Leet was held on Oct. 6, 1559, eight days before the letter of the magistrates was written from <Joughton. Adrian Quyny was sworn Bailiff, and his colleagues were William Whateley, High Alderman ; John Taylor, John Shake- speare, William Tyler and William Smith, haberdasher, Constables ; Humfrey Plymley and John Wheeler, Chamberlains ; Thomas Dickson alias Waterman, and Roger Greene, Tasters ; Richard Sharpe and William Butler, Serjeants - at - the - Mace ; William Trowt and Henry Featherston, Leather Sealers. The Serjeants, and in a less degree the Leather Sealers, were permanently, though pro forma annually, appointed. The rest were chosen more or less in succession and according to seniority, but there is no mistaking their Protestant complexion. Adrian Quyny, John Wheeler and John Shakespeare were ultra-Protestant, and some of the others were hardly less pronounced in their convictions. The minutes of this Leet are in the Gothic hand of Symons and are witnessed by the affeerors Richard Biddle, Lewis ap Williams, John Wheeler, William Tyler and John Shakespeare. Symons has written the names at the bottom of the page, on the right hand, and the affeerors have attached their signature or mark. Biddle and Wheeler have signed ; Lewis ap Williams, Tyler and Shakespeare have made their marks. Ap Williams' mark resembles a church-gable and may mean Holy Church ; Tyler's is a circle containing a circle, with a common centre, divided by a cross and may signify the Trinity ; Shakespeare's is a glover's compasses and denotes, no doubt, " God encompasseth us " (corrupted in a less religious age into " Goat and Compasses " !) Shakespeare's mark is daintily drawn, and does not give the impression of illiteracy. Squire Clopton, the champion of the Catholic party, must have keenly felt the change from Mary to Elizabeth. He had taken part in the ^Coronation feast of Mary on Oct. 1, 1553, serving the wafers at the Queen's table and having for his fee " all the instruments as well of silver or other metal for making of the same wafers and also all the napkins and other profits thereunto appertaining." On Jan. 31, 1559, rather more than a fortnight after the Coronation of Elizabeth, he buried his wife in the parish church of Stratford ; and less than a year later, on Jan. 4, 1560, he signed his will and died, leaving instructions that he should be interred in the same place. Their bodies were laid, no doubt, in what is sometimes called " the Clopton Chapel," in the east end of the north aisle, behind the handsome monument built for himself by Sir Hugh Clopton. There is nothing to mark the grave. Any intention the heir, William Clopton, may have cherished of erecting a tomb was probably prevented by the difficult years that followed for himself and his children. He inherited the bulk of the property, including manors and lands in Ryon Clifford, Bridgetown, Clopton, Ingon, Welcombe, Bearley and elsewhere in War- wickshire. His unmarried sisters, Anne, Eleanor and Rose, received 200 marks (113 6s. 8rf.) apiece, and his married sister, Elizabeth Arundel, 100Z. Among the credi- tors were William Hopkins, draper of Coventry, and William Tyler, Rafe Cawdrey, Lewis ap Williams, Francis Harbage and John Shakespeare's neighbour, William Smith the harberdasher, of Stratford. The wit- nesses included William Bott the agent. Immediately after Squire Clopton's death (if not shortly before it) his son and his wife removed from New Place to Clopton House, and William Bott, as we have seen, left Snitterfield for New Place. EDGAR I. FRIPP. (To be continued.)