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 was praysed greatlye and the chyff aucter therof was one Master Astoon beinge the head scoolemaster of the freescole there a godly and lernyd man who tooke marvelous greate paynes therin'. Robert Owen, who calls this Aston's 'great playe' of the Passion of Christ, assigns it to 1568, but it is clear from the town accounts that 1569 is right (Fisher, 18). This is presumably the play referred to by Thomas Churchyard (q.v.) in The Worthiness of Wales (1587, ed. Spenser Soc. 85), where after describing 'behind the walles a ground, newe made Theator wise', able to seat 10,000, and used for plays, baiting, cockfights, and wrestling, he adds:

At Astons Play, who had beheld this then, Might well have seene there twentie thousand men.

In the margin he comments, 'Maister Aston was a good and godly Preacher'. A 'ludus in quarell' is noted in 1495, and this was 'where the plases [? playes] have bine accustomyd to be usyd' in 1570 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 251, 255). Ashton resigned his Mastership about 1571 and was in the service of the Earl of Essex at Chartley in 1573. But he continued to work on the Statutes of the school, which as settled in 1578, the year of his death, provide that 'Everie Thursdaie the Schollers of the first forme before they goo to plaie shall for exercise declame and plaie one acte of a comedie' (Fisher, 17, 23; E. Calvert, Shrewsbury School Register). It is interesting to note that among Ashton's pupils were Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who entered the school together on 16 Nov. 1564.

JAMES ASKE (c. 1588).

Author of Elizabetha Triumphans (1588), an account of Elizabeth's visit to Tilbury. See ch. xxiv (C).

THOMAS ATCHELOW (c. 1589).

The reference to him in Nashe's Menaphon epistle (App. C, No. xlii) rather suggests that he may have written plays.

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626).

Bacon was son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, by Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. He was at Trinity, Cambridge, from April 1573 to March 1575, and entered Gray's Inn in June 1576. He sat in the Parliaments of 1584 and 1586, and about 1591 attached himself to the rising fortunes of the Earl of Essex, who in 1595 gave him an estate at Twickenham. His public employment began as a Queen's Counsel about 1596. He was knighted on 23 July 1603, became Solicitor-General on 25 June 1607, Attorney-General on 27 Oct. 1613, Lord Keeper on 7 March 1617, and Lord Chancellor on 7 Jan. 1618. He was created Lord Verulam on 12 July 1618, and Viscount St. Albans on 27 Jan. 1621. Later in the same year he was disgraced for bribery. The edition of his Works (with his Letters and Life) by J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath (1857-74) is exhaustive. Many papers of his brother Anthony are at Lambeth, and are drawn on by T. Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth (1754). F. J. Burgoyne, Facsimile of a Manuscript at Alnwick (1904), reproduces