scroll was to be placed, but capable also of a more particular application. I am but a "poor player," but I bear these insignia of gentry not without right. This, however, is supposing that the motto was the poet's own choice, which may not have been the case.*

It seems, however, proper to observe that among the complaints which Brook, an ill-natured and envious member of the college, brought against Dethick and the illustrious Camden, one was, that they had not exercised a sound discretion in the grant which they had made. I have not been able to find any copy of Brook's Complaint; but there are in existence several copies of the answer given by the Garter and Clarencieux Kings. From them we learn, 1. That there was an objection taken to the figure, that it was too like the coat of the old Barons Mauley, being in fact the coat of that very ancient house, with the addition only of the spear; to which it is replied, that the same objection might as well be made to Harley, which also resembles Mauley, and that the spear upon the bend is a very "patible difference." 2. To the quality of the person to whom the grant was made. The answer to this is, that he had been a magistrate at Stratford on Avon, a justice of the peace, which can, however, mean no more than that he was a justice of the peace during the year when he was bailiff, and in virtue of that office; further, that he had married a daughter and heir of Arden, and that he was a man of good substance and ability. The notes in Vincent, 157, No. 24, were evidently made with a view to this defence. The sum of £500 is there set down as a valuation in money of the estate of John Shakespeare, a part of which consisted in lands and tene

* It is remarkable that only a very few years before, Sir John Ferne in his Glorie of Generositie, 4to. 1585, a book which was known to Shakespeare, has placed the histriones in very disreputable company. See pp. 313 and 339.

ments. Arden, whose daughter he married, is there styled "a gentleman of worship;" as indeed he was.

An inference which may be drawn from the transactions of John Shakespeare with the heralds at, as we see, different periods of his life, and his having carried to the utmost extent consistent with truth his claim to hereditary gentility, is, that the original prejudices of the poet would be aristocratical, that is, that the influences communicated by his parents would be of that character; and further, that they would be likely to educate him as to them it appeared the heir of a family of some consideration ought to be educated. They appear to have done so, for it is quite clear that he was long enough at a grammar school to have had his mind deeply imbued with classic lore; not to be made a critic or scholar such as Parr or Porson, or even to have had his mind subdued to an acknowledgment of the supreme beauty of the models sent down from long past ages, but to have gained such an acquaintance with the whole range of classic history and fable as may well be deemed extraordinary. And this leads to the question, What really were the circumstances in life of the poet's father?

Mr. Malone, in the course of his researches in records which he found at Stratford, discovered what he thought sufficient evidence to prove that he was in trade, and in fact a glover. The evidence was this. At a court held on June 17, 1555, "Thomas Siche de Arscotte in com. Wigorn. querit. versus Joħni Shakyspere de Stratford, in com. Warwic. Glover, in plac. quod reddat ei oct. libras, &c." I give the passage exactly as Mr. Malone has given it; and without having had the opportunity of inspecting the original, but having seen the fac-simile of the passage which Mr. Knight has published, it appears to me impossible to withhold our assent from "glover" being the true reading of the contract,

however improbable it may seem that this English word should be introduced in a Latin sentence, when there was the word "chirothecarius" at hand. Whatever weight this may carry with it, it must be allowed to possess ; but it is remarkable, that often as his name is found subsequently, it is never again seen with this addition; so that this single entry is the sole evidence for this material fact in his history. It occurs, it will be seen, before his marriage. Possibly this may have been the occupation in which he was at first engaged, and which may have brought him to Stratford. After his marriage he is not found engaged in any branch of manufacturing industry. From that time it would rather appear that he lived on the proceeds of his own and his wife's inherited property, keeping portions of it in his own hands, and perhaps hiring lands of other people, trafficking in the produce, so that he might be called, as Rowe describes him, “a dealer in wool;" in other words, in a quality answering nearly to the modern term, "a gentleman farmer," one who cultivates land for profit, but who does not lose his position of a gentleman by doing so. But whatever he was, living at Stratford, he became a member of the Corporation, and gained such municipal distinctions as Stratford had to give at a period of life unusually early, for he can scarcely have been forty years of age when he served the office of Bailiff of the borough, the highest of all. Mr. Malone thinks that he became afterwards reduced in his circumstances; but his reasoning upon the facts collected by him touching this question appears to me inconclusive. That with a numerous family of children, and with the incumbrance of a Chancery suit, he did not much increase his inherited property, may have been the case; but he cannot have so conducted his affairs that he became decidedly a poor man, when we find him towards the close of life indulging in the luxury of

a formal grant of coat armour, and when the estimate of his property was in round numbers £500, a sum which may be regarded as at least equivalent to £4,000 in these times.

It is said that fresh evidence has recently been discovered at Stratford. This when produced will have its effect upon this question, one way or the other; but taking the facts as they are stated by Mr. Malone, most or all of them seem to admit of easy explanation, without supposing that the father of the poet ever sunk to a state of any thing that could be called poverty, or was ever otherwise than a respectable and respected townsman of Stratford, or neighbouring country gentleman of the second class, one who possessed landed property of his own, and who for above thirty years of hist life belonged to the class of those who in modern language would be called past-mayors of the borough, who was fairly entitled to the distinction usually given him in the parish register by the significant mark "Mr." before his name, and who by the heralds was honoured with the addition of "Gentleman," which they would not lightly confer.

His contributions to the poor at the time of the plague of 1564, and afterwards (says Mr. Malone), were small. But there were many who contributed less than his twelve pence, and the Bailiff himself heads the list with no more than 3s. 4d. In 1578 he mortgaged his estate derived from the Ardens at Wilmecote; but then he had recently bought two houses at Stratford, for which he gave as much money as he raised by the mortgage-£40. In the January of that year he is exempted from contributing to the soldiers which Stratford was to furnish, and in November from a contribution to the poor ; but it is not alleged that either of these exemptions is on account of his poverty, which, unless it is very decided indeed, is rarely regarded as sufficient reason for exemption in the case of local assessments. In 1578-9 he is a defaulter,

or at least had not paid at the time when the list was drawn out, in the assessment for arms; but so were Mr. Nash and Mr. Reynolds, whose respectability and wealth are indisputable, and he would not in such a list have appeared with the addition "Mr." withheld from most of the other names, if there had been either disgrace in the non-payment, or decided evidence of utter inability. A verdict against John Shakespeare in the Court of Stratford in 1586, at the suit of John Brown, with the return that he had no goods on which distraint could be made: this on the first view appears to be the strongest fact; but, beside the general improbability, there is at least an equal probability that the person concerning whom there is this return, and against whom a capias issued in consequence, was not our John Shakespeare, but John Shakespeare, the shoemaker, who was living at that time at Stratford. Mr. Malone relies more on a schedule of debts owing to Roger Sadler in 1578, appended to Sadler's will. "Item, of Edmund Lambert and Cornish for the debt of Mr. John Shakespeare, £5." I do not see the force of this argument. There were money transactions between Lambert and Shakespeare at that precise period, as we know by the proceedings in the Chancery suit ;* and at all events, that a debt owing from one person is to be called for from

* The outlines of this Chancery Suit, as they are to be collected from the bill, answer, and replication, which were all printed by the late body of Commissioners on the Public Records, are these: John and Mary Shakespeare were seised, in right of Mary, of a messuage, &c. at Wilmecote, which they mortgaged, in 1578, to one Edmund Lambert, of Barton on the Heath, for £40, who took the profits for three or four years. The Shakespeares then tendered the money in discharge of the mortgage; but Lambert refused to receive it unless other monies also due to him from Shakespeare were paid. In this state of things Edmund Lambert died, and his son John succeeded him and kept possession of the premises. John alleged that the mortgage had never been redeemed, and the question seems to have resolved itself into the matter of the tender, whether it had been made and was good or not. There is no trace of any decree. The question was before Sir Thomas Egerton,