Page:A life of William Shakespeare (IA lifeofwilliamsha02lees).pdf/57
came of good yeoman stock, and that his ancestors to the fourth or fifth generation were fairly substantial landowners.[1] Adam Shakespeare, a tenant by military service of land at Baddesley Clinton in 1389, seems to have been great-grandfather of one Richard Shakespeare who held land at Wroxhall in Warwickshire during the first thirty-four years (at least) of the sixteenth century. Another Richard Shakespeare who is conjectured to have been nearly akin to the Wroxhall family was settled as a farmer at Snitterfield, a village four miles to the north of Stratford-on-Avon, in 1528.[2] It is probable that he was the poet's grandfather. In 1550 he was renting a messuage and land at Snitterfield of Robert Arden; he died at the close of 1560, and on February 10 of the next year letters of administration of his goods, chattels, and debts were issued to his son John by the Probate Court at Worcester. His goods were valued at 35l. 17s.[3] Besides the son John, Richard of Snitterfield certainly had a son Henry; while a Thomas Shakespeare, a considerable landholder at
- ↑ Cf. Times, October 14, 1895; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 501; articles by Mrs. Stopes in Genealogical Magazine, 1897.
- ↑ Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1887, ii. 207.
- ↑ The purchasing power of money was then eight times what it is now, and this and other sums mentioned should be multiplied by eight in comparing them with modern currency (see p. 204 n.). The letters of administration in regard to Richard Shakespeare's estate are in the district registry of the Probate Court at Worcester, and were printed in full by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his Shakespeare's Tours (privately issued 1887), pp. 44-5. They do not appear in any edition of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines. Certified extracts appeared in Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 463-4.