WAS SHAKSPEARE DESCENDED FROM A LANDED PROPRIETOR?
Mr. Knight has on two occasions, the latter in his Stratford Shakspeare just published, called attention to what he concludes is an oversight of mine in not drawing any conclusion from a deed in which certain lands are mentioned as "heretofore the inheritance of William Shakspeare, Gent., deceased." These words are supposed by Mr. Knight to imply that the lands in question came to Shakspeare by descent, as heir-at-law of his father. This opinion appeared to me to be somewhat a hasty one: believing that no conclusion whatever is to be drawn from the phrase as there used, and relying on the ordinary definition of inheritance in the old works on law, I did not hesitate, some time since, to declare a conviction that the lands so mentioned were bought by Shakspeare himself. As the question is of some importance in the inquiry respecting the position of the poet's ancestry, perhaps one of your legal readers would kindly decide which of us is in the right. I possess an useful collection of old law-books, but there are few subjects in which error is so easily committed by unprofessional readers. In the present instance, however, if plain words are to be relied upon, it seems certain that the term inheritance was applied, to use Cowell's words, to
"every fee simple or fee taile that a man hath by his purchase." (See The Interpreter, 1637.)
J. O. Halliwell.