Perhaps Adam Palmer’s responsibilities had worn him out, and he had begun to mix things up, though in other points his testimony was clear. It was well for Robert Webbe that he was then alive. He was buried at Aston Cantlow, 13th July 1584.
Though this Chancery case does not yield us much new matter, it makes real our somewhat hazy notions of the property settled on Shakespeare’s aunts. But the whole series of documents, taken together, teach us a great many important points regarding the poet’s family and surroundings. It lets us picture the house abutting on the High Street where John Shakespeare was doubtless born, the extent of the united properties, and the stretches of the common fields which the poet doubtless haunted in his youth to catch the conies, permitted to the freeholders. But, above all, it answers conclusively the question, so mockingly put by the Baconians, Where did the Stratford man learn his law? There are more legal documents concerning this Snitterfield property than were drawn up for any other family of the time in Warwickshire, as anyone may test who wades through the “Feet of Fines,” and as few of his relatives could write, it is possible they could not read. William Shakespeare may have had but little Latin, but he was very likely esteemed as the scholar of the family, and doubtless had all these deeds by heart, through reading them to his anxious and careful relatives when they were brought out of the “box of evidences,” to strengthen the case for the defendant against Thomas Mayowe. The law papers of the Ardens, and the litigation of his father, prepared him alike for his many later personal associations with the law, and for the conduct of the Chancery case which he hugged to his heart during ten years at least. I trust soon to follow this out.
“Athenæum,” 24th July and 14th August 1909.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The very first entry in the Bearley Register, now kept at Wootten Wawen, is that of the marriage of Agnes Hewens, widow, to Thomas Stringer, 15th October 1550. It may be noted that this was three months after she was called “wife of Thomas Stringer” here.
[2] The Registers of Aston Cantlow parish church only begin in 1560.
[3] Endorsed with memoranda of assignment, by Robert Webbe, to Will Cookes of Snitterfield, yeoman, before the delivery of the deed of bargain and sale by Edward Cornwell, to the said Robert Webbe, in presence of John Dafferne, Hastings Aston, Thomas Chamberlain, Thomas Nicholson, and Henry Talbot.
[4] A writ was issued for Robert Webbe to appear before the Court of Exchequer for alienation without licence of lands in Snitterfield, 12th November 21 Eliz. (1579), Misc. Doc., vii, 51.
[5] In this there was either a mistake in the Christian name or the original intention was to make the arrangement in the name of the grandfather instead of the father of Mary Perkes.
[6] After the will of John Scarlett of Newnam, 10th December 1581, is an inventory of goods valued at £23. The inventory of Adam Scarlett of Wilmecote, with the will proved 1st September 1591, was £117, a very large amount for the period.