In 1566 we find a link between the Shakespeares and the Hathaways in John. Shakespeare standing surety for Richard Hathaway; and in the same year his son Gilbert was born; another Joan being born in 1569. In 1568 and 1571 he attained the highest municipal offices, being elected high-bailiff and senior alderman, and thus, as chief magistrate, is found described in local documents as “Mr.” Shakespeare. In 1571 also his daughter Anne, who died in 1579, was born; and in 1573 a son, Richard. In 1575 he purchased the freehold of “the birthplace” from one Edmund Hall, for £40.
Early in 1578 the first note of ill-fortune is sounded in the career of John Shakespeare. Some financial disaster had befallen him. In January, when the town council had decided to provide weapons for two billmen, a body of pikemen, and one archer, and assessed the aldermen for six shillings and eightpence each and the burgesses at half that amount, two of the aldermen were excused the full pay. One, Mr. Plumley, was charged five shillings, and Mr. Shakespeare was to pay only three and fourpence. The following year he defaulted in an assessment for the same amount. Meanwhile, he had been obliged to mortgage Asbies, which had come to him with his wife, and to sell the interests at Snitterfield. The Shakespeares, although they in after years again grew prosperous, never recovered Asbies.
No one knows what caused these straitened circumstances. Possibly it was some disastrous speculation in corn. In the midst of this trouble, his seven-year-old daughter, Anne, died, and another son, Edmund, was horn, 1580. He ceased to attend meetings of the town council, and his son William entered into an improvident marriage.
CHAPTER III
Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s bride—The hasty marriage—Shakespeare’s wild young days—He leaves for London—Grendon Underwood.
William Shakespeare was but eighteen and a half years of age when he married. Legally, he was an “infant.” His wife was by almost eight years his senior, but if we agree with Bacon’s saying, that a man finds himself ten years older the day after his marriage, the disparity became at once more than rectified. She was one Anne, or Agnes, Hathaway; her father, Richard, being a farmer of Shottery. The Hathaways were numerous in this district, there being at that time no fewer than three families of the name in Shottery and others in Stratford. Anne had no fewer than eight brothers and sisters, all of whom, except two, are mentioned in their father’s will. Richard, who describes himself in his will as “husbandman,” executed that document on September 1st, 1581, and died probably in the June following, for his will was proved in London on July 9th, 1582. Storms of rival theories have raged around the mystery surrounding this marriage, of which the register does not exist. It is claimed that Shakespeare was married at Temple Grafton, Luddington, Billesley, and elsewhere, but no shadow of evidence can be adduced for any of these places. All we know is that on November 28th, 1582, Fulke Sandells and John Richardson, farmers, of Stratford, who had been respectively one of the “supervisors” and one of the witnesses of Richard Hathaway’s will, went to Worcester and there entered into a “Bond in £40 against Impediments, to defend and save harmless the right reverend father in God, John, Lord Bushop of Worcester” from any complaint or process that might by any possibility arise out of his licensing the marriage with only once asking the banns. These two bondsmen declared that “William Shagspere, one thone partie and Anne Hathaway of Stratford” (Shottery was and is a hamlet in the parish of Stratford-on-Avon) “in the dioces of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize marriage together.” This document, discovered in the Worcester Registry in 1836, is sufficiently clear and explicit; but a complication is introduced by a license issued the day before by the Bishop for a marriage “inter Wm. Shaxpere et Anna Whateley de Temple Grafton.” It has been suggested that, as there were Whateleys living in the neighbourhood, and that as there were numerous Shakespeares also, with many Williams among them, this was quite another couple, while others contend that “Whateley” was a mistake of one of the clerks employed in the Bishop’s registry, and that the name of Temple Grafton as “place of residence” of the bride was a further mistake, that being the place intended for the ceremony. In any case, the point is of minor interest for the registers of Temple Grafton do not go back to that date, and the fabric of the church itself is quite new. We do not know, therefore, where Shakespeare was married, nor when; and can but assume that the wedding took place shortly after the bond was signed.
Six months later, Shakespeare’s eldest daughter was born, for we see in the register of baptisms in Holy Trinity church, Stratford, the entry:—
The reason for the hurried visit of the two farmers to Worcester, to hasten on the marriage with but one “asking” in church now becomes evident. They were friends of the late Richard Hathaway, and were determined that young Shakespeare should not get out of marrying the girl he had—wronged, shall we say? Well, no. There have been many moralists excessively shocked at this pre-nuptial intimacy, and they assert that Shakespeare seduced Anne Hathaway.
But young men of just over eighteen years of age do not, I think, beguile young women nearly eight years older. Anne probably seduced him; for woman is more frequently the huntress and the chooser, and man is a very helpless creature before her wiles.