Sarah Williams, ob. September, 1680.
Reader, stand still and spend a tear
Upon the dust that slumbers here;
And when thou readest, instead of me,
Think on the Glass that runs for thee.St. Paul’s, Shadwell.
John Jordan, 14th March, 1700.
Stand, Reader, and spend a tear,
And think on me who now lye here;
And whilest you read the state of me,
Think on the glass that runs for thee.St. Mary, Whitechapel.
Reader, stand still and spend a tear
Upon the dust that slumbers here;
And when thou readest, instead of me,
Think on the glass that runs for thee.St. Giles-in-the-Fields.
Another similar. No Name. St. Martins-in-the-Fields.
Mrs. Mary Morley. Another similar. Ratcliff, 1700 A.D.
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.Virginea Optima Vita El., aged 21, ob. 1700 A.D. St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.
When God was pleased (the world unwilling yet),
Helias James, to nature paid his debt;
And here reposes; as he lived he died,
The saying strongly in him verified—
Such life, such death, then a known truth to tell,
He lived a godly life, and died as well.
St. Andrew Wardrobe—St. Anne’s, Blackfriers, annexed thereto after the fire.
Joyce Rich, 1679, E. daughter of —
We two within this grave do lye,
Where we do rest together,
Until the Lord doth us awake,
And from the goats us sever.Ratcliff Hamlet.
Here lyes the body of William Wheatley, ob. 10th Nov. 1683.
Whoever treadeth on this stone,
I pray you tread most neatly;
For underneath the same doth lye,
Your honest friend, William Wheatley.Ratcliff Hamlet.
If any desire to be me nigh,
Pray let my bones in quiet ly,
Till Christ shall come in cloudy sky,
Who will us all both judge and try.Edward Norrys.
O ye, our friends, yat here pas by,
We beseech you to have us in memory;
Somtym we were as now ye be,
In tym to come ye shall be as we.Nathaniel Spencer, 1695.
Pray think on me as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I.St. James, Clerkenwell.
I have in my possession a Tour through England, by the Rev. R. Warner, in 1801; he gives an account which I have never seen alluded to, of a visit to Stratford-on-Avon. The mention of “cupboard, chair, and tobacco-stopper” is delightful. Vol. II. p. 272, Topographical Works of Rev. R. Warner, 1802. “On inquiring for the birth-place of our great poet, we were not a little surprised to be carried through a small butcher’s shop into a dirty back room; which, together with a miserable apartment above stairs, constituted the greater part of the house of his father, Mr. John Shakespeare, a wool-stapler, in the sixteenth century, where William was born April 23, 1564. Here are piously preserved the chair in which he sat, and the cupboard in which he kept his books. A tobacco-stopper also was shown us, said to be that which he had been accustomed to use for some years; but as we found this inestimable relic might have been purchased for 1s. 6d., and that parts of the chair and cupboard might be procured upon similar reasonable terms, we were as much inclined to give credit to their genuineness, as we had felt ourselves willing to believe the traditions of Guy Earl of Warwick, his shield, sword, and porridge-pot. Homely as the tenement was, however, we had much gratification in recollecting that it had been the birth-place of our great poet, and the scene where the first dawning of his gigantic intellect was displayed.”
“Shakespeare, you know, had quietly settled himself in his father’s trade of a wool-dealer, and to insure greater steadiness in his pursuit of business, had taken unto himself a wife, the daughter of one Hathaway, in the neighbourhood of Stratford. Good-nature or incaution, however, led him into the society of some idle youths, who committed occasional depredations in the parks of the surrounding gentry. Being detected in a nocturnal adventure of this kind upon the property of Sir Thomas Lucy, of Chalcot, near Stratford, he was prosecuted for the offence; and irritating the prosecutor to a still greater degree of violence, by an abusive ballad, he was under a necessity of avoiding the effects of the criminal process, by quitting his business and family at Stratford, and hiding himself in the Metropolis. Some instances of his poetical sarcasms are upon record, but local tradition confirms the assertion now made of their just application. They are written on John Coombe and his brother Tom, both notorious for penury and usury. The former, in a party at which Shakespeare was present, had sportively observed, that he apprehended the poet meant to write his epitaph in case he outlived him, but as he should lose the benefit of the composition if it were deferred till his death, he begged it might be done whilst he lived, that he might admire the tribute, and thank the writer; Shakespeare immediately presented him with the following lines:—