[190] These memoranda, which were as follows, were first written without the words here enclosed in brackets; those words were afterwards interlineated in the manuscript in a hand similar to that of the original sentences:
‘[This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand in paper. xx. years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne]
[A Justice of peace] And was a Baylife of Stratford uppo Avon xv. or xvj. years past.
That he hathe lands and tenements of good wealth and substance [500 li.]
That he mar[ried a daughter and heyre of Arden, a gent. of worship.]’
[191] ‘An exemplification’ was invariably secured more easily than a new grant of arms. The heralds might, if they chose, tacitly accept, without examination, the applicant’s statement that his family had borne arms long ago, and they thereby regarded themselves as relieved of the obligation of close inquiry into his present status.
[192a] On the gravestone of John Hall, Shakespeare’s elder son-in-law, the Shakespeare arms are similarly impaled with those of Hall.
[192b] French, Genealogica Shakespeareana, p. 413.
[193] The details of Brooke’s accusation are not extant, and are only to be deduced from the answer of Garter and Clarenceux to Brooke’s complaint, two copies of which are accessible: one is in the vol. W-Z at the Heralds’ College, f. 276; and the other, slightly differing, is in Ashmole MS. 846, ix. f. 50. Both are printed in the Herald and Genealogist, i. 514.
[194a] Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 478.
[194b] The tradition that Shakespeare planted the mulberry tree was not put on record till it was cut down in 1758. In 1760 mention is made of it in a letter of thanks in the corporation’s archives from the Steward of the Court of Record to the corporation of Stratford for presenting him with a standish made from the wood. But, according to the testimony of old inhabitants confided to Malone (cf. his Life of Shakespeare, 1790, p. 118), the legend had been orally current in Stratford since Shakespeare’s lifetime. The tree was perhaps planted in 1609, when a Frenchman named Veron distributed a number of young mulberry trees through the midland counties by order of James I, who desired to encourage the culture of silkworms (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 134, 411-16).
[197a] I do not think we shall over-estimate the present value of Shakespeare’s income if we multiply each of its items by eight, but it is difficult to state authoritatively the ratio between the value of money in Shakespeare’s time and in our own. The money value of corn then and now is nearly identical; but other necessaries of life—meat, milk, eggs, wool, building materials, and the like—were by comparison ludicrously cheap in Shakespeare’s day. If we strike the average between the low price of these commodities and the comparatively high price of corn, the average price of necessaries will be found to be in Shakespeare’s day about an eighth of what it is now. The cost of luxuries is also now about eight times the price that it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Sixpence was the usual price of a new quarto or octavo book such as would now be sold at prices ranging between three shillings and sixpence and six shillings. Half a crown was charged for the best-placed seats in the best theatres. The purchasing power of one Elizabethan pound might be generally defined in regard to both necessaries and luxuries as equivalent to that of eight pounds of the present currency.
[197b] Cf. Henslowe’s Diary, ed. Collier, pp. xxviii seq. After the Restoration the receipts at the third performance were given for the author’s ‘benefit.’