Meanwhile his own domestic affairs engaged some of his attention. Of his two surviving children—both daughters—the eldest, Susanna, had married, on June 5, 1607, John Hall (1575-1635), a rising physician of Puritan leanings, and in the following February there was born the poet’s only granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall. On September 9, 1608, the poet’s mother was buried in the parish church, and on February 4, 1613, his third brother Richard. On July 15, 1613, Mrs. Hall preferred,
with her father’s assistance, a charge of slander against one Lane in the ecclesiastical court at Worcester; the defendant, who had apparently charged the lady with illicit relations with one Ralph Smith, did not appear, and was excommunicated.
Purchase of a house in Blackfriars.
In the same year (1613), when on a short visit to London, Shakespeare invested a small sum of money in a new property. This was his last investment in real estate. He then purchased a house, the ground-floor of which was a haberdasher’s shop, with a yard attached. It was situated within six hundred feet of the Blackfriars Theatre—on the west side of St. Andrew’s Hill, formerly termed Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, in the near neighbourhood of what is now known as Ireland Yard. The former owner, Henry Walker, a musician, had bought the property for £100 in 1604. Shakespeare in 1613 agreed to pay him £140. The deeds of conveyance bear the date of March 10 in that year. [267] Next day, on March 11, Shakespeare executed another deed (now in the British Museum) which stipulated that £60 of the purchase-money was to remain on mortgage until the following Michaelmas. The money was unpaid at Shakespeare’s death. In both purchase-deed and mortgage-deed Shakespeare’s signature was witnessed by (among others) Henry Lawrence, ‘servant’ or clerk to Robert Andrewes, the scrivener who drew
the deeds, and Lawrence’s seal, bearing his initials ‘H. L.,’ was stamped in each case on the parchment-tag, across the head of which Shakespeare wrote his name. In all three documents—the two indentures and the mortgage-deed—Shakespeare is described as ‘of Stratford-on-Avon, in the Countie of Warwick, Gentleman.’ There is no reason to suppose that he acquired the house for his own residence. He at once leased the property to John Robinson, already a resident in the neighbourhood.
Attempt to enclose the Stratford common fields.
With puritans and puritanism Shakespeare was not in sympathy, [268] and he could hardly have viewed with unvarying composure the steady progress that puritanism was making among his fellow-townsmen. Nevertheless a preacher, doubtless of puritan proclivities, was entertained at Shakespeare’s residence, New Place, after delivering a sermon in the spring of 1614. The incident might serve to illustrate Shakespeare’s characteristic placability, but his son-in-law Hall, who avowed sympathy with puritanism, was
probably in the main responsible for the civility. [269a] In July John Combe, a rich inhabitant of Stratford, died and left £5 to Shakespeare. The legend that Shakespeare alienated him by composing some doggerel on his practice of lending money at ten or twelve per cent. seems apocryphal, although it is quoted by Aubrey and accepted by Rowe. [269b] Combe’s death involved Shakespeare more conspicuously than before in civic affairs. Combe’s heir William no sooner succeeded to his father’s lands than he, with a neighbouring owner, Arthur Mannering, steward of Lord-chancellor Ellesmere (who was ex-officio lord of the manor), attempted