After Rowe’s account, scarce any thing was added till the time of Malone, who by a learned and most industrious searching of public and private records brought to light a considerable number of facts, some of them very important, touching the Poet and his family.  And in our own day Mr. Collier has followed up the inquiry with very great diligence, and with no inconsiderable success; though, unfortunately, much of the matter supplied by him has been discredited as unauthentic, by those from whom there is in such cases no appeal.  Lastly, Mr. Halliwell has given his intelligent and indefatigable labours to the same task, and made some valuable additions to our stock.

The lineage of William Shakespeare, on the paternal side, has not been traced further back than his grandfather.  The name, which in its composition smacks of brave old knighthood and chivalry, was frequent in Warwickshire from an early period.

The father of our Poet was John Shakespeare, who is found living at Stratford-on-Avon in 1552.  He was most likely a native of Snitterfield, a village three miles from Stratford; as we find a Richard Shakespeare living there in 1550, and occupying a house and land owned by Robert Arden, the maternal grandfather of our Poet.  This appears from a deed executed July 17, 1550, in which Robert Arden conveyed certain lands and tenements in Snitterfield, described as being “now in the tenure of one Richard Shakespeare,” to be held in trust for three daughters “after the death of Robert and Agnes Arden.”

An entry in a Court Roll, dated April, 1552, ascertains that John Shakespeare was living in Stratford at that time.  And an entry in the Bailiff’s Court, dated June, 1556, describes him as “John Shakespeare, of Stratford in the county of Warwick, glover.”  In 1558, the same John Shakespeare, and four others, one of whom was Francis Burbadge, then at the head of the corporation, were fined four pence each “for not keeping their gutters clean.”

There is ample proof that at this period his affairs were in a thriving condition.  In October, 1556, he became the owner of two copyhold estates, one of them consisting of a house with a garden and a croft attached to it, the other of a house and garden.  As these were estates of inheritance, the tenure was nearly equal to freehold; so that he must have been pretty well-to-do in the world at the time.  For several years after, his circumstances continued to improve.  Before 1558, he became the owner, by marriage, of a farm at Wilmecote, consisting of fifty-six acres, besides two houses and two gardens; moreover, he held, in right of his wife, a considerable share in a property at Snitterfield.  Another addition to his property was made in 1575,—­a freehold estate, bought for the sum of L40, and described as consisting of “two houses, two gardens, and two orchards, with their appurtenances.”