persons of the Shakespeare ancestry to whom the grant was made, are spoken of thus :-".... parents parents... late antecessors," &c. over which latter word the word "grandfather" is written.

We come now to the third of these drafts, in which Camden Clarencieux is joined with Dethick. This is of the year 1599; so that the business probably was some years under consideration. It is printed by Mr. Malone * from the original, which is in the vol. R. 21, in the Library of the College of Arms. In this we have the same proofs of uncertain or imperfect information respecting the individual to whom the grant was made; but still we have the general assertion that such a grant was made by King Henry the Seventh, and that the lands were in those parts of Warwickshire in which the ancestors of John Shakespeare had lived for some descents in good reputation and credit. I distinguish the interlined matter by placing it within crotchets :-" whose parent [great grandfather] and [late] antecessor, for his faithfull and approved service to the late most prudent prince King Henry 7, of famous memorie, was advanced and rewarded with lands and tenements given to him in those parts of Warwickshire," &c.

We have now before us the whole evidence of these documents, and, by comparing one with another, we must perceive that there was no clear knowledge on the subject at the time, but that the whole rested on a vague tradition; so that we ought not to wonder that even Mr. Malone's industry and sagacity were foiled when he sought for this royal grant; yet we shall not think it necessary to suppose, as Mr. Malone does, that certain grants to the Ardens and not to the Shakespeares are those to which the heralds

* Boswell's Malone, vol. ii. p. 542. And again by an oversight of the Editor, at p. 583.

really refer; the construction being plainly in all of them, that the grant had been made to a male ancestor of John Shakespeare. Indeed the object was to give some proof of his own gentility by descent (the Arden connection is treated of apart); and the clauses, vague as they are, do establish a certain degree of probability, that a Shakespeare in the direct line of the poet's ancestry did perform some worthy service to King Henry the Seventh, did receive from him some reward, which reward may have been, as one of the documents distinctly asserts, lands and tenements in those parts of Warwickshire in which the Shakespeares of this part of the family had lived; though no such grant has been found upon record, nor can the possession of any such lands be proved by inquisition, or traced out of the hands of the grantee. The person to whom the grant, whatever it was, was made, must have belonged to the generation next above Richard Shakespeare the bailiff of the nuns of Wroxhall.

The general effect of the information comprised in these documents is, that John Shakespeare, when he settled at Stratford, was a man of some pretension by descent, and this condition I have shown to be better satisfied by connecting him with the Wroxhall Shakespeares than with any other of the lines. His marriage with the coheir of Arden, which, as I shall soon shew, brought him into connection with a family of very ancient gentry in Warwickshire, points to the same conclusion respecting him.

We have another fact to which sufficient attention has not been given, when the inquiry has been into the quality of the family from whom the poet sprung, which shews that, early in life, long before the son had increased the property of the family by his professional exertions, and therefore no way connected with that success, John Shakespeare was in conference with the heralds respecting the arms which he was

entitled to bear; and exhibited a kind of evidence, not to be disregarded, that his progenitors had used coat-armour. This was in 1568-9, at the time when he was bailiff, that is, chief officer, equivalent to mayor, of the town of Stratford. When he applied in 1599 for the grant, he "produced," as the grant expresses it, "this his auncient cote of armes, heretofore assigned to him whilst he was her Majesty's officer, justice and bailiff of that town." The precise effect of this expression is not quite clear. If by "assigned" we are to understand "granted" or "confirmed," what necessity was there for the subsequent grant by Dethick and Camden ? We must take "assigned" in some more subdued sense; but, reduce it as we will, we are still forced upon this acknowledgement, that as early as 1569 John Shakespeare was in communication with the heralds respecting the arms which he was entitled to bear; that he produced a figure which he alleged his ancestors had borne; and that there was something more than a mere tacit allowance of his right by descent to use it. This falls very little short of establishing the fact, that he was what, in the language of heraldry, constitutes "a gentleman of blood.”*

These heraldic documents are of the utmost importance in these researches: but it is much to be regretted, that when the

*There is a very spirited drawing of the Arms and Crest of Shakespeare in Harl. MS. 6140. f. 45 b. over which is written, "William Shakspere," and there is added, as the authority, "A Patent from William Dethick, Garter Principal King of Arms." On the same page are the arms which were granted to "M. Drayton, of Warwickshire, Esq." The figure is a Pegasus on a field azure guttée d'eau, with a Mercury's cap for the crest. It is a manuscript of Nicholas Charles, one of the Heralds. It may be added, while on this subject, that Molins, a surgeon in Shoe Lane, who married a daughter of John Florio, the supposed original of Holofernes, had a grant from Sir William Segar, dated August 23, 1644, of a fer de moulin azure, on a field ermine, with a water-mill for the crest; and that the arms of Florio were impaled with them, namely, Azure, a mary-gold proper, leaves and stalk argent, and in chief a sun proper.

grant was made there was no registration of what John Shakespeare could so easily have told of his ancestors; and again, that when, in 1619, the Heralds held a Visitation of Warwickshire, and there was such a rush of Stratford people to record their arms and pedigrees, the Shakespeares of that town had then been three years extinct. Had this visitation occurred a very few years earlier, there can be no doubt that Shakespeare would have been found among his friends and neighbours, the Combes, Nashes, Reynolds', Lanes, Kempsons, Rutters, Woodwards, at the heralds' levées, and that we should have received from his own dictation evidence which would have dispelled all that is vague and uncertain in this inquiry.

Such inquiries may be derided as useless, or decried as administering to a foolish assumption; but this is to take far too narrow a view of them. It may signify little from whom a great man is sprung; and Shakespeare, like ten thousand other men, well or ill descended, owes more to himself than to his ancestors. It is also true, as he himself tells us, that

Nature cannot choose her origin;

and that therefore it is poor matter of unseemly self-satisfaction in any one that he can trace the history of his family, or the possession of property by them, into times more remote than another is able to do. But the reflecting mind will perceive that there is more in it than this; for that the genius and character of every man, great or small, are influenced and moulded very much by the persons to whose hands nature first consigns him; that many which may seem to be the considered opinions of the man, are in reality but the prejudices of birth and family; and that if we would understand the real character and genius of any man, however great, or if we would understand our own, we must know what those ori

ginal prejudices were; and if the inquiry is meant to be conducted as every one would wish the inquiry to be conducted into the history of such a mind as Shakespeare's, where we have writings, traces of his thought, monuments of that mind, imperishable, that have influenced millions of other minds, and will influence more through a long tract of time to come, we must not rest satisfied with what we can learn of his immediate ancestors only, but see, if possible, from what kind or class of persons they had received their own first impressions, and how their characters had been formed to what they were. We may be often foiled in such researches: in the present case it is not much that can be done; but what can be done ought to be done, and the first step to be taken is this pioneering of genealogical inquiry.

We obtain further information respecting the transaction of 1569 from notes which are appended to the draft in Vincent, 157, No. 24: "This John sheweth a patierne thereof under Clarence Cook's hand in paper xx yeares past." It appears then that the herald with whom on that occasion John Shakespeare communicated, was no other than Robert Cooke, the Clarencieux King at Arms, who was one of the most distinguished members of the college; and that he had given his sanction to the use of the arms so far as to deliver a drawing of them on paper to him.

These arms were no doubt in all respects those which were afterwards more formally assigned to the family: the golden spear with a silver head on a bend sable, laid on a golden field, with a falcon supporting a spear for the crest. They are well known, and require no remark from me. But it seems extraordinary that so little notice has been taken of the motto; the family motto of the poet. It is "Non sanz droict," expressive as it seems, in the first instance, of the right of the bearer to display the insignia, beneath which the