have not added to the intrinsic interest of the place; the house which he built, or improved, for himself, and in which he spent the last years of his life, was pulled down; but the birth-place and marriage place of Anne Hathaway, is just as it was; and, excepting the tombs of Shakespeare and herself, the only authentic and unchanged traces of their existence here." Howitt was a writer of the emotional school, and he certainly subordinated his facts to his fancies in writing thus. For instance, while the Shakespeare birth-place evidence leaves little or no room for doubt, we have nothing but a vague tradition to associate the so-called home and birth-place of Anne Shakespeare with the house of her supposed father, Richard Hathaway. We have no record of her birth, and in the will of her real or presumed father her name is not mentioned as one of his family. It mentions four sons and three daughters, named respectively Agnes, Catherine, and Margaret, but no daughter named Anne. Still the tradition is not altogether unsupported by suggestive facts.

We know that Richard Hathaway, of Shottery, and John Shakespeare, of Henley Street. Stratford-on-Avon, were friends when

the poet was in his second year. * The sons of Richard were probably sent to the Grammar School-one was afterwards High Bailiff and if so, Will Shakespeare may have been their

schoolfellow. He may have passed many a holiday with them and their sisters at Shottery, and been merry with them under the boundary elm tree beside his father's house, or in the

*

We have the bond in which John Shakespeare became his surety.

Corporation gravel-pits behind it. In this way Willie and Anne may have grown up together as sweethearts. All this is probable enough. And yet he may have married another Anne Hathaway. There were Hathaways living in Stratford, and I have just seen a record of Gild property, dated 1764, in which the names of both Hathaway and Burbidge (query Burbage) * figure as old inhabitants. Hathaways were also to be found at Luddington. It is known too that in Shottery a second family of Hathaways then existed, and in confirmation we have their tomb-inscriptions recorded. There were Hathaways too in Worcester. We have also the record of a Stratford Alderman's marriage with another Anne Hathaway in 1580. It is, however, argued in favour of the tradition that Agnes in the will was accidentally substituted for Anne, but this is hardly probable, although it is generally accepted as a fact by those who share William Howitt's feelings and prejudices. Another fact has, however, a bearing upon it which is distinctly favourable. In the marriage bond, or license, of November 1532, now preserved in the Consistorial Registry at

* Burbadge was Master of the Earl of Leicester's players.

Worcester, the names of the bondsmen are given, and these names are those of Foulke Sandells and John Richardson. They were both farmers at Shottery. John died rich in 1594, and Foulke Sandells was one of the supervisors of Richard Hathaway's will in September 1531. Halliwell-Phillipps argues in favour of the tradition, and says Richard appended his seal to the license because the seal attached to it bears the initials R. H., oblivious of the fact that Richard died about a year before the bond was issued. The license mentions Anne Stratford-upon-Avon, not Shottery, but this is of no great importance, because the village belonged to the parish, as Luddington and others did. Shakespeare's grand-daughter, Lady Barnard, the last of his descendants, when she died in 1669, had bequeathed to a relative, Joan, the wife of Thomas Hathaway, a sum of fifty pounds. With all these facts, conjectures, and traditions before us, it appears impossible to confidently assert that from this house Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. Probably he did.

as of

The venerable and kindly old lady who officiates as custodian of the house, Mrs. Baker, now in her 80th year, was born there, and we know

her great-grandmother's name was Hathaway. Moreover, she asserts that the popular tradition of Shakespeare having married a daughter of that Richard Hathaway whose will we have, was preserved in her family generation after generation. But there are other Hathaways, who came, as they assert, from Gloucestershire, who make the same claim with as much confidence. One of this family recently told me that he could prove their claim, but he could not tell me how "just then." In like way, maybe, we have many Shakespeares who claim direct descent from William Shakespeare. Several of them have visited Stratford within the last three years.

In 1854, the cottage became the property of Mr. Thompson, an architect and Alderman of Stratford-upon-Avon, and therefore one of the birth-place trustees. He did little or nothing for its preservation, and received from its tenant a rental of eleven pounds yearly. Soon after it was known that the trustees of the Shakespeare birth-place had obtained an Act of Parliament authorising them to use their funds in purchasing the cottages of Mary Arden and Anne Hathaway, he advertised the latter for sale in a London

newspaper.