Those who did marry do not seem to have invested much time or energy in the role of paterfamilias. Robert Greene, a few years older than Shakespeare, married ‘a gentleman’s daughter of good account’ in about 1585 and settled briefly in Norwich. When she had borne a child and he had spent her portion he abandoned her and returned to his haunts in London, where he died destitute in 1592, having signed a bond to the poor shoe-maker whose family cared for him which he begged his estranged wife to honour. Thomas Dekker, gentleman, may have been the father of a daughter christened at St Giles Cripplegate in 1594, and another buried there in 1598, and a son buried at St Botolph’s in 1598, and he may not. Philip Massinger was married and had children, apparently, but nothing is known of his family. Even the most successful of Shakespeare’s rivals, Benjonson, though like Shakespeare married in his youth and father of at least three children, lived mainly in other people’s houses, at Polesworth with Goodere, and at Loughton with Sir Robert Wroth, for example, evidently at their expense, though he must have earned at least as handsomely as Shakespeare both at court and in the public theatres. Jonson lamented that he followed the muse of poetry even though she had beggared him, when he might have been a rich lawyer, physician or merchant.29 Yet Shakespeare, who did the same, is presumed to have earned and kept a fortune. Those of Shakespeare’s colleagues who acquired houses of their own looked for them rather closer to London. Thomas Middleton and his wife, the well-connected Mary Marbeck, and their single child lived at Newington Butts. The player Augustine Phillips bought himself a house in Mortlake. Condell owned a house in Fulham.
We have no clear idea of what the house that the Shakespeares bought in 1597 was like. The fine of 1597 mentions a messuage with two barns and two gardens; the version of 1602 adds two apple orchards. The restored house was pulled down in 1702, and so we have to rely on the long-distance reminiscences of people who were alive in the later seventeenth century to get any idea of what the Shakespeares ended up with. In 1737 George Vertue interviewed Shakespeare Hart, a descendant of the Bard’s sister Joan Hart, and sketched what he told him. Vertue’s drawing shows a house with three storeys and five gables. His caption reads, ‘This the outward appearance towards the street, the gate and entrance (at the corner of Chapel Lane)…’ He then drew a plan showing the gate and a building on either side in front of the house: ‘besides this front or outward gate there was before the house itself (that Shakespeare lived in) within a little court-yard, grass growing there—before the real dwelling house, this outside being a long gallery etc. and for servants.’ The long gallery would have been used for exercise in the winter months and for children to play in during inclement weather. Richard Grimmitt, born in 1683, said that to the best of his remembrance ‘there was a brick wall next the street, with a kind of porch at the end of it next the chapel; then they crossed a small kind of green court before they entered the house which was bearing to the left and fronted with brick, with plain windows consisting of common panes of glass set in lead, as at this time’. Besides the little green forecourt, New Court had a big enclosed garden of at least three-quarters of an acre. This, the ‘great garden’, was sold off at about the time that the house was pulled down. It is there that Shakespeare is supposed to have planted the famous mulberry tree.
Mulberry trees can be in the ground for many years before they fruit, but, if the point of the planting is to rear silkworms, it doesn’t matter if the trees don’t fruit, as you only need fresh green leaves. Shakespeare’s mulberry tree, the bole of which when it was cut down in 1758 was a mere six inches in diameter, was probably the last surviving of a row whose leaves were originally harvested for silkworms. Everybody who could remember agreed that the tree was in the garden in Shakespeare’s time, and this, later generations supposed, meant that he had planted it with his own fair hands. Malone surmises that the mulberry tree was planted in 1609 when thousands of mulberry trees were imported from France at the order of James I in a bid to establish silk manufacture in Britain.30
James’s attempt failed, as did that of his grandson Charles II who sixty years later planted a mulberry garden at Whitehall with the same intention. Before the industrial revolution silk production, whether in China or in Europe, was a cottage industry. If, as has been suggested, Ann was involved in the haberdashery business with her brother-in-law, in the manufacture of lace and ribbons or as a knitter, teacher of knitting or organiser of outworkers, she might well have wanted to branch out into the really big money, which was in silk. The suggestion that she was involved in sericulture at New Place is given some support from the Holy Trinity register for 1611 which for the first time describes the occupation of a parishioner, one Thomas Knight, as ‘silk weaver’.31 All things considered it is unlikely that the Bard planted a single mulberry tree at New Place and rather more likely that his wife planted several.
There were grapevines at New Place too, but no one has suggested that the Bard trod his own grapes or bottled his own vintage. All the work associated with New Place, whether it was brewing or wine-making or sericulture, would have been overseen by Ann Shakespeare. If she had been unwilling or unable to extend the field of her operations, Shakespeare could never have bought the house, unless he was prepared to employ a housekeeper or a steward. As no such person appears in the record, the best guess is that Ann was both housekeeper and steward. Within months of acquiring New Place Shakespeare is listed as a holder of malt; the malt was almost certainly made by Ann or under her supervision. If she was making malt, she was probably also brewing ale, and raising pigs on the spent malt, curing her own bacon, and baking bread, for all these activities were interdependent.
Brew somewhat for thine
Where brewer is needful, be brewer thyself
What filleth thy roof will help furnish thy shelf,
Else bring up no swine
In buying thy drink by the firkin or pot,
The tally ariseth, but hog amends not.32
To make malt in this period barley, or mixed oats and barley called maslen, was soaked in water in a ‘yealing vat’ and spread on the floor of a ‘couch house’ to begin the germination process that converts the starches in the grain to sugar or maltose. For this process space was needed.
The place may be so and the kiln may be such
To make thine own malt shall profit thee much.
As soon as rootlets began to emerge from the grain, the malt was swept up and put to dry on a ‘kill’ or ‘keele’, a wooden frame supporting a ‘hair cloth’ made of woven horse hair, which was set over a fire of straw. Straw was chosen because it does not create the kind of thick smoke that would taint the malt, which was meant to assume a golden colour. The process was dangerous, especially when carried out in a confined, poorly ventilated space. All of the fires that devastated Stratford probably involved the mismanagement of some stage of the malting or brewing process. It was essential to dry the malt thoroughly, if it was not to spoil.
Some drieth with straw and some drieth with wood,
Wood asketh more charge and yet nothing so good…
Malt being well spared the more it will cast,
Malt being well-dried the longer will last…33
This activity, especially if carried out on a considerable scale, required the services of maids; others were employed by the good housewife elsewhere in her establishment:
Set some about churning, some seething of souse,
Some carding, some spinning, some trimming up house…
Set some to grind malt, or thy rushes to twine,
Set some to peel hemp, or to seething of brine…34
The most skilled workers were to be found in the dairy:
Good servant in dairy that needs not be told
Deserveth her fee to be paid her in gold…
Keep dairy house cleanly, keep pan sweet and cold,
Keep butter and cheese to look yellow as gold.35
Ann could have undertaken the same enormous range of activities as her younger contemp
orary, Margaret, Lady Hoby.36 As well as observing her daily routine of private and public devotions, reading and conference with her household, Lady Hoby attended women in labour, dressed wounds, prepared medicines, gardened, propagated plants, gathered and preserved fruit, made cakes and confectionery, kept bees, made candles, distilled essential oils, dyed wool, and lent money and held money.
Malt-making and money-lending were connected activities; the women who prospered as the one entered in business as the other, both holding and laying out funds for clients. We have one piece of evidence of Ann’s participation in this kind of related activity. On 25 March 1601, the Hathaways’ shepherd made his will. Shepherds, responsible for keeping the scattered small flocks healthy, for crutching, docking, castrating, shearing and mating them, paring their feet and delivering lambs, as necessary, made good money. According to Edgar Fripp there were no fewer than eight shepherds living in Stratford in 1600. In his will Whittington admitted a debt for ‘a quarter’s of an year’s board’ to Ann’s brothers John and William Hathaway who were still living at Hewlands Farm, so he was probably one of the six people in Joan Hathaway’s household in 1596. His will was witnessed by two of the creditors listed in Richard Hathaway’s will of 1581, John Pace and John Barber; another witness was William Gilbert the curate who wrote the elder Hathaway’s will. When he died at Shottery in April 1601 Whittington’s possessions, assessed at the handsome sum of £50, included ‘four score and one sheep’ and eleven quarters of malt.37 One clause in his will is of particular interest:
Item I give and bequeath unto the poor people of Stratford forty shillings that is in the hand of Ann Shakespeare wife unto Mr William Shakespeare and is due debt unto me being paid to mine executor by the said William Shakespeare or his assigns according to the true meaning of this my will.
As Whittington also listed further debts owed to him by Ann’s brothers, John and William Hathaway, executors of their mother’s will in which he had been left money which he had not yet received, the will might be thought to give us a picture of the Hathaway clan in 1601 as so strapped for cash that their faithful shepherd was obliged to lend them small sums that they were not able to repay in his lifetime. In fact the last person to whom a shepherd like Whittington would confide his money would be someone who was in financial difficulties. Having no households of their own to maintain, because they lived mostly with the owners of the flocks they managed, shepherds tended to accumulate quantities of cash which they had no way of keeping safe. As soon as a sizable sum had accumulated they tended to place it in the hands of a solid citizen who would be certain to repay it on demand. When Richard Cowper, also a shepherd, died in 1588, and left an estate valued at more than £37, all but £7 of it was in the hands of other people, his principal debtor being Alderman Abraham Sturley, who owed him £22.
If Whittington had not known Ann all her life, he would probably have described the money he had placed in her hands as in the hands of her husband, who would have been legally liable for it. In departing from custom, Whittington has provided us with a single scintilla of evidence that Ann Shakespeare was economically active in her own right. Even if the only money she had access to was her husband’s income, Ann may have been empowered to lend and spend it as she thought fit, which would give the lie to those people who want to believe that Shakespeare’s wife did not enjoy her husband’s trust or respect. Not all wives enjoyed such freedom, but it was not at all uncommon. In The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff makes love to the married ladies because he believes that both of them have access to significant amounts of money. Mistress Ford, according to report, ‘has all the rule of her husband’s purse; he hath a legion of angels’ (I. iii. 49–50). She has the key to her husband’s coffer (II. ii. 263) and Ford in his jealous fit fears that if she and Falstaff get together his coffers shall be ransacked (II. ii. 281). Mistress Page ‘bears the purse too: she is a region in Guiana, all gold and bounty’ (I. iii. 64–5). What Whittington’s will does not prove, or even suggest, is that Shakespeare ever left his family without enough to live on, so that Ann was forced to borrow.38 It seems more likely that Ann was, like many other women in a similar position, operating as a banker. ‘There be other Usurers which will not lend themselves but give leave to their wives and they play like hucksters, that is, every month a penny for a shilling…’39
Another court case relating to Ann’s business dealings began in 1607 when Shakespeare sued a John Addenbrooke, seeking recovery of £6 plus damages. As far as we can tell the women who made and traded in malt and in money were usually single, either unmarried or widows, but as the dealings of married women were invariably subsumed within their husband’s business activities, it may be that we have a very partial notion of women’s economic activity at the turn of the sixteenth century. Even so, it seems very much more likely that it was Ann who wanted New Place, Ann who restored it and Ann who ran it than that it was Shakespeare. Perhaps it was her money that paid for it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
of hunger and disorder, introducing the villain of the piece, Sir Edward Greville, who contrived the foul murder of the Bailiff of Stratford, and Ann’s friend and ally the young lawyer Thomas Greene
The prevailing notion of Shakespeare’s Stratford is that it was a sleepy place of leafy lanes and picturesque half-timbered houses, neat and peaceful, a sort of Metroland before the event, a retirement village just waiting for Shakespeare to return and put his feet up. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the mid-1590s most Stratfordians struggled; the rich grew richer but the numbers of landless poor proliferated and even substantial citizens were menaced with destitution. The winter of 1596–7 saw the highest death-toll of the century, the cumulative effect of years of malnutrition.
The Corporation did its best to stem the tide of misery, but by all the indices, the frequency of violent death, of family breakdown, desertion and bastardy, of pauperisation and despair, the situation deteriorated. The puritan city fathers strove with might and main to keep a modicum of order as the gentry looked on, waiting for a moment of weakness. Elsewhere in Warwickshire the poor people had lost the struggle against their landlords before Ann Shakespeare was born; in the 1590s enclosures began to encroach upon the common lands near Stratford. Endless wrangling in the law courts spilled over into fighting in the streets.
The villages of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire waged the fiercest struggle of all to defend their common fields and slender commons against enclosure in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were the scene of the Midland Revolt of 1607.1
An already difficult situation was made more so by changes in local administration. After the death of the childless Earl of Warwick in 1590 the lordship of the Stratford manors fell vacant. The Corporation petitioned Lord Treasurer Burghley for the right to name Stratford’s vicar and schoolmaster, and other privileges associated with the lordship, only to be forestalled.2 Local landowner Edward Greville took out a patent in the names of two London scriveners, one of whom did a good deal of legal work for Greville’s new patron, the Earl of Essex, and bought the lordship for himself. Greville is typical of the gentlemen described by a later town clerk of Stratford:
gentlemen were naturally enemies to Corporations and the truth whereof this Corporation hath experiently tasted: all their troubles and suits proceeding from distaste proudly and causelessly taken by neighbouring gentlemen who will be satisfied with no reasonable respects except such crouching observance as standeth not with the honour of a Corporation to perform…who make no other use of them but as they do of their stirrups to mount their horse, so to serve their times they will bestow a salute of them or some formal compliment when they have scorn in their hearts.3
Properly managed, Edward Greville’s estates, which extended from the Avon to the Stour, and included the substantial manors of Milcote, Weston, Welford, Coldicote and Sezincote, would have made him a very wealthy man, but he had no interest in improving them. He coveted the rich prizes that h
is fellow courtiers were winning with minimum effort or personal risk from patronage and speculation.
The Grevilles were a law unto themselves. Edward’s ancestor John Greville of Milcote was decidedly vicious. In the Acts of the Privy Council we read that on 26 October 1541,
Upon an information given that John Greville of Milcote in the County of Warwick should misuse his own daughter, and shot at one of his servants with a cross-bow, it was decreed that the said John Greville should be sent for to appear immediately before the Council.4
Greville appeared, was bound over for a surety of £500 and required to appear before the court every day, while the crown prepared its case, but no witnesses could be persuaded to give evidence and the case was ultimately dismissed. Greville’s grandfather, Sir Edward Greville, married one of the co-parcenary heiresses of William Willington, a Merchant of the Staple, who had greatly enriched himself by buying up land in Warwickshire, enclosing and depopulating the villages of Barcheston and Chelmscote. When Sir Edward died in 1562, his son Lodowick, who was only twenty-two, became the head of the family. After his ambitious marriage to Thomasine Petre, daughter of Sir William Petre, Greville pillaged his estates to lavish money on the building on his Milcote estate of a huge country mansion to be called Mount Greville, while his encroachments on the rights of his tenants resulted in a succession of Star Chamber suits. In March 1576 the Privy Council wrote to Sir Thomas Lucy, Thomas Smith and John Higford, desiring them to investigate the complaints of tenants of Wellford in Gloucesterhire against Greville.5 In January 1579, after he knocked down Sir John Conway of Arrow in a London street and laid about him so fiercely with his sword that he was likely to have cut his legs off if he had not been dragged away by Conway’s attendants, Greville spent some time in the Marshalsea.6
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