The Project Gutenberg EBook of Shakespeare's Family, by Mrs. C. C. Stopes

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Title: Shakespeare's Family

Author: Mrs. C. C. Stopes

Release Date: August 14, 2008 [EBook #26315]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAKESPEARE'S FAMILY ***

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SHAKESPEARE'S FAMILY

[Illustration]

[Illustration: William Shakespeare from the Drocshout painting now in
the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon.]

SHAKESPEARE'S FAMILY

BEING

A Record of the Ancestors and Descendants
of William Shakespeare

WITH

_SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ARDENS_

BY

MRS. C. C. STOPES

AUTHOR OF
"THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE QUESTION ANSWERED," "SHAKESPEARE'S WARWICKSHIRE
CONTEMPORARIES," "BRITISH FREEWOMEN," ETC.

LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
NEW YORK
JAMES POTT & COMPANY
1901

Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected. Footnotes have been
moved to the end of the chapter. Letters that are preceeded by a caret
(^) are superscripted in the text.

PREFACE

When I was invited to reprint in book-form the articles which had
appeared in the _Genealogical Magazine_ under the titles of
"Shakespeare's Family" and the "Warwickshire Ardens," I carefully
corrected them, and expanded them where expansion could be made
interesting. Thus to the bald entries of Shakespeare's birth and burial
I added a short life. Perhaps never before has anyone attempted to write
a life of the poet with so little allusion to his plays and poems. My
reason is clear; it is only the genealogical details of certain
Warwickshire families of which I now treat, and it is only as an
interesting Warwickshire gentleman that the poet is here included.

Much of the chaotic nonsense that has of late years been written to
disparage his character and contest his claims to our reverence and
respect are based on the assumption that he was a man of low orig