,
Humphrey Peto, and William Clopton, Commissioners. Their depositions in
support of the deed of transfer seem to have been sufficient, and we
hear no more of Mayowe. The newly-married couple settled down on the
inheritance of the Ardens, and the old home of the Shakespeares.

Concerning Mary Arden's special inheritance at Asbies, there is a sadder
story to tell. Whether John Shakespeare could read or not, he was
certainly not a Latin scholar, and though not ignorant of many points of
common law, was not up to all the technicalities used at times to
confuse the truth. It is evident that there had been some verbal
agreement between him and Edmund Lambert on which he relied, but that
the written deed was all that John Lambert accepted.[113] On selling the
main portion of his wife's property at Snitterfield, John Shakespeare
seems to have walked right off with the money to Edmund Lambert, of
Barton-on-the-Heath, to redeem his mortgage, and reinstate himself as
owner of Asbies, free to grant a lease or sale on his own terms. But
through a quibble, which "was not in the bond," Edmund Lambert refused
to accept this until certain other debts were also paid. Thereby he
gained the shelter of time, which "was in the bond," and put Shakespeare
at a legal disadvantage, though it is evident from the later papers that
a verbal agreement had taken place to extend the time, seeing that the
money had been tendered. We may be sure that the property was worth more
than L40 in hard cash to either, and more, in romantic associations, to
the Shakespeares. For it was a part of Thomas Arden's original property.
How he came by it, no one is sure. French[114] suggests it might have
been given him by the Beauchamps of Bergavenny, who had intermarried
with the Ardens, and had been more than once known to have been in
friendly relations. The guardian of Robert Arden, his grandfather, had
been the Lady of Bergavenny, and Elizabeth Beauchamp was godmother to
Elizabeth Arden, daughter of Walter and sister of Thomas, whom we take
to be the Thomas of Aston Cantlow.

Edmund Lambert died in 1587, and his son John seems to have been
threatened by the Shakespeares with a law-suit for the recovery of
Asbies, and proposed as a compromise to pay a further sum of L20,
thereby securing Asbies as by purchase. To this, however, the consent,
not only of Mary, but of William, her heir, was necessary, and the poet
is supposed to have come down to Stratford on the oc