a small sum of money in a new property. This was his last
investment in real estate. He then purchased a house, the ground-floor
of which was a haberdasher's shop, with a yard attached. It was situated
within six hundred feet of the Blackfriars Theatre--on the west side of
St. Andrew's Hill, formerly termed Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, in
the near neighbourhood of what is now known as Ireland Yard. The former
owner, Henry Walker, a musician, had bought the property for 100 pounds
in 1604. Shakespeare in 1613 agreed to pay him 140 pounds. The deeds of
conveyance bear the date of March 10 in that year. {267} Next day, on
March 11, Shakespeare executed another deed (now in the British Museum)
which stipulated that 60 pounds of the purchase-money was to remain on
mortgage until the following Michaelmas. The money was unpaid at
Shakespeare's death. In both purchase-deed and mortgage-deed
Shakespeare's signature was witnessed by (among others) Henry Lawrence,
'servant' or clerk to Robert Andrewes, the scrivener who drew the deeds,
and Lawrence's seal, bearing his initials 'H. L.,' was stamped in each
case on the parchment-tag, across the head of which Shakespeare wrote his
name. In all three documents--the two indentures and the
mortgage-deed--Shakespeare is described as 'of Stratford-on-Avon, in the
Countie of Warwick, Gentleman.' There is no reason to suppose that he
acquired the house for his own residence. He at once leased the property
to John Robinson, already a resident in the neighbourhood.

[Picture: Signature on Mortgage-Deed]

Attempt to enclose the Stratford common fields.

With puritans and puritanism Shakespeare was not in sympathy, {268} and
he could hardly have viewed with unvarying composure the steady progress
that puritanism was making among his fellow-townsmen. Nevertheless a
preacher, doubtless of puritan proclivities, was entertained at
Shakespeare's residence, New Place, after delivering a sermon in the
spring of 1614. The incident might serve to illustrate Shakespeare's
characteristic placability, but his son-in-law Hall, who avowed sympathy
with puritanism, was probably in the main responsible for the civility.
{269a} In July John Combe, a rich inhabitant of Stratford, died and left
5 pounds to Shakespeare. The legend that Shakespeare alienated him by
composing some doggerel on his practice of lending money at ten or twelve
per cent. seems apocryphal, alth