John Shakespeare

• 1. Introduction

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  John Shakespeare died on the 7th of September 1601, and by the next morning his burial was recorded at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was known to his neighbours as a glover, a man who worked leather with his hands. Yet the records that survive tell a stranger and richer story than that. Here was a man who climbed from tradesman to mayor, then tumbled into debt so severe that bailiffs could not find a single thing of his to seize. And through all of it, he was raising a son named William. How did a provincial leather worker build and then nearly destroy a life of civic respectability? And what, if anything, did that life pass on to the playwright who would outlast them both?

• 2. The Stratford Tradesman

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  Richard Shakespeare, John's father, was a husbandman of the Warwickshire village of Snitterfield. By April 1552 John had made his way to Stratford-upon-Avon. In October 1556 he bought two properties there, one on Greenhill Street and one on Henley Street. The Henley Street house would eventually become the eastern wing of what is now known as Shakespeare's Birthplace, after John bought two adjoining houses to the west in 1576 and joined all three together.

  From 1556 to 1592, official records repeatedly call him a glovemaker. Tradition remembered him in that trade even into old age. But the scale of his real estate dealings and legal expenses pointed to income well beyond that of a small-town craftsman. He administered his father's estate in 1561, inherited agricultural land, leased out property, sold timber and barley, and bought and leased additional houses. Court records also caught him acting as a "brogger", an unlicensed wool dealer, which was illegal. He was taken to court twice for charging interest above the legal ceiling of ten per cent. The glover's shop was only part of the picture.

• 3. Rising Through Office

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  In 1556, John Shakespeare was elected borough ale taster, a position with real teeth. He was responsible for checking weights, measures, and prices set by innkeepers, publicans, butchers, bakers, and general traders across the borough. In 1558 he moved to borough constable, then to affeeror in 1559, chamberlain in 1561, and alderman in 1565.

  The pinnacle came in 1568, when the common council of burgesses and aldermen elected him high bailiff, a role equivalent to mayor. As bailiff he presided at sessions of the court of record and at council meetings. He also served simultaneously as almoner, coroner, escheator, and clerk of the market, issuing warrants and negotiating directly with the lord of the manor. Each of these offices required standing as a church member in good order, and John maintained that standing through the years of his civic rise. His tenure as chamberlain earlier in the decade had a particular consequence: following Elizabeth I's injunction of 1559, he oversaw the covering of wall-paintings in the Chapel of the Guild of the Holy Cross, with a contemporary record noting payment of two shillings for "defasyng ymages in þe chapel".

• 4. A Long Fall

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  From January 1577 onward, John Shakespeare's attendance at council meetings collapsed. Over nine years, until his discharge in September 1586, he appeared at only one meeting. The prevailing explanation is debt: a man who owed money could not be arrested inside his own home, so staying away from public functions was a form of shelter. Though absenteeism carried a fine, he was never charged one, which scholars take as a sign that his fellow councillors recognised his straits.

  The years 1578-9 saw him mortgage, sell, and rent out properties, including those he had acquired through his marriage. In October 1585 he was taken to court over a debt, failed to appear, and had two writs of distraint issued against him. By January 1586 the sergeants-at-mace reported he "had nothing of which he could be distrained", a legal phrase meaning his creditors had found nothing to seize. Two successive writs of capias were issued for his arrest. The case was ultimately dropped because pursuing it cost the plaintiff more than it was worth.

  A separate action concerned a debt of £22 owed by his brother Henry, for whom John had acted as guarantor. John was arrested over this in January 1587 and released on bail. He denied guilt in court and produced a writ of habeas corpus. What happened after that is not recorded.

• 5. Mary Arden and the Children

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  Mary Arden came from a local gentry family, the Ardens of Warwickshire. She was reportedly a niece of John's father, Richard Shakespeare, which would have made the match a union of connected families. The exact date of the marriage is not known, but a date around 1557 is assumed because the earliest surviving baptismal record for their children is dated the 15th of September 1558, for a daughter named Joan.

  John and Mary had eight children in total. Joan, the first, died in infancy. Margaret was baptised on the 2nd of December 1562 and buried on the 30th of April 1563. William was baptised on the 26th of April 1564. Gilbert followed on the 13th of October 1566; a second Joan on the 15th of April 1569; Anne on the 28th of September 1571; Richard on the 11th of March 1574; and Edmund on the 3rd of May 1580. Five of the eight survived into adulthood. Edmund, the youngest, died in London and was buried there on the 31st of December 1607. The second Joan outlived them all, buried on the 4th of November 1646.

• 6. Questions of Faith

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  Mary Arden came from a Catholic family, and some scholars have argued that the household's religious life was more complicated than John's public conformity suggested. A tract apparently signed by a "J. Shakespeare" was found in the eighteenth century in the rafters of the Henley Street house. The scholar Edmond Malone saw and described it before it disappeared. Anthony Holden noted that Malone's reported wording linked the document to a testament written by Charles Borromeo and circulated in England by Edmund Campion.

  Other research, however, challenged the document's chronology entirely, arguing it dated from 1638 at the earliest, which would make it impossible for John Shakespeare to have possessed it. Matthew Steggle concluded that the testament could not chronologically belong to John and may instead have been written by his daughter Joan, William's surviving sister. He further argued that the discoverer, John Jordan, had forged the missing first page and misread the name "Joan" as "John". The document's authenticity remains unresolved, and the question of what John privately believed has never been settled.

• 7. The Coat of Arms

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  In 1569, John Shakespeare applied for a coat of arms. The application rested on a vague claim that an ancestor had been honoured by King Henry VII for "valeant and faithefull service". The draft application referred to the family having since continued "in good reputation and credit". That first application was withdrawn, and the matter went dormant for years.

  Arms were finally granted by William Dethick of the College of Arms on the 20th of October 1596. By that point John's fortunes had recovered to some degree. Most historians believe his son William, then successful in London as a writer and businessman, re-opened the application and paid for it. The 1596 application also noted that John had married "the daughter and heir of Arden, a gentleman of worship". The grant came five years before John's death, and the arms it conferred passed to William, meaning the playwright spent the last years of his life as a gentleman by heraldic right.

• 8. The Man Behind the Name

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  Almost nothing survives of John Shakespeare's inner life. The sole scrap of personality comes from a note written by Thomas Plume, roughly fifty years after John's death. Plume recorded a conversation with Sir John Mennes, who was born in 1599 and claimed to have met the elder Shakespeare in his shop. Mennes described him as a "merry cheeked old man" who spoke of his son William with fond scepticism, saying that Will was a good honest fellow but that he, John, would have dared to crack a joke with him at any time.

  The anecdote has a problem. Katherine Duncan-Jones pointed out that Mennes was two years old when John Shakespeare died in 1601, making a personal meeting impossible. She suggested Plume may have been recording a story Mennes had heard from his own father rather than one he witnessed. The note may be worthless as evidence, or it may be the second-hand echo of an actual encounter. Either way, it is all that remains of the man's voice, and it shows a father who was proud of his son and not easily overawed by him.