Thomas Quiney

• 1. Introduction

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  Thomas Quiney was baptised on the 26th of February 1589 at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, the same church where William Shakespeare worshipped, and where, years later, he would marry Shakespeare's daughter. That marriage, on the 10th of February 1616, would set off a chain of events touching a dying father's will, a woman buried in secret, a church court, and a family legacy that took decades to untangle.

  Quiney was a vintner and tobacconist who held municipal offices in the borough, a man his neighbours elected to positions of trust. He signed his chamberlain's accounts with a couplet in French from a sixteenth-century romance. He was, by most measures, respectable. Yet by the time William Shakespeare died, just weeks after the wedding, Quiney had been excommunicated, dragged before the Bawdy Court, and written out of his father-in-law's inheritance in a revision that scholars believe was made with Thomas Quiney specifically in mind.

  What happened in those few weeks of early 1616? How did a vintner with ten siblings and a municipal career become the man Shakespeare's will went to elaborate lengths to exclude? And what became of Judith, of the children, of the house at the corner of High Street and Bridge Street known as The Cage? Those are the threads this documentary follows.

• 2. A Stratford Family

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  Richard and Elizabeth Quiney raised eleven children in Stratford-upon-Avon, and Thomas was one of them. No record survives of Thomas attending the local school, but the evidence of his adult life points to a real education. He could write short passages in French, he practiced calligraphy, and he kept accounts well enough to serve as chamberlain of the borough corporation in 1621 and 1622.

  His siblings scattered and settled in different directions. A brother, also named Richard, became a grocer in London. His sister Mary married Richard Watts, who would later serve as vicar of Harbury in Warwickshire. His sister Elizabeth married a man named William Chandler, who would eventually become Thomas's own brother-in-law when the two traded houses. These family ties would prove consequential: Richard, Mary's husband, and Thomas Nash were later named as trustees of The Cage, the house most closely associated with Judith and Thomas's life together.

  The family that Thomas married into was, of course, far more famous. Judith Shakespeare was the younger daughter of William Shakespeare, the playwright, and her twin brother Hamnet had died in childhood. She was in her early thirties at the time of the marriage, older than was typical for a first marriage in that era.

• 3. The Wedding and Its Fallout

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  The couple's troubles began before the ink was dry on the marriage register. In 1616, Lent started on the 23rd of January and did not end until the 7th of April. The church forbade weddings during Lent without a special licence from the Bishop of Worcester, and Quiney and Judith had failed to obtain one. Three other couples were married in February of that same year, suggesting the minister may have been at fault, but it was Quiney who was summoned to appear before the consistory court in Worcester.

  He failed to appear by the required date. On or about the 12th of March 1616, the court recorded its judgment: excommunication. Whether Judith was also excommunicated is unknown. The punishment did not last long. By November of that year the couple was back at Holy Trinity for the baptism of their first child.

  Before the excommunication was even entered in the register, a worse matter surfaced. Margaret Wheeler, a woman Quiney had recently impregnated, died in childbirth along with the child. She was buried on the 15th of March 1616. Eleven days later, on the 26th of March, Quiney appeared before the Bawdy Court and confessed in open court to "carnal copulation" with Wheeler. His sentence was public penance "in a white sheet (according to custom)" before the congregation on three Sundays, followed by a further admission of guilt before the Minister of Bishopton in Warwickshire. The first part of the sentence was remitted; he paid a five-shilling fine to the parish's poor instead. Because Bishopton had only a chapel, not a full church, he was spared additional public humiliation.

• 4. Shakespeare Rewrites His Will

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  William Shakespeare had first summoned his lawyer, Francis Collins, in January 1616. On the 25th of March he made further alterations to his will. Scholars believe the timing was not coincidental: Shakespeare was dying, and the events surrounding his new son-in-law appear to have alarmed him.

  The revisions were pointed. Where an earlier draft had included a provision "vnto my sonne in Law", those words were struck through and Judith's name was inserted in their place. To Judith, Shakespeare bequeathed £100 toward her marriage portion, another £50 if she gave up the Chapel Lane cottage, and a further £150 to come at the end of three years, with the stipulation that she could receive the interest but not the principal. The money was explicitly denied to Thomas Quiney unless he settled on Judith lands of equal value. Judith also received "my broad silver gilt bole".

  For the bulk of the estate, which included the main house New Place, two houses on Henley Street, and various lands in and around Stratford, Shakespeare set up an elaborate entail. The estate passed first to his daughter Susanna Hall, then in descending order through Susanna's potential sons, then to Susanna's firstborn Elizabeth and her male heirs, and only then, seventh in the order, to Judith and her male heirs. Quiney himself was nowhere in the line. Scholars generally read this entail as a direct response to the husband Judith had chosen, though some have noted it might simply reflect that Susanna was already the favoured child.

• 5. The Cage and Its Troubles

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  Judith owned the cottage on Chapel Lane that her father had left her, and Thomas had held a lease since 1611 on a tavern called Atwood's on High Street. In July 1616, just months after the wedding and Shakespeare's death, Thomas swapped houses with his brother-in-law William Chandler. The new property stood at the corner of High Street and Bridge Street. It was known as The Cage, and it is the house traditionally associated with Judith Quiney.

  In the 20th century, The Cage briefly served as a Wimpy restaurant before being converted into the Stratford Information Office. But in Thomas Quiney's lifetime, the house had its own legal complications. Around 1630 he attempted to sell the lease, and his kinsmen stepped in to stop him. By 1633, to protect Judith and the children, the lease was placed in trust under three relatives: John Hall, who was Susanna's husband; Thomas Nash, who was married to Judith's niece; and Richard Watts, Quiney's own brother-in-law and the vicar of Harbury, who had likely officiated at the original wedding. Eventually, in November 1652, the lease passed to Thomas's eldest brother Richard Quiney, the London grocer.

  Quiney's time as a tradesman was not without its troubles. He was fined for swearing and for permitting townsmen to drink unlawfully in his house. He also came close to prosecution for dispensing what were described as unwholesome and adulterated wines. He was selling wine to the corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon as late as 1650.

• 6. Children and Aftermath

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  Judith and Thomas had three children, all baptised at Holy Trinity. The eldest, Shakespeare Quiney, was baptised on the 23rd of November 1616 and buried on the 8th of May 1617, six months old. He had been named for his maternal grandfather. The second child, Richard, was baptised on the 9th of February 1618 and buried on the 6th of February 1639. The third, Thomas, was baptised on the 23rd of January 1620 and buried on the 28th of January 1639. Richard and Thomas were buried within a month of each other; they were 21 and 19 years old, respectively.

  The deaths of all of Judith's children triggered fresh legal consequences under William Shakespeare's will. Susanna Hall, together with her daughter and son-in-law, used what the records describe as a rather elaborate legal device to settle the inheritance within her own branch of the family. The resulting legal proceedings continued until 1652, thirteen years after the deaths of Richard and Thomas Quiney.

  Of Thomas Quiney himself, the historical record eventually goes quiet. The parish burial records for 1662 and 1663 are incomplete, and scholars speculate that he died during one of those two years. By that point, his nephew in London held the lease to The Cage, and the family that Shakespeare had tried to provide for through his carefully worded will had dwindled to nothing.