The will is preserved at Doctors' Commons with the reverence which is due to so precious a document; and I add with pleasure, that in 1835 it was very carefully and skilfully repaired with tracing paper by Mr. Mussett, an officer of that establishment. It has for its companions the original testamentary papers of four other illustrious men, namely, Milton, Johnson, Pitt, and Napoleon.

We learn from the memorandum of probate that an inventory of the goods of Shakespeare was delivered into court. I should not be surprised if this were one day to appear. I have caused all inquiry to be made for it, both at Doctors' Commons and at Lambeth, but without success.

Judith, the younger of the two daughters, married February 10, 1615-6. The will appears to have been begun on February 25, 1615-6, fifteen days after the marriage, and to have been completed on March 25, 1616. Shakespeare died on April 23rd following. There was time, therefore, to have recopied the will, and this must have been intended.

He describes himself as in perfect health when the will was made; yet he dies so soon afterwards. This looks as if his sickness and death were sudden, and gives some countenance to the tradition concerning his death preserved by Ward.

THE COMBES.

Of all the Stratford families, not actually connected in blood or affinity with the Shakespeares, there is no name more frequently brought into connection with his than that of Combe. He bought land of them in 1602. John Combe, called the usurer, left him a legacy of 57. in 1614; and in 1616 Shakespeare gives his sword to Mr. Thomas Combe. But nothing has brought the two names into connection so much as the satirical epitaph which Shakespeare is said to have written on John Combe the usurer, or" John a' Combe," a form in which the name sometimes appears in formal documents:

"Ten in the Hundred lies here ingraved, &c."

Concerning Shakespeare's writing an epitaph on Combe I wish to say a few words, because it seems to me that there is more in the matter than the writers on the life of Shakespeare have perceived. Aubrey gives this doggrel as Shakespeare's; so does Rowe. The variations are immaterial. But Rowe seems to have been misinformed, when he says that it was written in the life-time of Combe, and that Combe never forgave it, which is hardly consistent with his having left a legacy to Shakespeare. Braithwaite prints it in 1618, but without attributing it to Shakespeare, and says that it was fastened on Combe's monument in the church of Stratford.* The earliest authority in which it is actually attributed to Shakespeare, as far as I know, is a manuscript

* Remains after death, &c. by Richard Braithwaite, as quoted in Hazlewood's Edition of Drunken Barnaby's Journey, vol. i. p. 237.

of miscellaneous verse, with the date 1630 in the title page, about which time it appears to have been written, where we have the third and fourth lines only, and they are said to be by "Shakespeare on Mr. Combe the usurer."

But the point to which I wish to draw attention is this that there were other, and we may believe better, verses written by Shakespeare on the death of his friend John Combe, which were to be seen a few years after his death in the church of Stratford, something entirely different from the four lines which have been so often printed. The proof is this:

In the Lansdowne MS. at the British Museum, No. 213, there is an amusing account of a summer's journey taken by three officers, a captain, lieutenant, and ancient, in 1634. They set out from Norwich, and in the course of their tour visited Stratford, where they went to the church, in which they found the following monuments :- "A monument for the Earl of Totness, and his lady, still living. The monument of Sir Hugh Clopton. A neat monument of that famous English poet, Mr. William Shakespeare, who was born here; and one of an old gentleman, a batchelor, Mr. Combe, upon whose name the said poet did merrily fann up some witty and facetious verses, which time would not give us leave to sacke up." The epitaph, so well known, does not at all answer to this: and there were, therefore, certainly at that period some lines of Shakespeare's in the church, now lost, written in the punning style of the times, allusive to the double sense of the word Combe, as the name of the person there interred, and the name also of a certain measure of corn. The words "name," "fan," and "sack," lead directly and unequivocally to this conclusion.

There is endless confusion in Mr. Malone's account of the Combes; and where he is at fault it generally is found that

later writers of the life of Shakespeare are at fault also. It must, however, be admitted that it is not easy to place Shakespeare's John Combe in his proper position in the family pedigree. He was the son of an elder John Combe. This was known to Mr. Malone, and finding at Stratford the baptism of a John, son of John Combe, in 1577, he hastily concluded that this must have been Shakespeare's friend, though there was this difficulty attending the supposition, that the usurer would then have been at the time of his death only thirty-seven. The truth is that the elder John Combe had two sons, both named John, and both growing up, one by his first wife, Joyce Blount, born about 1556, who was the usurer, and the other by his second wife, Rose Clopton (aunt to the Countess of Totness), who was the John born in 1577. This removes all the difficulties, and the fact is so distinctly stated by Vincent in his Warwickshire volume,* shewn to me by Sir Charles Young, who now so worthily fills the office of Garter King at Arms, that there can be no doubt about it. This fact, which would not be collected from any of the ordinary sources of information respecting the Combes, will hereafter give the precision which the remarks on this subject in the Variorum want. The younger John settled at Warwick, where he was living in 1619. The elder John died, as we know, at Stratford. The Combe family came to Stratford from Astley, or Ashley, in Worcestershire, about the time of the dissolution of the college of priests, by whom the service was performed in the beautiful chancel of Stratford church, erected expressly for those high devotions. They bought the house in which the priests had lived a collegiate life, and converted it into a private dwelling. John Combe, father of the usurer, had a

* No. 126. f. 109.

grant of arms from Cook, Clarencieux, in 1584, namely, on a field ermine, three lions passant in pale gules. Beside the usurer and some younger children, he had Edward, who had no male issue, and Thomas. This Thomas succeeded to the college, and married Mary Young, a widow, of Kingston Hall, in Shropshire, who had been originally Mary Bonner, alias Savage, in some way connected with the least respectable of the men who laboured to prevent the separation of England from the great Christian Confederacy, Edmund Bonner, the Bishop of London. This Thomas died in 1609, and was the father of another Thomas, his second son, the Combe to whom Shakespeare bequeathed his sword. There were also two daughters, one of whom was the wife of Edward Lane, of Bridgetown, brother of Mary Lane, wife of Sir Richard Bishop, of that place:* and Joyce, who married Edward Boughton, of Causton. William Combe, the eldest son of Thomas, succeeded him in his estates, was High Sheriff of Warwickshire in the year of Shakespeare's decease, and died in 1666, at the age of 80. He was one of those from whom much information might have been gained concerning Shakespeare fifty years after his decease, had there been persons curious enough to make the inquiry. There were other Combes at Stratford, but it is useless to proceed further with them.

*The Bishops were a Roman Catholic family: one of them was a Doctor of the Sorbonne and Bishop of Chalcedon. K. 3. f. 105, in the College of Arms.