The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-17 00:00:00

The Last of the Shakespeares,

The following letter has been addressed to the
editor of the Times :
Sir,—l have much pleasure in complying with
the request so courteously put forward by Mr. Hal-
liwell in your columns yesterday.
Before, however, publishing " the preliminary
evidence which is supposed to link Shakespeare's
brother with an ancestor of the present George
Shakespeare, of Wolverhampton," let me hasten to
avow and correct an error into which I was led from
the fact of not having the memoranda at hand to
refer to when my letter to you was written. Tne
brother of the poet mentioned should have been
Humphrey, not Gilbert. Of this Humphrey the
following is the pedigree, written in the hand-
writing of George Shakespeare himself :
"Tne Pedigree of George Shakespeare, of No. 6,
Great Berry-street, Wolverhampton—John Shake-
speare, father of the poet, died in 1601, S tratford-
on-Avon ; Humphrey, son of John Shakespeare, bap-
tised May 24, 1590, Stratford; Humphrey, son of
Humphrey Shakespeare, baptised Feb. 2,1639, Lap.
worth; John, son of Humphrey Shakespeare,baptised
April 9, 1678, Lapworth; John, son of John Shake•
speare, a carpenter, bora 1697, Charlecote ; Edward,
son of John Shakespeare, died 1770, at Charlecote ;
Edward, son of Edwd. Shakespeare, baptised March
15, 1761, Caarlecote ; John, son of Edward Shake-
speare, born 1782, died 1855, Henley•in-Arden ;
George,son of John Shakespeare, born Oct. 10,1812,
Henley-in-Arden, now alive."
This pedigree can, I believe, be authenticated in
every particular, and if your distinguished corres-
pondent be desirous of testing its accuracy, he cin
do so without the labour of devoting his valuable
time to a research which only his love for the great
master could render endurable.
Supposing the pedigree to pass unchallenged, it
may possibly be urged that after all Humphrey was
not the son of our poet's father, but of another
John Shakespeare, who undoubtedly resided in
Stratford in 1584.
This assumption, so directly opposed to the state-
ments of Rowe, the poet, and Betterton, the actor,
the earliest investigators of this vexed question,
has been so admirably treated i❑ an article in yes-
terday's Birmingham Daily Fos that I venture to
enclose it in the hope that you will find room for

its insertion :
" Wolverhampton, June 11.—I have called upon
George Shakespeare, of Henley-in-Arden,' of whom
Mr John Coleman, the tragedian, has written so
kindly to the Times, and he has given me all the
information he possesses upon which to base his claim
to be the only lineal descendant of William Shake-
speare. He traces back his lineage, not the poet's
brother Gilbert, but to Humphrey Shakespeare, who
was baptised at Stratford, May 24, 1590. This
Humphrey, it will be remembered, is the second
son of the three children who are supposed
to be included by Rowe in tho large family
of John Shakespeare, the father of the poet, de-
cribed as ' ten children in all,' and it has never yet
been conclusively proved that Ursula, and Hum-
phrey, and Pnilip were not the children of the
poet's father. Malone,' Knight says, ' has estab-
lished very satisfactorily the origin of this error
into which Rowe has fallen.' The explanation is
this : After the baptism of the poet's sister Joan
(the second of that name, she who was married to
William Hart), on April 15, 1596, we find John

Shakespeare entered in the register as Magister or
Master. He might afterwards lose this designation
of respectability, but is scarcely likely. Bearing
this in mind, the fact that Ursula, and Humphrey,
and Philip are entered es the children of plain John
Shakespeare;after Anne, and Richard, and Edmund
had been entered as the children of Master John
Shakespeare, is an important one. It seems to show
that Ursula, and Humphrey, and Philip are the
children of John Shakspeare, a shoemaker, who,
according to the Stratford register, married Mar-
gery Roberts, Nov. 25, 1584; but Margery was
buried, the same register shows, on Oct. 29, 1587
and she could not therefore be the mother of Ursula,
who was baptized March 11, 1588. Rowe's oppo-
nents got over this difficulty by assuming that the
shoemaker marries again. The Stratford register,
however, contains no record of this assumed second
marriage. If there had been a second, why should
it not be recorded as well as the first P But
there is a greater difficulty. How could the shoe-

maker have had a child born in wedlock not five
months after the death of his first wife ? If Ursula
was not the daughter of John Shakespeare, the shoe
maker, then she was the daughter of John Shake-

speare who, in 1571, became chief alderman of Strat-
ford, and entitled to and received the designatio❑
of INlagister. And if Ursula was the alderman's
daughter, why should not Humphrey, and after-
wards Philip, be the alderman's sons, and the de-
scendants of ono or other of these as much the lineal
descendants of the poet as if they were the descen-
dants of Gilbert ? There is only one reason which,
as it seems to us, Rowe's opponents can urge (for we
will notice the ' Mr.' theory directly), and how far
that reason can be allowed to prevail in their favour
we mutt leave with others. The reason is involved

.n the fact that between the date of the baptism of
:he alderman's first child, Joan, on September 15,
1558, and the baptism of Philip, on September 21,

1591, a period of 33 years is embraced, John
Shakespeare, however, the alderman, and the
father'of the poet, was not buried till September
8, 1601, and his wife survived Lim till 1608. Whet
her age was at the birth of any of her children there
is, so far as we know, no means of ascertaining,
but 33 years is a long period to be embraced in the
birth of children by one mother. But it will not
avail Rowe's opponents much to say that, inas-
much as Edmund, who they say was the last child
of the alderman, was baptised May 3, 1580, nearly
eight years elapsed between his birth and the birth

of Ursula : for it is a r ct that between the birth of
Edmund, the eighth, and Richard, the seventh

child, more than seven years elawes, Richard hav-
ing been baptized March 11, 1573, and Edmund,

as we have teen, on May 3, 1580. And now
for the 'Mr.' theory. What really is there

in it ? The first five of John Shakespeare's
children were baptized as the offsprings of
plain John Shakespeare, the next three (Anne,

Richard, and Edmund) as the children of Mr. John
Shakespeare. Anne was born September 2, 1571 ;
in 1571 John Shakespeare was made chief alderman,

and his child became in virtue thereof the daughter

of Mr. Jahn Shakespeare. In 1586 John Shake-

spear() was deprived of his alderman's gown, and
was no longer Mr. John Shakespeare. All chil-

dren, therefore, born to him after that date became,
by the same process of reasoning, the effapring of
plain John Shakespeare again ; and Ursula, and
Humphrey, and Philip were all born after that date
—a date prior to which he was found aching and
mortgaging his property, until, in 1579, he was
unable to pay a levy of three shillings, and at
which very date (1586) he was returned by the
constable as having 'nothing to diatrain upon.'

We think we have now adduced sufficient reasons

why Shakespersan scholars should re-examine
the data upon which they limit the family of
John, the father of 'William Shakespeare, to
eight children. At the same time I have ro-
ferred to the only difficulty that presents itself—
not perhaps an insuperable difficulty—to Ursula,
liiiuipLrey, and Philip being regarded as sister
and brothers of William Shakespeare, the poet.

Having thus cleared the way for George Shakes-
in a communication which I hope
peare, of Henley-in-Arden, and now of
theseAVolver-
columns en Tuesday, show in
hmaamy pat opnp,e
air wi
ni ,
what way he has traced his pedigree to Humphrey
Shakespeare, sketch his history, and narrate what
he has done and by whom he has been assisted to

bring his claims to ba regarded as the lineal de-
scendant of the ' Bard of Avon' before the notice

of those by whom be had hoped they would be
recognised, merely adding here that whatever may
have been the photographic representation of hie

Features that has been sent to London, I quite concur

with Mr. Coleman that ' Heaven has written his

pedigree in PliinTst characters upon his brow.'
1 aw, Sir, yours most faithfully,
JOHN COLEMAN.
Marshall's-house, Preseot, Jane 14.

ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL.—The (51d Pauline dinner is
to be held at the Albion Tavern, the L.NNI Chief Baron in
the chair, on Friday, the let of July, not the 20, as stated
yesterday.