Note. The twin children were presumably named after Hamnet Sadler, a baker of Stratford, and his wife Judith. Fripp (Richard Quyny, p. 108) notes that Hamnet and Hamlet are interchangeable spellings in the Stratford town records.[1]
Hamnet Shakespeare was buried August 11, 1596, having lived eleven and a half years. (See no. XII.) Judith married Thomas Quyny of Stratford (Feb. 10, 1616) and was buried there February 9, 1662, aged seventy-seven. She had three sons, all of whom died long before her and unmarried. The eldest, Shakespeare Quyny (baptized November 28, 1616), lived less than six months.
V. MENTION OF SHAKESPEARE AS HEIR OF JOHN AND MARY SHAKESPEARE IN SUIT OVER THE ESTATE OF ASBIES (1589).
From Coram Rege Roll, Public Record Office, London.
In 1579 John and Mary Shakespeare alienated to Edmund Lambert, brother-in-law of Mary, for forty pounds, the estate of Asbies, three miles from Stratford, an inheritance from Mary’s father, Robert Arden. There appears to have been an informal agreement for recovery of the estate on repayment of the sum; but Edmund and after him his son, John Lambert, refused to acknowledge this. In Michaelmas term (autumn), 1589, John Shakespeare brought suit against John Lambert, asserting that on Edmund Lambert’s death in 1587, John Lambert contracted to pay twenty pounds on condition that the Shakespeares should not bring suit against him and should confirm him in the possession of the estate. The por-
- ↑ See p. 84, fifth line from bottom.
