It would seem from this, that the residence of his father was unknown. Mr. Malone supposes, and on very good grounds,[1] that his mother married again in somewhat less than two years after the death of her first husband, and it was at this period, perhaps, that Fuller's researches found him, "a little child, in Hartshorn Lane, near Charing Cross."
His father-in-law was a master-bricklayer by profession; and there is no cause for believing, that he was either unable or unwilling to bestow on his new charge such a portion of education as then commonly fell to the children of respectable craftsmen; and Jonson was accordingly sent, when of a proper age, to a private school in the church of St. Martin in the Fields.
From this school it was natural to suppose that he would be taken to follow the occupation of his step-father; but this was not the case. Respect for the memory of Mr. Jonson, or what is equally probable, a remarkable aptitude in the child for learning, raised him up a
- ↑ On very good grounds.] "I found, in the Register of St. Martin's, that a Mrs. Margaret Jonson was married in November 1575, to Mr. Thomas Fowler." Malone, Shak. vol. i. p. 622. There cannot, I think, be a reasonable doubt on the person here named: unquestionably she was the poet's mother.
