enough in a town surrounded by pasture-land, and
seems to testify to his restless enterprise in business.
He prospered rapidly, was successful in small law-
suits, acquired property, married an heiress, and was
advanced to high office, becoming, in a short series of
years, ale-taster, constable, affeeror, chamberlain, alder-
man; lastly, when his son William was four years old,
he attained the summit of his municipal ambition, and
appears as Justice of the Peace and High Bailiff of the
Town. Then his affairs declined; he who was wont
to be plaintiff and triumphant creditor assumes the
more melancholy character of defendant and insolvent
debtor; he mortgages his wife's estate, absents him-
self from the meetings of the Town Council, is deprived
of his alderman's gown, ceases to attend church and
is presented as a recusant; but continues, as he began,
incurably litigious. During his later years we hear no
more of financial difficulties, and it has been reasonably
assumed that the success of his son restored the family
fortunes. At the close of the century he succeeded,
after repeated applications, in obtaining the grant of
a coat-of-arms; in 1601 he died, and was buried at
Stratford. The bare facts, so far as they lend them-
selves to portraiture, seem to supply suggestions for
the picture of an energetic, pragmatic, sanguine, frothy
man, who was always restlessly scheming and could
not make good his gains. "He spread his bread with
all sorts of butter, yet none would stick thereon." We
guess him to have been of a mercurial temperament,
and are not surprised to find that he was a lover of
dramatic shows. During his tenure of the office of
High Bailiff, wandering companies of players make
their first recorded appearance at Stratford, and per-
form before the Town Council, receiving money for
their pains. In business he seems to have been

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