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A man, yes; once his stripling days of hot blood are over, days of rustic rout, of fight and wrestle, of deer-stealing, of wanderings with strolling players; a man, husband to Ann Hathaway, father of children, son of Mary Arden of the Asbies, Gentlewoman of John Shakespeare, failure, who would be Gentleman; a man, this William Shakespeare, gone up to London to do a part in the world.
"We find," says he, "that John Shakspeare also farmed the meadow of Tugton, containing sixteen acres, at the rate of eleven shillings per acre. Now what proof has Mr. Malone adduced, that the acres of Asbies were not as valuable as those of Tugton? And if they were so, the former estate must have been worth between three and four hundred pounds."
John Shakespeare, with irons in so many fires, seemed forever to have put money out, in ventures in leather, in wool, in corn, in timber, and to have drawn none in. And now he talked of a mortgage on the Asbies estate.
Had life been any sweeter to her as Mary Arden of the Asbies, daughter of a gentleman, than as Mary Shakespeare, wife of a dealer in leathers? Nay, nor as sweet! But she could not make her husband see it so. Yet and she looked up at him with a sudden passion of love in that gaze it was this big, sanguine, restless, masterful spirit in him that had won her.
"Say the word, Mistress Mary Arden of the Asbies," says Father grandly, "and I stop the bargain with your Cousin Lambert where it stands. 'Tis yours to say about your own. Though nothing spend, how shall a man live up to his state? But it shall be as you say, although 'tis for you and the boy. He is the chief bailiff's son his Dad can feel he has given him that, but would have him more.
She brought to her husband, as her marriage portion, the landed estate of Asbies, which, upon any just valuation, must be considered as a handsome dowry for a woman of her station.
Will Shakespeare was the once chief bailiff's son. He was the son of Mary Arden of the Asbies. Though he never had thought about it one way or another, he had always known himself as good as the best. And so at Kenilworth, standing with the crowd and looking up at the jeweled folk in fine array casting their jokes and gibes down at the trammel, he had laughed, too, as honest as any.
Will Shakespeare cries out. He has touched little sister Annie's hand and it is cold. And after that, things went worse in the Shakespeare household. All of John Shakespeare's ventures were proving failures. Debt pressed on every side. There began talk again of a mortgage on the Asbies estate, and this time none could say nay.
On her father's death Mary inherited Asbies, a house with 50 acres of land attached to it. The first children of the marriage were two dau., who d. in infancy. William was the third, and others followed, of whom three sons, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and a dau. Joan, reached maturity.
Every question which it can be reasonable to raise at all, it must be reasonable to treat with at least so much of minute research, as may justify the conclusions which it is made to support. The estate of Asbies contained fifty acres of arable land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. What may we assume to have been the value of its fee-simple?
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