e injustice or the impracticability of his claim. The only
further allusion to it occurs in Lady Barnard's will.[201] She directs
her trustees to dispose of New Place with the proviso "that my loving
cousin, Edward Nash, Esq., shall have the first offer or refusal
thereof, according to _my promise formerly made to him_."

Elizabeth Nash married Mr. John Barnard, of Abington, Northamptonshire,
at Billesley, a village four miles from Stratford, June 5, 1649, where
the Trussels resided. Why did she go there to be married? A puzzling
question indeed, which cannot be answered by the register, as it is
lost. Whether her marriage weakened her mother's health, or whether the
state of her mother's health had hastened her marriage, we know not; but
a month later, on July 11, 1649, Mrs. Hall died, and, being buried
beside her husband on the 16th, _made his tomb complete_. The Latin
scholars of the family were all gone, and it is not too much to suppose
that Elizabeth herself, Shakespeare's grandchild, composed her mother's
epitaph:

"Here lyeth the body of Susanna, wife of John Hall, gent., the daughter
of William Shakespeare, gent. She deceased the 11 day of July, Anno
1649, aged 66.

"Witty above her sex, but that's not all,
Wise to Salvation was good Mistress Hall,
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholly of him with whom she's now in blisse.
Then, passenger, hast nere a tear
To weep with her that wept with all
That wept, yet set herself to chere
Them up with comforts cordiall?
Her love shall live, her mercy spread
When thou hast nere a tear to shed."

A lozenge bore the arms of Hall and Shakespeare impaled. In the early
part of last century these verses were erased to make space for the
record of the death of one Richard Watts, who owned some of the tithes
and had the right to be buried in the chancel. But they, fortunately,
had been preserved by Dugdale;[202] and in 1844 the Watts record was
erased and Mrs. Hall's verses restored.

Her death limited Shakespeare's descendants to two--Judith Quiney,
daughter, and Elizabeth Barnard, granddaughter. A fine was levied on New
Place in 1650, in which John Barnard and Henry Smith were made trustees
to the settlement of 1647, instead of Richard Lane and William Smith. In
1652 a new settlement was made, devising it to the use of John Barnard
and his wife, and the longer liver of them, to the heirs of the body o