arnard,
Shakespeare's only grandchild and last surviving descendant, who,
although she only occasionally visited Stratford after her second
marriage in 1649 and her removal to her husband's residence at
Abington, near the town of Northampton, retained much property in her
native place till her death in 1670. Ward reported from local
conversation six important details, viz., that Shakespeare retired to
Stratford in his elder days; that he wrote at the most active period
of his life two plays a year; that he made so large an income from his
dramas that "he spent at the rate of L1000 a year"; that he
entertained his literary friends Drayton and Jonson at "a merry
meeting" shortly before his death, and that he died of its effects.

Oxford, which was only thirty-six miles distant, supplied the majority
of Stratford tourists, who, before Betterton, gathered oral tradition
there. Aubrey, the Oxford gossip, roughly noted six local items other
than those which are embodied in Ward's diary, or are to be gleaned
from Beeston's reminiscences, viz., that Shakespeare had as a lad
helped his father in his trade of butcher; that one of the poet's
companions in boyhood, who died young, had almost as extraordinary a
"natural wit"; that Shakespeare betrayed very early signs of poetic
genius; that he paid annual visits to his native place when his career
was at its height; that he loved at tavern meetings in the town to
chaff John Combe, the richest of his fellow-townsmen, who was accused
of usurious practices; and finally, that he died possessed of a
substantial fortune.

Until the end of the century, visitors were shown round the church by
an aged parish clerk, some of whose gossip about Shakespeare was
recorded by one of them in 1693. The old man came thus to supply two
further items of information: how Shakespeare ran away in youth, and
how he sought service at a playhouse, "and by this meanes had an
opportunity to be what he afterwards proved." A different visitor to
Stratford next year recorded in an extant letter to a friend yet more
scraps of oral tradition. These were to the effect that "the great
Shakespear" dreaded the removal of his bones to the charnel-house
attached to the church; that he caused his grave to be dug seventeen
feet deep; and that he wrote the rude warning against disturbing his
bones, which was inscribed on his gravestone, in order to meet the
capacity of the "very ignorant sort of people" whose business it w