less than three
Richard Shakespeares of Rowington, whose extant wills were proved
respectively in 1560, 1591, and 1614, were fathers of sons called
William. At least one other William Shakespeare was during the period a
resident in Rowington. As a consequence, the poet has been more than
once credited with achievements which rightly belong to one or other of
his numerous contemporaries who were identically named.

The poet's ancestry.

The poet's ancestry cannot be defined with absolute certainty. The
poet's father, when applying for a grant of arms in 1596, claimed that
his grandfather (the poet's great-grandfather) received for services
rendered in war a grant of land in Warwickshire from Henry VII. {2} No
precise confirmation of this pretension has been discovered, and it may
be, after the manner of heraldic genealogy, fictitious. But there is a
probability that the poet came of good yeoman stock, and that his
ancestors to the fourth or fifth generation were fairly substantial
landowners. {3a} Adam Shakespeare, a tenant by military service of land
at Baddesley Clinton in 1389, seems to have been great-grandfather of one
Richard Shakespeare who held land at Wroxhall in Warwickshire during the
first thirty-four years (at least) of the sixteenth century. Another
Richard Shakespeare who is conjectured to have been nearly akin to the
Wroxhall family was settled as a farmer at Snitterfield, a village four
miles to the north of Stratford-on-Avon, in 1528. {3b} It is probable
that he was the poet's grandfather. In 1550 he was renting a messuage
and land at Snitterfield of Robert Arden; he died at the close of 1560,
and on February 10 of the next year letters of administration of his
goods, chattels, and debts were issued to his son John by the Probate
Court at Worcester. His goods were valued at 35 pounds 17s. {3c}
Besides the son John, Richard of Snitterfield certainly had a son Henry;
while a Thomas Shakespeare, a considerable landholder at Snitterfield
between 1563 and 1583, whose parentage is undetermined, may have been a
third son. The son Henry remained all his life at Snitterfield, where he
engaged in farming with gradually diminishing success; he died in
embarrassed circumstances in December 1596. John, the son who
administered Richard's estate, was in all likelihood the poet's father.

The poet's father.

About 1551 John Shakespeare left Snitterfield, which was his birthplace,
to seek a