n Arden. Lambert was
to receive no interest on his loan, but was to take the 'rents and
profits' of the estate. Asbies was thereby alienated for ever. Next
year, on October 15, 1579, John and his wife made over to Robert Webbe,
doubtless a relative of Alexander Webbe, for the sum apparently of 40
pounds, his wife's property at Snitterfield. {12a}

The father's financial difficulties.

John Shakespeare obviously chafed under the humiliation of having parted,
although as he hoped only temporarily, with his wife's property of
Asbies, and in the autumn of 1580 he offered to pay off the mortgage; but
his brother-in-law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were owing, and he
would accept all or none. The negotiation, which was the beginning of
much litigation, thus proved abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor,
John Brown, was embarrassingly importunate, and, after obtaining a writ
of distraint, Brown informed the local court that the debtor had no goods
on which distraint could be levied. {12b} On September 6, 1586, John was
deprived of his alderman's gown, on the ground of his long absence from
the council meetings. {12c}

Education.

Happily John Shakespeare was at no expense for the education of his four
sons. They were entitled to free tuition at the grammar school of
Stratford, which was reconstituted on a mediaeval foundation by Edward
VI. The eldest son, William, probably entered the school in 1571, when
Walter Roche was master, and perhaps he knew something of Thomas Hunt,
who succeeded Roche in 1577. The instruction that he received was mainly
confined to the Latin language and literature. From the Latin accidence,
boys of the period, at schools of the type of that at Stratford, were
led, through conversation books like the 'Sententiae Pueriles' and Lily's
grammar, to the perusal of such authors as Seneca Terence, Cicero,
Virgil, Plautus, Ovid, and Horace. The eclogues of the popular
renaissance poet, Mantuanus, were often preferred to Virgil's for
beginners. The rudiments of Greek were occasionally taught in
Elizabethan grammar schools to very promising pupils; but such
coincidences as have been detected between expressions in Greek plays and
in Shakespeare seem due to accident, and not to any study, either at
school or elsewhere, of the Athenian drama. {13}

Dr. Farmer enunciated in his 'Essay on Shakespeare's Learning' (1767) the
theory that Shakespeare knew no language but his own,