the place was in good order. It is at least highly probable that the
poet conducted some farming operations in and round New Place, though we
know nothing of his special qualifications for this work. There is a
record that in time of a local famine he had a good store of corn, and
he is known to have bought several lots of arable land. From the date of
the purchase of New Place there could have been none to dispute the
poet's claim to the description of William Shakespeare of Stratford,
Gentleman, and from first to last the total amount of his purchases of
real estate in and round his native town would amount to more than L7000
modern currency, if we value the Elizabethan pound at eight times our
own.

At the corner of Chapel Street, Stratford, where it turns into Chapel
Lane, there is an ugly modern house that enjoys the title of New Place
and receives the sixpences of the faithful. The trustees of
Shakespeare's birthplace own New Place and Anne Hathaway's cottage. The
house in which Shakespeare passed his last years does not exist, but
there is not a little about Stratford that calls for sixpences more
readily than it can justify the receipt of them. All that New Place can
offer of true Shakespearian interest is some venerable timbers, a shovel
board, from the old Falcon Inn that rose close by soon after
Shakespeare's death and still stands in receipt of custom, a circular
table inlaid with wood from the mulberry tree that the poet is said to
have planted, and a stone mullion from his own house. There is little
else that can recall the past, although the site of the ancient Clopton
mansion that Shakespeare purchased is undeniably here. The history of
the house that has passed and that of its successors has a very definite
interest.

Shakespeare left New Place to his favourite daughter, Susanna, and to
her daughter, Elizabeth Nash, in second marriage Lady Barnard. On her
death Sir John Barnard kept the place as a residence until he sold it to
Sir Edward Walker, whose daughter Barbara married Sir John Clopton,
descendant of the man who built the first house at the end of the
fifteenth century. Sir John pulled down the old house, rebuilt it, and
was succeeded by Sir Hugh Clopton. From him in an evil hour it passed
into the hands of a clerical Vandal, Francis Gastrell by name. He was a
wealthy man and mean, so he quarrelled with the Stratford rating
authorities, who assessed him too heavily, or so he said, for the
relie