There is one curious mention of the name which no

student seems to have worked out. A certain Hugh

Saunders, alias Shakcspere} of Merton College, Oxford,

became Principal of St. Albans Hall in 1501. He was

Vicar of Meopham, in Kent, Rector of Mixbury, Canon

^ Wood's Colleges. Fasti Oxoniensis, Bliss, 1815. Wood,
Antiq. Oxon., L. 2, 341. Boase, Reg. Univ. Oxon. Newcourt's
*• Repertorium."



1 6 Shakespeare's Family

of St. Paul's, and Prebendary of Ealdstreet^ in 1508 ;
and Rector of St. Mary's, Whitechapel, in 1512. He
died 1537. Now, such an alias was common at the
time, when a man's mother was of higher social station
than his father. We may therefore, seeing he was
somehow connected with Shakespeare, imagine Hugh
Saunders' mother to have been a Shakespeare. He is
styled " vir Uteris et virtute percelebris."



CHAPTER IV



THE SHAKESPEARE COAT OF ARMS

NONE of the BEimily seem to have risen above the
heraldic horizon till John Shakespeare applied
for his coat of arms. Into the
contest over that application it is well
to plunge at once, and thence work
backwards and forwards. Four
classes of writers wage war over the
facts: the Baconians, like the late
Mr. Donnelly, who deny everything ;
the Romanticists, who accept what
is pleasant, and occasionally believe
manufactured tradition to suit their
inclinations; the agnostic Shake-
speareans, like Halliwell-Phillipps,
who really work, but believe only what
they can see and touch, if it accords
with their opinions ; and the ingenu-
ous workers who seek saving truth like
the agnostics, but bring human influences and natural
inferences to bear on dusty records. Now, Halliwell-
Phillipps does not scruple to affirm that three heralds,^

^ Cooke, Dethicke and Camden.
