The precise date of Shakespeare's return to Stratford to take up his residence at New Place is unknown: but it was probably as early as 1611, when his name appeared in a list of leading inhabitants of the town who raised a fund to promote the passage of a bill in Parliament "for the better repair of the highways." In the spring of 1614 we find that a Puritan preacher, who had been invited to the town by the corporation, was hospitably entertained at New Place. The town records read: "For one quart of sack and and one quart of claret wine given to a preacher at the New Place, xx. d." Dr. Ilall may have been living with Shakespeare at the time, and the preacher may have been invited to the house through his influence. On the 9th of July, 1614, a fire at Stratford destroyed fifty-four houses, besides barns and other buildings. Fortunately New Place and the Shakespeare birthplace in Henley Street escaped the conflagration. In that same summer John Combe of Welcombe died, leaving £5 to Shakespeare in his will. In the autumn of 1614 the good people of Stratford were greatly excited by the attempt of William Combe. the squire of Welcombe, to inclose a large portion of the common fields near the town. The design was resisted by the corporation as likely to injure the agricultural interests of the town and materially to diminish the tithes. For this latter reason, if for no other, Shakespeare would naturally have been opposed to the scheme; but it seems probable that he was fmally induced to favor it, being assured by Combe that his personal interests should suffer no detriment. It does not appear, however, that he took any active part in promoting the inclosures, which were finally prohibited by an order issued by Chief Justice Coke on the 27th of March, 1615.
On the 10th of February. 1616. Judith. the poet's younger daughter, so charmingly idealized in Mr. Black's novel bearing her Dame, was mar ried to Thomas Quiney, who was nearly four years her junior, having been baptized on the 26th of February, 15S9. He was an accomplished penman, and we may infer that he was acquainted with French from a motto in that language which lie inserted in an official document. At the time of his marriage he was in business as a vintner, and was patronized by the corporation and the leading citizens. In 1617 he was elected a burgess. and in 1621-23 acted as chamberlain. In 1630 he retired from the council, and, his busi ness having fallen off, he removed in 1652 to London. where lie died a few years later. He had three sons, two of whom died in infancy and the third when twenty years old. Judith Quincy lived to the age of 76, surviving all the members of her family except her aunt, Joan Bart. Judith's marriage took place without a license, an irregularity for which a fine was im posed by the ecclesiastical court at Worcester. As no other cause is known or suspected. it is
supposed that the nuptials were hastened on ac count of the failing health of her father.
Ile had made his will in the latter part of Jan uary, and from the original date and some other erasures in the document it appears to have been a corrected draft for the engrossed copy that was to be signed on the 25th of the month, but for some reason this was postponed. The draft was therefore laid aside until Shakespeare's condi tion became suddenly worse, when his lawyer was. hurriedly summoned from Warwick, and, without waiting to make a regular transcript of the will, it was signed after a few more altera tions had been hastily made. The most peculiar interlineation in the document, and one which has been much discussed as perhaps .bearing on the question whether the poet was happy in his domestic relations, is that in which lie leaves his widow his "second best bed, with the furniture." The first best bed was the one generally reserved for visitors, and, being perhaps a family heir loom, would have descended to his eldest daugh ter as `undevisable property.' There is no other reference to Mistress Shakespeare in the will: but she was amply provided for by virtue of her rights of dower, and such omission in a case of this kind was by no means uncommon in wills of the time. The gift of the bed, like many similar bequests in those old wills, was doubtless prompted by love and tender associations, and not the insult it would otherwise have been—an in sult which William Shakespeare on his death-bed could never have inflicted on the mother of his children. NVe have seen, moreover, that as soon as he began to be prosperous iu London lie bought the dilapidated New Place, and, as fast as his means allowed, repaired the house, en larged and improved the estate, and gradually made it the elegant and delightful home which must have been his ideal from the first, and which he kept steadily in view for the fourteen or more years before be returned to Stratford to enjoy it. That during all that time lie looked forward to sharing that home with a wife whom lie did not love is inconceivable.
Shakespeare died on Tuesday, April 23. 1616. According to a tradition of which no mention occurs until about fifty years later, the poet in the latter part of March was visited by his friends Drayton and Ben Jonson; and at a `merry meeting" in a Stratford tavern. the three "drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted." But the story prob ably had no other foundation than the popular notion of the time that fevers were generally due to some excess in eating or drinking. It is more likely, as Halliwell-Rhillipps suggests, that Shakespeare's disease was induced by the wretched sanitary conditions of the immediate neighborhood of New Place—an explanation that would not have occurred even to the medical men of the time.