A 1642 will that bequeathed William Shakespeare’s home to someone entirely unrelated to him that caused much courtroom drama has been rediscovered in the U.K.’s National Archives. Legal records specialist Dan Gosling found the will in a box of unlabeled chancery court documents dating from the 17th century and earlier. It was first described by a Shakespeare scholar in the mid-19th century. He had discovered it in the Rolls Chapel, the repository of the Court of Chancery’s document records from 1484 until 1856 when the rolls were moved to the new Public Record Office building. We now know that the original will was absorbed into the National Archives without being catalogued.
The will was made by Thomas Nash, husband of Shakespeare’s granddaughter Elizabeth, who lived with her and her mother, Shakespeare’s eldest daughter from his first wife, Susanna Hall, in the playwright’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon. Known as New Place, Shakespeare had bought it in 1597 for the hefty sum of £60. It was three stories high with timber and brick construction and had 20 rooms, 10 fireplaces, a courtyard and a sizeable property that contained two bards and an orchard. It was the second largest private home in Stratford at the time and obviously a very desirable piece of real estate. After he died in 1616, he left the bulk of his possessions, including his extensive properties, to Susanna, entailed to her sons upon her death, and in the case there were no sons, to her daughter Elizabeth and her male heirs.
For reasons unknown, perhaps because Nash assumed erroneously that he would outlive his wife and his mother-in-law and somehow handwaved away the whole question of Shakespeare’s complex entailment measures, he left the home to his cousin Edward Nash. Even if Thomas Nash didn’t know that New Place was entailed, it was rashly optimistic, to say the least, to think that he would outlive his wife and mother-in-law as he was 59 when he wrote the will and so was Susanna. Elizabeth was 34.
When Thomas Nash died in 1647, legal confusion ensued. Elizabeth and Susanna had to obtain a deed of settlement to prove that they still owned the house they literally lived in along with all the other properties that Shakespeare had willed to his daughter. Edward Nash took umbrage and being deprived of a house that had been willed to him by someone who never owned it, and sued Elizabeth in the Court of Chancery.
“He argues the will of Thomas Nash was proved in the property court of Canterbury, and Elizabeth Nash, as the widow and executrix, was duty bound to abide by the terms of the will and give New Place to Edward Nash,” [says Dan Gosling.]
Elizabeth appeared at the chancery court to explain the lands and property were granted to her and her mother by “my grandfather William Shakespeare”. As part of proceedings she was asked to produce Thomas’s will, which is how the document eventually ended up in the chancery archives, now held by the National Archives.
The upshot of the proceedings is not clear, but, Gosling said, it appears Edward never got to own the property. When Elizabeth died in 1670, having had no children and ending Shakespeare’s direct line of descendants, her will stipulated Edward Nash would have the right to acquire New Place.
“She uses the words ‘according to my promise formally made to him’, which suggests some spoken procedures were made,” said Gosling. In the event, there is no recorded mention of Edward as owner of New Place, which went to the wealthy landowning Clopton family after Elizabeth’s death and was demolished in 1702.
* This article was originally published here
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