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the church. The children of Alderman Smith get his attention. To the school of Stratford, he bequeathed Cooper's Latin Dictionary. Doubtless William Shakspere later used this copy many a time and oft. William Smith, aged about twelve, gets the Apothegms either of Erasmus or Lycosthenes, and Aesop's Fables. Richard, about ten, gets Erasmus Copia Verborum. He also gets "David salmes / & the Actes of the aposteles bathe in Englyshe meter." The first was Stern-hold and Hopkins, the second by Christopher Tye. Bretchgirdle left a second copy of Tye to Thomas Smith, under two years old. Francis Willoughby had also been provided with Tye in 1556.1" Tye considers his work
very necessary for Students after their study to file their wits, and also for all Christians that cannot sing to read the good and godly stories of the Lives of Christ his Apostles.
Robert, age six, gets, besides a religious work, Tully's Offices in English, which would probably be the translation by Nicholas Grimald rather than the older translation by Robert Whittinton. Thomas, age about nineteen months, gets only a copy of Tye. John, about eight years, gets Sallust and Justin. Apparently, though, the Sallust and Justin did not prove efficacious.'33 William, Jr., a little more than six months, is given a shilling instead of books. Edward Wynnyngton of Northwich, Bretchgirdle's godson, gets Trilingua Lexicon Graecum. Another godson, George Marson, gets a Virgil with commentary and a Horace also with commentary. Still another, Robert Venables, gets Erasmus, Encheiridion Militia Christiani in English and Latin. Christopher Sanckye gets Tully's Offices, text of the largest volume, and the .1bccedarium Anglico-Latinum pro tyrunculis Ricardo Hufoets exscriptore, which was an English-Latin dictionary. William Sanckye receives Withals, John, .d Short Dictionary for Young Beginners, English and Latin.1" Thus Bretchgirdle had evidently taught the conventional course at Witton, and expected the conventional texts to be of use in Stratford as well. Since the books of Bretchgirdle were valued at Ģio, he probably had three or four hundred volumes, of which those in his will are only samples.
The inventory of a neighboring minister who married a Stratford wife also throws light on our problem of probable Stratford practice. John Marshall of St. Alban Hall, Oxford, who took his B.A. in 1575 and M.A. in 1577, died in 1607, leaving a library for which the in-
See above, p. 378. '5 Fripp, Shakespeare Studies, p. 76. 1,6 Fripp, Shakespeare Studies, pp. as--2$.
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