OCRed data provided
for searching only. for of Sapperton in GIoucestershire on March 5, 1695, Archdeacon of Coventry in the diocese of Lichfield on July a6, 1703, and was buried at Sapperton June 1g, 1708. Most likely, then, Davies picked up his story while in 1703-08 he was Archdeacon of Coventry, only a few miles from Stratford. Perhaps the handwriting would also give a clue to the date of the entry.
It will be remembered that Betterton is supposed to have made his journey to Warwickshire in i7o8. He searched the church records at Stratford for notices of the Shakspere family. No doubt, he had considerable conversation with the clerk. It was the parish clerk and sexton, William Castle, who in 1693 had told Dowdall the runaway-apprentice story of Shakspere. Castle had been succeeded on March 11, 1698, by Richard Smith alias Bucke. He or a successor is most likely to have told Davies this story while the latter was at Coventry between 1703 and 1708, and to have told it to Betterton about 1708. Or, since Betterton checked the registers, is this version the vicar's story and not the sexton's at all? It is amusing to note that the center of propagation for all these old traditions was the church at Stratford-at that time it had no rivals. It is at least clear that Davies and Betterton got the story at Stratford about the same period, and from the same approximate source, since they got very nearly the same story. Both the external facts and the relations of the two versions make it clear that Davies had his version somewhat earlier than Betterton procured his. Apparently, the ballad on Lucy was not mentioned to Davies, and Betterton later was told that the ballad was lost. I believe this is sufficient evidence that the story of 1727-30 to the effect that Sir Joshua Barnes had picked the ballad up in Stratford about 16go is a fiction, as all other circumstances indicate. The story of Wilkes that Thomas Jones of Tardebigge had written down a stanza of it before 1703 has also this added suspicion against it. For apparently the ballad had not entered even the Stratford tradition till after 1703. Most likely both of these instances are merely attempts to manufacture a satisfactory ballad to meet the demand created by Rowe.
Davies thus has the official story in Stratford z7o3-o8. 'In this it is said that Shakspere and Lucy had a feud over the rabbits and venison till Lucy forced Shakspere to London and fame. How has this version of the run-away story come to supplant the earlier butcher version, as told by the neighbors to Aubrey and in a later reshaping by the sexton Castle to Dowdall? Castle, it will be remembered, had been succeeded by Smith or Bucke in 1698. At that time, therefore, the official story was likely to change, and we find later that it had done so. The intermediate stage between Castle's story up to 1698 and the version of 1703-08 is furnished by the story that Sir William Bishop of Stratford had passed to Bowman and Betterton be-fore 1700. According to that story,
some part of Sir John Falstaif's character was drawn from a townsman of Stratford, who either faithlessly broke a contract, or spitefully refused to part with some land for a valuable consideration, adjoining to Shakespeare's, in or near that town.u
n Chambers, Shakespwre, vol. II, p. 279.
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