The account of John Taylor and John Shakespeare, chamberlains of the Stratford-upon-Avon Corporation for the year Michaelmas 1561 to Michaelmas 1562

John Shakespeare, together with John Taylor, appears to have been elected as a chamberlain of the Stratford-upon-Avon Corporation in the autumn of 1561. Chamberlains kept the Corporation accounts. The document shown here is the account John Shakespeare and John Taylor submitted in January 1563 for the year ending Michaelmas (September 29) 1562.

The Corporation elected two chamberlains in September or October each year. One chamberlain would be responsible for drawing up the account for the following twelve months, while the other checked it. The accounts, however, were not submitted the next September or October, but in the following January. The same two chamberlains were usually re-elected for the following year, but with their roles reversed.

Surviving records are patchy for the first ten years of the Corporation’s existence but it seems that John Shakespeare and John Taylor were elected in the autumn of 1561, and then submitted accounts in January 1563 for the year Michaelmas 1561–Michaelmas 1562. They were then re-elected in the autumn of 1562 and submitted accounts in January 1564 for the year Michaelmas 1562–Michaelmas 1563.

In their account, shown here, covering the year Michaelmas 1561–Michaelmas 1562, the two men recorded receipts of £52 0s. 7½d. and expenditures of £51 15s. 0d., leaving them with a surplus of 4s. 9½d. carried over into the following year’s account. 

It is difficult to identify which of the two men was mainly responsible for the account submitted in January 1563. Later in the century, as literacy improved, accounts were submitted in the recognizable hand of one of the chamberlains with corrections by the other, but this account is a “fair copy” in the hand of the steward, Richard Symons.

However, John Shakespeare and John Taylor were also retained to submit accounts for two additional years in 1565 and 1566. These two further accounts can help us identify who was largely responsible for the account shown here. In 1566, John Shakespeare is described as mainly responsible for the accounts, making it very likely that Taylor bore the main responsibility for those submitted in January 1565. On the assumption they had alternated their responsibilities in similar fashion over the previous two years, it was therefore Taylor who submitted these accounts in January 1563, and John Shakespeare those of January 1564.

These accounts, on a loose sheet, are endorsed with at least two or possibly three marks. The first mark is a cross, written against Richard Symons’s endorsement, and might reasonably be thought to be Taylor’s, given that he was mainly responsible for the drafting. However, on two other occasions we know for certain that John Shakespeare also made his mark with a cross, in 1579 and 1597. Moreover, the second mark bears no resemblance to the “glover’s compasses” traditionally thought to be his, from 1561 and 1564. To complicate matters, another cross has been added near the damaged top edge of the document. 

[On one side of a single sheet in the hand of Richard Symons, with endorsements, later bound into a volume, now BRU 15/3/21]