John Shakespeare, RIP

John Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's father, died in Stratford-upon-Avon on September 7, 1601. Whether or not John Shakespeare was a Catholic and a Recusant Catholic at that is a great matter of contention. Some of the discussion relies upon the authenticity of a "Spiritual Testament" of John Shakespeare found during the eighteenth century in the rafters of William Shakespeare's birthplace. Shakespeare's father was certainly involved in the changes brought about by the Elizabethan religious settlements, as the British Library recounts:

In January 1564, three months before the birth of his son William, John Shakespeare noted in his accounts as chamberlain of the town of Stratford-upon-Avon that two shillings had been ‘paid for defacing images in the Chapel of the Holy Cross’. It may seem strange for us now living in the 21st century for someone to be paid by the town council to damage a church. However, the Protestant Reformation, like similar movements within Judaism and Islam at different periods, banned the use of religious imagery, often violently. In 1559, the new government of Queen Elizabeth I passed a Royal Injunction demanding the removal of ‘all signs of superstition and idolatry’ from places of worship, ‘so that there remain no memory of the same in walls, glasses, windows or elsewhere within their churches and houses’.

More detail about religion in Stratford:

In Stratford itself, at the level of town government, conformity was naturally the rule. Because of this, it reflected the way that the monarch and Parliament in London kept reversing religious policy, so that what was orthodox one year became illegal the next. Thus in 1553, the town corporation was granted ownership of the Holy Cross Chapel and became responsible for caring for the almshouse poor, and for paying and housing the vicar and his assistant chaplain, as well as the schoolmaster. But not all Reformation proclamations were carried out to the letter. The images in the church were merely whitewashed over in 1564, allowing them to be recovered later, and the rood loft (the ornate partition between the nave and the choir of the church) was only taken down four years late. The ‘Dance of Death’ on the north wall was allowed to remain. While Stratford after 1558 was outwardly Protestant, many townsmen and women remained Catholic at heart. Some of them would become what are known as ‘recusants’: those who refused to go to the established Church out of commitment to another faith; others, known as ‘Church papists’, hid their religion behind conformity. After the Jesuit Mission of 1580–81 to reconvert England to Rome, there is evidence of Warwickshire being a prominent centre of recusancy, including militant recusancy, from the Throckmorton Plot of 1584 to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Writing for the British Library, Brian Cummings accepts the claim that John Shakespeare was a Recusant: "Evidence exists that his father John was a recusant, and his mother’s family, the Ardens, had visibly Catholic relatives."

He was buried in the Church of the Holy Trinity (image credit). May he rest in peace.