Catalogue description Lease fr. Chr. Davenport, Hen. Smyth, Tho. Potter, Joh. Thomas, Gil. Walden, and Joh....

Lease fr. Chr. Davenport, Hen. Smyth, Tho. Potter, Joh. Thomas, Gil. Walden, and Joh. Downes, feoffees, to Tho. Hobson, butcher, of a close in Little Horwell, for 21 years after 1631, at 18s. rent.

Sign, and seal (a skull, with motto 'respice finem') of Tho. Hobson. (dorso) Hum. Burton, Joh. Wrighton, Edw. Owen.

The two shops (Dr429/164 and 169) were no doubt external booths or sheds of wood, such as can be seen depicted in Chambers's 'Book of Days', 1,350, and not rooms inside the tenement itself, and the implements or 'standards,' the fixtures which passed from tenant to tenant, remaining the property of the church. Morton, Barnard (Dr429/167), Burbage (Dr429/170) are all Leet Book names. It was a Morton, the clerk of trinity tells me, who lies buried under the nameless tomb in the Archdeacon's Chapel, because of the rebus, a moor's head, a tun, or barrel, to be seen carved upon it. Burbags and Barnard have both Shakespearean associations. It would be good if it could be found that James Burbage, joiner, who built the first English theatre and made Shakespeare's art possible, came of Coventry stock. Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall, married Sir John Barnard, of Abington, Northants. No. 168 is the enfeoffment of the church property by the surviving feoffees, who had received it from the patentees mentioned in King James' charter, to a new set of trustees who were younger men.