Elizabeth Barnard issues a deed poll requiring her trustees, should she die without issue, to sell the family estates

Six months after the settlement of the Shakespeare family estates, Elizabeth Barnard issued a deed poll, shown here, claiming in her own right the “power to limitt, appoynte & dispose of” the settled estates (listed as before as New Place and four and a half yardlands in Old Stratford, Bishopton and Welcombe, the inheritance of William Shakespeare, her grandfather). The deed poll also declares that, should she die “without heires of my bodie,” the settled property should pass, after her husband’s death, to Henry Smith of Stratford, gentleman, and Job Dighton, a Middle Temple lawyer, in trust to sell and to apply the money raised “in such manner and by such some or somes, as I … shall by any wrighting or noate under my hand, truly testified, declare & nominate.” It was not until 1670 that she made her will giving final instructions as to how the money should be divided up.

A deed poll normally only involved one party and in this case was drawn up on paper, with a piece cut back for a tongue on which Elizabeth applied her signet seal: the Barnard arms (three talbots’ heads erased) impaling (alongside) Shakespeare’s. Richard Lane, his wife Mary, and Phillip Scarlett, who all sign, and Elizabeth “Riton” (probably Wrighton) who made her mark, witnessed the deed.