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Document-specific information
Creator: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon
Title: Parish Register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon
Date: 1558-1776
Repository: The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
Call number and opening: DR243/1: Baptismal register, fol. 17r
View online bibliographic record
Robert Bearman, "Parish register entry recording Edmund Shakespeare's baptism," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/458.
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, DR243/1: Baptismal register, folio 17 recto. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/458.
Edmund Shakespeare, John and Mary Shakespeare’s eighth child, was baptized on May 3, 1580, according to the Holy Trinity Church parish register. Next to the entry, an “X” added by a later hand highlights its significance. Six years had elapsed since the baptism of his brother Richard Shakespeare. This suggests that the Shakespeares had regarded their family, comprising five children, as complete until their daughter Anne’s death in April 1579. Mary, married since ca. 1557, may by then have been in her early forties.
Edmund was an unusual baptismal name but the child was surely named after Mary’s brother-in-law, Edmund Lambert, to whom John and Mary had mortgaged their Wilmcote inheritance two years earlier in November 1578.
Written by Robert Bearman
Last updated May 22, 2020