John Shakespeare was a glover and whittawer by trade.
15 Facts About John Shakespeare
2.
John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, with whom he had eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood.
3.
John Shakespeare was the son of Richard Shakespeare of the Warwickshire village of Snitterfield, a farmer.
4.
John Shakespeare moved to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551, where he became a successful businessman involved in several related occupations.
5.
John Shakespeare inherited and leased agricultural lands and is on record as selling timber and barley.
6.
John Shakespeare was twice taken to court for violating the usury laws that prohibited charging interest higher than the legal limit of 10 per cent.
7.
In 1556, John Shakespeare was elected borough ale taster, the first of several key municipal positions he was to hold in Stratford.
8.
John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, one of the Ardens of Warwickshire, a local gentry family and reportedly a niece of John Shakespeare's father Richard Shakespeare.
9.
John Shakespeare fell on hard times in the late 1570s that would last until the early 1590s.
10.
John Shakespeare was engaged in trading wool illegally in 1571, when he acquired 300 tods of wool, a large consignment.
11.
John Shakespeare had been excused levies that he was supposed to pay by supportive townsmen and business associates and they kept his name on the rolls for a decade, perhaps hoping that in that time he would be able to return to public life and recover his financial situation, but he never did so.
12.
The only record that survives of John Shakespeare's personality is a note written by Thomas Plume fifty years after his death.
13.
John Shakespeare was elected to several municipal offices, which required being a church member in good standing.
14.
John Shakespeare, acting as town chamberlain and in accordance with Elizabeth I's injunction of 1559 to remove "all signs of superstition and idolatry from places of worship", covered over the wall-paintings of the Chapel of the Guild of the Holy Cross some time in the 1560s or 1570s; his contemporary record detailed paying two shillings for "defasyng ymages in ye chapel".
15.
However, some scholars believe there is evidence that several members of John Shakespeare's family were secretly recusant Roman Catholics.