later among the Essex Shakespeares.

There is one curious mention of the name which no student seems to have worked out. A certain Hugh Saunders, alias Shakespere,[50] of Merton College, Oxford, became Principal of St. Albans Hall in 1501. He was Vicar of Meopham, in Kent, Rector of Mixbury, Canon of St. Paul's, and Prebendary of Ealdstreet, in 1508; and Rector of St. Mary's, Whitechapel, in 1512. He died 1537. Now, such an alias was common at the time, when a man's mother was of higher social station than his father. We may therefore, seeing he was somehow connected with Shakespeare, imagine Hugh Saunders' mother to have been a Shakespeare. He is styled "vir literis et virtute percelebris."