to be the Thomas of Aston Cantlow. Edmund Lambert died in 1587, and his son John seems to have been threatened by the Shakespeares with a law-suit for the recovery of Asbies, and proposed as a compromise to pay a further sum of L20, thereby securing Asbies as by purchase. To this, however, the consent, not only of Mary, but of William, her heir, was necessary, and the poet is supposed to have come down to Stratford on the occasion to act with his parents. But probably there was some other hitch: the L20 may have been held to be covered by the "other debts," which already had done service for Edmund Lambert; or the Shakespeares weighed their desire to have back the land, which they probably then wished, with their growing family, to farm themselves. Nothing seems then to have been settled, and they were too poor to risk the perils of a great law-suit. Doubtless, with sad hearts and bitter retrospect, they regretted their unlucky purchases in 1575, which seemed to have pinched them so, and wished at least they had been contented with the half, with the one tenement in Henley Street that formed part of their residence. For, had they only spent L20 then instead of L40, they could have repaid their hard-dealing relative not only the smaller mortgage, but the "other debts," out of the L40 they received for Snitterfield from the more liberal Robert Webbe. Finding John Lambert even harder to deal with than his father, John Shakespeare brought a Bill of Complaint against him in the Court of Queen's Bench,[115] 1589, by John Harborne, attorney, in which his wife and son are mentioned. Nothing seems then to have been done. On November 24, 1597, backed by their son's influence and money, John and Mary Shakespeare, plaintiffs, without associating their son's name, made a formal complaint to the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Egerton,[116] stating that Edmund Lambert was to hold it only until repaid the loan, that the money had been duly tendered to him on the agreed date, that he had refused it, and that his son John holds the land still, and makes secret estates of the premises, the nature of which they cannot describe, as the papers have been withheld them; that their papers and evidences are open to the court. They add further that "the sayde John Lamberte ys of greate wealthe and abilitie, and well frended and allied amongst gentlemen and freeholders of the county ... and your saide oratores are of small wealthe and very fewe frendes and alyance in the said countie. They pray a writ of subpoena to be directed to John Lambert to appear in the Court of Chancery."