Just as his father had _doubles_, so had William. There was a William Shakespeare drowned in the Avon, and buried at St. Nicholas, Warwick, July 6, 1579.[234] The world would not have known what it had lost had this fate overtaken "our Will," but it makes us shiver now as we think of it, even as a past possibility. It has been thought that this youth was the son of Thomas Shakespeare, shoemaker, of Warwick, and brother of John the shoemaker of Stratford. But he seems rather young for that relationship. Another contemporary William seems to have been in a small way of business as a farmers' agent, sometimes as a lender, and sometimes as a borrower. Among the Shakespeare manuscripts at Warwick Castle are preserved bonds for 2s. 6d. for a quarter of a year's use of L5 by William Shakespeare in 1620, 1624, and 1626. Another of "three quarters of oats to Will Shakespeare for a quarter's use of L5 due upon the 10th of May last, 1621," and some for the sale of malt.[235] It has seemed to me much more than probable that this was the William who sued Philip Rogers in the Court of Record at Stratford-on-Avon,[236] in 1604 for the price of a strike of malt sold and other money due. "The declaration filed by William Shexspere" in the Court has been accepted by Halliwell-Phillipps and all the Baconians as concerning the poet. But, in the first place, any such declaration at that date would then have designated our Shakespeare "gent."; in the second, he would have employed his cousin, Thomas Greene, as his attorney, and not William Tetherton, and Thomas Greene would have spelt his name otherwise than it is written. In the third place, there is no corroborative testimony that the poet ever sold malt, and there is concerning this contemporary William.