may presume, then, that after a year or two he was able to maintain his wife and children with some approach to comfort, and as the years passed and reputation grew he found himself able to revisit his birthplace in security, and to take definite steps to re-establish the family fortunes, then at so low an ebb. We read that after 1596, when the poet returned to Stratford with London's honours thick upon him and plenty of money in his purse, his father's debts were no longer the subject of proceedings at the local court. We may presume, then, that his son had paid them and cleared the way for John Shakespeare's strange application to the College of Heralds for a coat of arms. Strange at first thought, but less remarkable if, as is generally supposed, the father was acting for the son. It was and is the custom for a coat of arms to be applied for by the eldest male of the house, and the poet could not have made application in his father's lifetime. The application may have received some initial support in London, for arms were assigned with the least possible delay. Garter King-of-Arms referred to certain (and probably apocryphal) services rendered "to that most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of famous memory," and stated, without any recorded blush, that the Shakespeare family had continued since those days to live in Warwickshire, in good reputation and credit! He went on to record the undoubted fact that the applicant had married Mary Arden, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden of Wilmcote, who is described as a gentleman. In view of these qualifications, arms were assigned to the applicant, a shield described in the quaint jargon of heraldry, "Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the first, and for crest or cognizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent standing on a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid." The motto chosen was "Non Sans Droict." But though the grant was assigned, the assignment was not completed for three years, the claim to relationship with the Ardens of Park Hall, through John Shakespeare's wife, being disallowed, as was indeed inevitable. Even then the grant was criticised in many quarters, but William Shakespeare's eminence tended to render all criticism nugatory; nor was he the first eminent actor to enjoy a coat of arms. It is quite easy to understand the significance of the application if we turn to regard the poet as a purchaser of real estate. Some two years before the assignment was completed, he had impressed upon his fellow townsmen of Stratford the truth that the period of strained finances had passed.