monument," and that no other monument was put in its place, at that
date or later.

Now Mrs. Stopes {180b} argues that in 1748 the monument was "entirely
reconstructed," and so must have become no longer what Dugdale's man
drew, but what we see to-day. It is positively certain that her
opinion is erroneous.

If ever what we see to-day was substituted for anything like what
Dugdale's man drew, the date of the substitution is unknown.

Mrs. Stopes herself discovered the documents which disprove her
theory. They were known to Halliwell-Phillipps, who quotes an
unnamed "contemporary account." {181a} This account Mrs. Stopes,
with her tireless industry, found in the Wheler manuscripts, among
papers of the Rev. Joseph Greene, in 1746 Head Master of the Grammar
School. In one paper of September 1740 "the original monument" is
said to be "much impaired and decayed." There was a scheme for
making "a new monument" in Westminster Abbey. THAT, I venture to
think, would have been in Hanoverian, not in Jacobean taste and
style. But there was no money for a new monument. Mrs. Stopes also
found a paper of November 20, 1748, showing that in September 1746,
Mr. Ward (grandfather of Mrs. Siddons) was at Stratford with "a cry
of players." He devoted the proceeds of a performance of Othello to
the reparation of the then existing monument. The amount was twelve
pounds ten shillings. The affair dragged on, one of the Church-
wardens, a blacksmith, held the 12 pounds, 10s., and was troublesome.
The document of November 20, 1748, was drawn up to be signed, but was
not signed, by the persons who appear to be chiefly concerned in the
matter. It directed that Mr. Hall, a local limner or painter, is to