France two years later. Family and bequests With his wife, Margaret Fitzalan, William Ros had four sons: John, Thomas, Robert and Richard. They also had four daughters: Beatrice, Alice, Margaret and Elizabeth. Ros also had an illegitimate son, John, by a now-unknown woman. Charles Ross suggests that he "provides full confirmation of what the scanty evidence as to the character of his earlier career suggests, that Ros was a man of just and equitable temperament" by the nature and extent of his bequests. His heir, John, inherited his father's lordship and patrimony and his armour and a gold sword. His third son, Robert—whom Ross describes as "evidently his favourite"—also inherited a quantity of land. Ros made this provision for Robert from John's patrimony, a decision described by G. L. Harriss as "overrid[ing] both family duty and convention". His younger three sons (Thomas, Robert, and Richard) received a third of Ros's goods among them; Thomas, traditional for a younger son, was intended for an ecclesiastical career. Ros's wife, Margaret, received another third of his goods. His illegitimate son, John, received £40 towards his upkeep. Loyal retainers received benefices, and Ros's "humbler dependents"—for instance, the poor on his Lincolnshire estates—received often-massive sums among them. His executors—one of whom was his heir, John—received £20 each for their services. Ros was buried in Belvoir Priory, and an alabaster effigy was erected in St Mary the Virgin's Church, Bottesford, on the right side of the altar. Seven years later, after his death at Baugé, an effigy of his son John was placed on the left. William Ros left £400 to pay ten chaplains for eight years to educate his sons. In Shakespeare William Ros appears in William Shakespeare's Richard II as Lord Ross. His character performs a double act of sorts with Lord Willoughby in their (ultimately successful) attempts to persuade the Earl of Northumberland to revolt against Richard, although as one reviewer has noted, indicating "little sense of rebels carefully testing the political water" before doing so. Together, the three of them are the core of the conspiracy to overthrow Richard. In their colloquies—for which R. F. Hill has compared them to a Senecan Chorus— they provide the audience with a catalogue of Richard's misdeeds by re-telling his history of poor governance. Ross, says Hill, is "lured" by the earl into conversation, which results in their plotting. Ross tells Northumberland, "The commons hath [King