April 1569bur. 4 November 1646), Anne (bap. 28 September 1571bur. 4 April 1579), Richard (bap. 11 March 1574bur. 4 February 1613) and Edmund (bap. 3 May 1580bur. London, 31 December 1607). Shakespeare's family was above average materially during his childhood. His father's business was thriving at the time of William's birth. John Shakespeare owned several properties in Stratford and had a profitable—though illegal—sideline of dealing in wool. He was appointed to several municipal offices and served as an alderman in 1565, culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, in 1568. For reasons unclear to history he fell upon hard times, beginning in 1576, when William was 12. He was prosecuted for unlicensed dealing in wool and for usury, and he mortgaged and subsequently lost some lands he had obtained through his wife's inheritance that would have been inherited by his eldest son. After four years of non-attendance at council meetings, he was finally replaced as burgess in 1586. Boyhood and education A close analysis of Shakespeare's works compared with the standard curriculum of the time confirms that Shakespeare had received a grammar school education. The King Edward VI School at Stratford was on Church Street, less than a quarter of a mile from Shakespeare's home and within a few yards from where his father sat on the town council. It was free to all male children, and the evidence indicates that John Shakespeare sent his sons there for a grammar school education, though no attendance records survive. Shakespeare would have been enrolled when he was 7, in 1571. Classes were held every day except on Sundays, with a half-day off on Thursdays, year-round. The school day typically ran from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. (from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. in winter) with a two-hour break for lunch. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the grammar curriculum was standardised by royal decree throughout England, and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and literature—"as good a formal literary training as had any of his contemporaries". Most of the day was spent in the rote learning of Latin. By the time he was 10, Shakespeare was translating Cicero, Terence, Virgil and Ovid. As a part of this education, the students performed Latin plays to better understand rhetoric. By the end of their studies at age 14, grammar