English wine cask units the mediæval French and Italian "botte") or pipe was half a tun, or 1008 pints. Tradition has it that George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV of England, was drowned in a butt of malmsey on 18 February 1478. (However, Josephine Tey in "The Daughter of Time" suggests that "drowned in a butt of malmsey" means rather that George, Duke of Clarence, drank himself to death rather than literally drowning in a container of wine.) In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims he has received "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado".
Gilbert Shakespeare is not recorded, but according to William Oldys he survived to a patriarchal age." Oldys wrote in the mid-18th century, without certainty as to identity: "One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles the Second... The curiosity at this time of the most noted actors to learn something from him of his brother, etc., they justly held him in the highest veneration..." Gilbert Shakespeare Gilbert Shakespeare (baptised 13 October 1566, buried probably 3 February 1612) was a younger brother of William Shakespeare. His name