Religious views of William Shakespeare evidence, no general agreement has been reached. Shakespeare and his immediate family were conforming members of the established Church of England. When Shakespeare was young, his father, John Shakespeare, was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, all of which required being a church member in good standing, and he participated in whitewashing over the Catholic images in the chapel and taking down the rood screen. Shakespeare's birth and that of his siblings were entered into the church register, as were the births of
History of the Shakespeare authorship question caught the public imagination for many years, mostly in America. Ignatius Donnelly's claim to have discovered ciphers in the works of Shakespeare revealing Bacon as a "concealed poet" were later discredited by William and Elizebeth Friedman, expert code-breakers, in their book "The Shakespearian Ciphers Examined." The first book by Charlotte Stopes on Shakespearean matters was "The Bacon/Shakespeare Question" (1888), which examined attitudes on particular details found both in Bacon's works and in those attributed to Shakespeare. Mrs Stopes concluded that there were fundamental differences, arguing that Bacon was not the author. The book met with sufficient success leading to it