the law as to their park, had a proprietorship in deer, for the successor of the Sir Thomas of the ballad sent a present of a buck to the Lord Keeper Egerton in 1602. The deer-stealing tradition has shifted its locality as it has advanced in age. Charlcote, according to Mr. Samuel Ireland, was not the place of Shakspere's unlucky adventures. The Park of Fulbrooke, he says, was the property of Sir Thomas Lucy; and he gives us a drawing of an old house where the young offender was conveyed after his detection. Upon the Ordnance Map of our own day is the Deer

Barn, where, according to the same tradition, the venison was concealed. The engraving here given is founded upon a representation of the Deer Barn, "drawn by W. Jackson, 1798." I found it amongst some papers belonging to Mr. Waldron, that came into my possession, and I presented it to the author of a tract, published in 1862, entitled "Shakespeare no Deer-Stealer." The rude drawing is now in the Museum at Stratford.

The author of this tract, Mr. C. Holte Bracebridge, cannot be named by ourselves, nor, indeed, by any of his contemporaries, without a feeling of deep respect. His generous exertions to alleviate the miseries accompanying the war in the Crimea, originated in the same high principle as those of Florence Nightingale. But he must excuse us if we hesitate in our belief that the shifting of the scene of the deerstealing from Charlcote to Fulbrooke adds much additional value to the credibility of the tradition. The argument of Mr. Bracebridge is in substance as follows:"From 1553 to 1592, Fulbrooke Park was held in capite of the Crown by Sir Francis Englefield. From 1558 to the time of his death, abroad, in 1592, Sir Francis had been attainted, and his property sequestered, although the proceeds were not appropriated by the Queen. It follows, then, that neither Sir Thomas Lucy nor his family had a proprietary right in Fulbrooke until the last years of Shakspere's life, when the estate, having been re-granted to the mother of the former attainted owner, it had been purchased from his nephew. But as Lucy's park ran along the bank of the Avon for nearly a mile, and for about the same distance Fulbrooke occupied the opposite bank; as the river was shallow and had a regular ford at Hampton Lucy, situate at one angle of Charlcote Park, the deer of

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Fulbrooke and the deer of Charlcote were only kept separate by the fence on either
side, that of the banished man being probably broken down. It is clear, holds
Mr. Bracebridge, that if Shakspere had broken into Charlcote, and had there taken
a buck or a doe, he would have been liable to the penalties of the 5th of Elizabeth ;
and that Sir Thomas Lucy would not have abstained from taking the satisfaction of
the law, "for an offence, looked upon at that period, by the gentry at least, very
much as housebreaking is with us." Because, therefore, Sir Thomas Lucy was a
gentleman of ancient lineage, as his ancestor once held Fulbrooke Park of the
Crown; as Englefield was abroad as a proscript, "he, Lucy, no doubt, hunted
there." We state the argument of Mr. Bracebridge, from these facts, in his own
words:--
In this state of things, Shakspeare would treat very lightly the warnings
of the Charlcote keepers, knowing as a young lawyer that he had as good a right as
Sir Thomas to sport over Fulbrooke, insomuch as there was no legal park there."
If Mr. Bracebridge's arguments may be admitted to prove that William Shakspere,
in the eye of the law, was not a deer-stealer; if he himself knew that he had as
good a right to take a deer in Fulbrooke as Sir Thomas Lucy himself, what becomes
of the tradition, first reduced to shape by Rowe, that he was prosecuted by Sir
Thomas Lucy, somewhat too severely as he thought; that in order to revenge the
ill-usage he made a ballad upon the knight; and that this production was so very
bitter that he was obliged to leave his business and family, and shelter himself in
London? The elaborate and ingenious argument of the author of " Shakespeare no
Deer-Stealer," offers the best support to our opinion, thus noticed by him:-
"Mr. Knight, after reviewing the evidence as to the tradition, considers it unworthy
of belief." All the accessories of the story confirm us in this opinion. Under the
law, as it existed from Henry VIII. to James I., our unhappy poet could not be
held to have stolen rabbits, however fond he might be of hunting them; and cer-
tainly it would have been legally unsafe for Sir Thomas Lucy to have whipped him
for such a disposition. Pheasants and partridges were free for men of all condition
to shoot with gun or cross-bow, or capture with hawk. There was no restriction
against taking hares except a statute of Henry VIII., which, for the protection of
hunting, forbade tracking them in the snow. With this general right of sport-
whatever might have been the opinion of the gentry that the taking of a deer was as
grievous an offence as the breaking into a house-it is clear that, with those of
Shakspere's own rank, there was no disgrace attached to the punishment of an
offender legally convicted. All the writers of the Elizabethan period speak of
killing a deer with a sort of jovial sympathy, worthy the descendants of Robin Hood.
"I'll have a buck till I die, I'll slay a doe while I live," is the maxim of the Host in
The Merry Devil of Edmonton;' and even Sir John, the priest, reproves him not:
he joins in the fun. With this loose state of public opinion, then, upon the subject of
venison, is it likely that Sir Thomas Lucy, with the law on his side, would have pursued
for such an offence the eldest son of an alderman of Stratford with any extraordinary
severity? If the law were not on his side, Sir Thomas Lucy would only have made
himself ridiculous amongst his neighbours by threatening to make a Star Chamber
matter of it. The knight was nearly the most important person residing in the imme
diate neighbourhood of Stratford. In 1578 he had been High Sheriff. At the period
when the deer-stealing may be supposed to have taken place he was seeking to be

member for the county of Warwick, for which he was returned in 1584.

He was in the habit of friendly intercourse with the residents of Stratford, for in 1583 he was chosen as an arbitrator in a matter of dispute by Hamnet Sadler, the friend of John Shakspere and of his son. All these considerations tend, we think, to show that the improbable deer-stealing tradition is based, like many other stories connected with Shakspere, on that vulgar love of the marvellous which is not satisfied with the wonder which a being eminently endowed himself presents, without seeking a contrast of profligacy, or meanness, or ignorance in his early condition, amongst the tales of a rude generation who came after him, and, hearing of his fame, endeavoured to bring him as near as might be to themselves.

Charlcote, then, shall not, at least by us, be surrounded by unpleasant associations in connexion with the name of Shakspere. It is, perhaps, the most interesting locality connected with that name; for in its great features it is essentially unchanged. There stands, with slight alteration, and those in good A broad taste, the old mansion as it was reared in the days of Elizabeth. avenue leads to its fine gateway, which opens into the court and the principal entrance. We would desire to people that hall with kindly inmates; to imagine the fine old knight, perhaps a little too puritanical, indeed, in his latter days, living there in peace and happiness with his family; merry as he ought to have been with his first wife, Jocosa (whose English name, Joyce, soundeth not quite so pleasant), and whose epitaph, by her husband, is honourable alike to the deceased and to the survivor.* We can picture him planting the second

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avenue, which leads obliquely across the park from the great gateway to the porch of the parish-church. It is an avenue too narrow for carriages, if carriages then had been common; and the knight and his lady walk in stately guise along that grassy pathway, as the Sunday bells summon them to meet their humble neighbours in a place where all are equal. Charlcote is full of rich woodland scenery. The lime-tree avenue, may, perhaps, be of a later date than the age of Elizabeth; and one elm has evidently succeeded another from century to century. But there are old gnarled oaks and beeches dotted about the park. Its little knolls and valleys are the same as they were two centuries ago. The same Avon flows beneath the gentle elevation on which the house stands, sparkling in the sunshine as brightly as when that house was first built. There may we still lie

"All the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion, most sound; in love to her husband, most faithful and true; in friend. ship, most constant; to what in trust was committed to her, most secret: in wisdom, excelling; in governing her house, and bringing up of youth in the fear of God, that did converse with her, most rare and singular. A great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly.

"Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true, Thomas Lucy."

"Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along his wood,"

and doubt not that there was the place to which

"A poor sequester'd stag, That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, Did come to languish." *

There may we still see

"A careless herd,

Full of the pasture,"

leaping gaily along, or crossing the river at their own will in search of fresh fields and low branches whereon to browse. We must associate Charlcote with happy circumstances. Let us make it the scene of a troth-plight.

The village of Charlcote is now one of the prettiest of objects. Whatever is new about it—and most of the cottages are new-looks like a restoration of what was old. The same character prevails in the neighbouring village of Hampton Lucy; and it may not be too much to assume that the memory of him who walked in these pleasant places in his younger days, long before the sound of his greatness had gone forth to the ends of the earth, has led to the desire to preserve here something of the architectural character of the age in which he lived. There are a few old houses still left in Charlcote; but the more im

* As You Like It, Act II., Scene 1.