perused some years ago, two stanzas of it were rescued from oblivion by the learned Joshua Barnes, from a songstress in Stratford, about the year 1690. The writer of these spurious verses, which are given below, unluckily did not know that the wife of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he has represented as a wanton, was a lady of the most exemplary piety and virtue; and that a very high eulogy on her excellent qualities is yet to be seen in the church of Charlecote, written, as the author of it has mentioned," by him who knew her best; " without doubt, her husband, who has particularly praised her for her exemption

editions of Shakspeare's plays, of which he published a fictitious catalogue, in 1751, while he was in the Marshalsea of Dublin, was, I suspect, the author of this Manuscript History of the Stage, which, from some circumstances mentioned in it, appears to have been written some time between April, 1727, and October, 1730. The passage alluded to is as follows:

"Here we shall observe, that the learned Mr. Joshua Barnes, late Greek Professor of the University of Cambridge, baiting about forty years ago at an inn in Stratford, and hearing an old woman singing part of the above-said song, such was his respect for Mr. Shakspeare's genius, that he gave her a new gown for the two following stanzas in it; and, could she have said it all, he would (as he often said in company, when any discourse has casually arose about him) have given her ten guineas:

"Sir Thomas was too covetous,

"To covet so much deer,

"When horns enough upon his head
"Most plainly did appear.

"Had not his worship one deer left?
"What then? He had a wife

"Took pains enough to find him horns
"Should last him during life.".

"from any crime or vice," and for "her love and truth, and faithfull adherence to her marriage Vows 2."

But to this, which has passed current for above a century, and to all the circumstantial evidence by which it seems to be supported, I have a very plain tale to oppose. I conceive it will very readily be granted that Sir Thomas Lucy could not lose that of which he never was possessed; that from him who is not master of any deer, no deer could be stolen. It is agreed, that there never was a park at Charlecote; and, if the knight never eat any venison but what came out of the park of Fulbroke, he certainly never partook of that delicacy; for he never was possessed of Fulbroke, nor was it enclosed in his time; having

2 In the church of Charlecote is the following inscription, in honour of this lady:

"Here entombed lyeth the Lady Joyce Lucy, wife of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote in the county of Warwick, Knight, daughter and heir of Thomas Acton of Sutton in the county of Worcester, who departed out of this wretched world to her heavenly kingdome, the 10th day of Feb'. in the year of our Lord God 1595 [1595-6], and of her age Ix and three: 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 friendship 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 dyed most godly. "Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true, THOMAS LUCY."

been disparked before he arrived at the age of manhood, in which state it continued during the whole of his life. In the first year of King Edward VI. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, obtained a grant of the inheritance of this park; and on his attainder 1 Mar. the Queen [March 8, 1554-5] gave the pannage and herbage of it to Sir Francis Englefield, who was one of her principal favourites, and Master of the Court of Wards; and, a few years afterwards (4 & 5 Ph. & M.), she granted him the reversion of this disparked park (for so it is, again and again, expressly called), to hold of herself in capite. In the first year of Elizabeth, Sir Francis Englefield went into foreign parts; from whence, I believe, he never returned. Being a Roman Catholick, and leagued with the enemies of the Queen on the throne, on the 27th of March, in the thirteenth year of her reign [1571], a commission was issued, to seize all such lands as belonged to him into the Queen's hands. Whether he had, before that time, passed from him the disparked grounds of Fulbroke, I have not been able to ascertain; but, however that may be, they assuredly were not purchased by our Sir Thomas Lucy, nor was he ever possessed of them; as appears by the inquisition taken at Warwick, after his death [September 26, 1601], which recites all the lands of which he was seized, in the county of Warwick and elsewhere, and does not mention Fulbroke. Neither was his son, Sir Thomas Lucy, who survived his father but five years, ever possessed of this manor. The fact is, that it was purchased some time in the reign of James the First, by Sir Thomas Lucy, grandson of our Sir Thomas, who, as Dugdale has

truly stated, renewed the park, which, as we have seen, from the year 1554, had been disparked and unenclosed, and, by the addition of Hampton Woods, enlarged it considerably.

In further confirmation of what I have now stated, it may be observed, that, though Sir Thomas Lucy lived on a very amicable footing with the corporation of Stratford, we never find any notice of their receiving a buck from him, which they undoubtedly would have done, had he been possessed of a park so near them. To Sir John Hubaud, who lived at Ipsley, not many miles from Stratford, and to Sir Fulke Greville, the elder, of Beauchamps Court, near Alcetor, and his son (afterwards Lord Broke), to these gentlemen alone, from 1576 to the year 1600, they appear to have been indebted for their venison feasts.

If, after all, it shall be said that Sir Thomas Lucy, though he had no park either at Charlecote, might yet, without any royal leave, have had some deer in his grounds, and that still our poet may have been guilty of the trespass which has been imputed to him, the objector must be told that no such grounds 3 were protected by the common law, every one having right to kill thereon all beasts of chase as feræ naturæ; and that the penalties of the statute

3

3 "A park is an enclosed chace, extending only over a man's own grounds. The word park, indeed, properly signifies an enclosure: but yet it is not every field or common, which a gentleman chuses to surround with a wall or paling, and to stock with a herd of deer, that is thereby constituted a legal park; for the king's grant, or, at least, immemorial prescription, is necessary to make it so." Blackstone, ii. 38.

of Elizabeth, already mentioned, as well as preceding statutes on this subject, extended only to offences committed in a legal park, our author, had he even been guilty of the act imputed to him, would not have fallen within the peril of the law. He might, indeed, have been proceeded against by an action of trespass; but it never has been alleged that any civil suit was instituted against Shakspeare on this ground. In truth, the objection which I have now stated is scarcely worth considering; for of keeping deer in unenclosed grounds no example can be produced.

That there never was a park at Charlecote, is very easily proved. It is well known that, from the time of the Norman conquest, in consequence of the principle of the feudal law, that the king is the ultimate proprietor of all the lands of the kingdom, which are all considered as derived from him, and of his right by the common law, and by virtue of his royal prerogative, to all bona vacantia, which all beasts of chase are supposed to be, no person could possess a legal park but by royal licence, or immemorial prescription. Hence it follows that, strictly speaking, no man was entitled, at common law, to hunt or sport even upon his own soil. By the grant of a chase licence to make a park or free warren, becoming, as Sir William Blackstone has well expressed it, a royal game-keeper, he obtained not only the power, but the sole and exclusive power of killing all beasts of venery, and all fowls of warren, so far as his chase, park, or warren, extended; and it was unlawful, at common law, for any other person to kill any beasts

♦ See p. 135.