students in one of their favorite clandestine expeditions upon the understanding that he was to maintain a rigid silence, vexatiously frightened away a choice herd of rabbits by exclaiming, "Ecce cuniculi multi"; thus excusing himself when reproved for his folly, who in the world, said he, would have thought that conies could have understood Latin?

But although it will be gathered from these evidences that amateur poaching was not always visited in those days with a distinct loss of character, it must not be inferred that its votaries, when detected, did not sometimes get into trouble and a certain amount of attendant disgrace. Much would depend upon the extent and nature of the depredations, and no little of course on the special tastes and pursuits of the owners. The landed gentry had suffered so much inconvenience from the practice that many of them had long been anxious for the establishment of stricter game-laws. Strenuous efforts had been made to render even rabbit-taking a felony, and it is not probable that Sir Thomas Lucy, an enthusiastic sportsman and an advocate for game-preservation, could have regarded the doings of Shakespeare and his companions with equanimity. It was natural that he should do his best to protect his covers from spoliation, and it is easy to believe that there may have been a display of arbitrary and undue severity in the process. There could have been no one among the poachers who would have been likely to have offered a successful resistance, or who would have dared to have appealed to a superior court in respect to a matter in which all of them were incipiently in the wrong; and it must be borne in mind that the future poet was then no more either to Sir Thomas or to the world than Peter

Turf or Henry Pimpernell. They might have been indicted under an Act of the thirteenth of Richard II, c. 13, which provided that "no manner of layman which hath not lands or tenements to the value of forty shillings by year shall have or keep any greyhound, hound, nor other dog to hunt; nor shall they use ferrets, hays, nets, hare-pipes, nor cords nor other engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other gentlemen's game, upon pain of one year's imprisonment;" but the county records of the time not being extant, it is now impossible to ascertain the course of any proceedings that may have been taken in the matter. And even if the Session Rolls, had been preserved, it is not likely that all the particulars of the case would have been revealed, for in all probability Sir Thomas Lucy frequently took it upon himself to exercise a summary jurisdiction in regard to minor offenses. Such a method of settlement may have been on occasion convenient to both parties if, for example, he had sent delinquents to jail on his own responsibility for two or three months when a legal conviction would have secured their imprisonment for twelve. It must be remembered that the rural magistrates of those days assumed very large discretionary powers, their "luxuriant authority," as it was termed by an Elizabethan legislator, having been a frequent subject of complaint. That the magistrates in the vicinity of Stratford-on-Avon were accustomed to exercise a despotic sway over the poorer inhabitants may be gathered from the fact that at a somewhat later period William Combe, the squire of Welcombe, sent a person of the name of Hiccox to Warwick jail, and refused bail, merely because he "did not behave himself with such respect in his presence it seemeth he looked for." What would he not have done

if he had first caught his disrespectful visitor marching off with his rabbits and deer, and then, with unprecedented temerity, electrifying the neighborhood by the circulation of a poetical lampoon reflecting upon the intelligence and judgment of His Worship? Now Shakespeare, in his poaching days, the penniless son of an impecunious father, and without friends of appreciable influence, would assuredly have fared no better on such occasions than poor Hiccox, unless he had been, as he obviously was not, high in the favor of Davy, the servingman; and the most rational mode of accounting for and excusing his longsustained resentment is to recognize a substantial groundwork of facts in the early traditions. They are in unison with possibilities that furnish an intelligible explanation of the known circumstances, and all becomes clear if it be assumed that a persistive, harsh, and injudicial treatment elicited the obnoxious ballad. Its author could have been severely punished under the common law for its exhibition, and there can be little doubt that it was a contemplated movement in reference to the libel, in addition, perhaps, to some other indictment, that occasioned his flight to the metropolis.

The Sir Thomas Lucy who received the honor of knighthood in 1565, and had thus accidentally diverted the course of what might otherwise have been an unnoted life, was the head of one of the most opulent and influential families in the county of Warwick. Owning estates in various parts of the country, including, within a few miles of Stratford-on-Avon, the manors of Sherbourn, Hampton Lucy and Charlecote, they had been settled at the lastnamed demain for many generations. Sir Thomas was born in 1532, and was therefore about fifty-three years

of age at the time of the poet's sprightly adventures. He married in early life Joyce Acton, a rich heiress, through whom he became possessed of Sutton Park, near Tenbury, then and for long afterwards one of the most important deer-enclosures in Worcestershire, where he was high sheriff in 1586. He was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584, but his absenteeisms from Warwickshire were exceptional, and there he held a social position little inferior to that of the higher nobility. His only son was knighted in 1593, and thus it curiously happened that, from that year until his death in 1600, there were two Sir Thomas Lucys of Charlecote, the one known as the younger and the other as the elder. The ancestral manor house, which the latter rebuilt in the first of Elizabeth, 1558 and 1559, was arranged, out of compliment to that sovereign, in the form of the capital letter E, and it remains to this day the "goodly dwelling and a rich," a visible monument of his wealth and residential dignity. It is situated on the eastern bank of the Avon, upon ground of a slightly undulating character, about four miles from Stratford through the bye-paths that the trespassers would most likely have followed. Although the whole edifice has been seriously modernized, the back especially having been nearly transformed, the front-exterior still retains the general characteristics of the original structure; but by far the most genuine and interesting object is the ancient gatehouse, which stands in advance at a little distance from the mansion, and which, with its turrets and elegant oriel window, is essentially in the state in which it would have been recognized by the now celebrated poachers of 1585. At the period of Shakespeare's arrival in London, any reputable kind of employment was obtained with consider

able difficulty. There is an evidence of this in the history of the early life of John Sadler, a native of Stratford-onAvon and one of the poet's contemporaries, who tried his fortunes in the metropolis under similar though less discouraging circumstances. This youth, upon quitting Stratford, "join'd himself to the carrier, and came to London, where he had never been before, and sold his horse in Smithfield; and, having no acquaintance in London to recommend him or assist him, he went from street to street, and house to house, asking if they wanted an apprentice, and though he met with many discouraging scorns and a thousand denials, he went on till he light on Mr. Brokesbank, a grocer in Bucklersbury, who, though he long denied him for want of sureties for his fidelity, and because the money he had (but ten pounds) was so disproportionate to what he used to receive with apprentices, yet, upon his discreet account he gave of himself and the motives which put him upon that course, and promise to compensate with diligent and faithfull service whatever else was short of his expectation, he ventured to receive him upon trial, in which he so well approved himself that he accepted him into his service, to which he bound him for eight years." It is to be gathered, from the account given by Rowe, that Shakespeare, a fugitive, leaving his native town unexpectedly, must have reached London more unfavorably circumstanced than Sadler, although the latter experienced so much trouble in finding occupation. At all events, there would have been greater difficulty in the poet's case in accounting satisfactorily to employers for his sudden departure from home. That he was also nearly, if not quite, moneyless, is to be inferred from tradition, the latter supported by the ascertained