Charlecote.

To Charlecote, four miles east of Stratford, is an expedition rarely ever omitted by the Shakespearean tourist, for it is associated with one of the most romantic traditions of the poet’s life; that of the famous poaching incident, which may well have been the disposing cause of his leaving his native town and seeking fortune in London. The balance of opinion is strongly in favour of accepting the story, which comes down to us by way of Archdeacon Davis, Vicar of the Gloucestershire village of Sapperton, who died in 1708. He says the youth “was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipped and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native county, to his great advancement.”

This does not at first sight present a flattering picture of William Shakespeare, but we have to consider that the deer- and game-raiders of that era were not on the blackguardly level of the modern poacher. They were commonly sportive and high-spirited youths, who went about the business of it in company. At the same time, he ought at this juncture to have given up this hazardous sport. The probable date of his leaving for London, fleeing before the anger of Sir Thomas Lucy, is either the summer of 1585 or 1587. He was in the former year twenty-one years of age, had already been two years and a half a married man, and was the father of three children. In imagination we can hear John Shakespeare’s friends prophesying that his son Will would “come to no good.” The same ungenerous thing has no doubt been prophesied of every high-couraged lad from time immemorial.

In revenge for Sir Thomas Lucy’s reprisals Shakespeare is said to have written some satirical verses and fastened them on the park gates of Charlecote. Some of the lines have, in tradition, survived—

“A Parliament member, a Justice of Peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, in London an Ass,
If lousy is Lucy, as some folk miscall it,
Then Lucy is lousy, whatever befall it.
He thinks himself great,
Yet an ass in his state
We allow by his ears with but asses to mate.”

This has been styled a “worthless effusion,” and attempts have been made to pooh-pooh it; but whatever its worth or otherwise, it distinctly shows that sÆva indignatio—that unmeasured fury which is one of the stigmata of the literary temperament. Its extravagance is no point against it, and to show that Sir Thomas Lucy was neither a scarecrow nor an ass is altogether beside the mark.

Shakespeare, rubbing his hurts, put all the hatred he could into his rhythmic abuse, and did not stop to consider how closely it tallied with actualities. Now let us reconstruct the actual man. The real Sir Thomas was a personage of wealth inherited unimpaired, and of undoubted culture and esteem: in the words of his contemporaries a “right worshipful knight.” He reigned long in the home of his ancestors at Charlecote, to which he succeeded in 1552, upon the death of his father. He was then only twenty years of age, and he lived until 1602. He had for tutor none other than John Foxe, the martyrologist, to whom his father, Sir Thomas, had given shelter. “Foxe, forsaken by his friends, and accused of heresy for professing the reformed religion, was left naked of all human assistance; when God’s providence began to show itself, procuring for him a safe refuge in the house of the Worshipful Knight, Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote in Warwickshire, who received him into his family as tutor, and he remained there till his pupils no longer needed instruction.” Foxe was married here, at Charlecote, in 1547.

In common with the rich landowners of his time, Sir Thomas Lucy was a patron of architecture and the arts, and in no way the inferior of his contemporaries, as the beautiful hall of Charlecote, built by him, sufficiently proves. Six years after coming into his inheritance he demolished the old mansion and erected that we now see. The house of Lucy had never before lived in such state as that he enjoyed. In 1565 he received the honour of knighthood, and first sat in Parliament in 1571: in all these and succeeding years filling the usual local magisterial offices of a personage of his station. He is said to have entertained Queen Elizabeth on her progress to Kenilworth, in 1572, and the entrance porch to the front of the house is said to have been added for the occasion; a tradition that may well be true, for it is a more elaborate structure than the surrounding composition. It is two storeys in height, and in stone: the frontage in general being chiefly of brick. It is also obviously an addition, and is not exactly central. The building of it converted the ground plan into the semblance of a capital E, which was the courtly way among architects and their patrons of paying a compliment to Queen Elizabeth. Is it not thus sufficiently clear that in the building of his new mansion Sir Thomas had overlooked this customary compliment and that he hurriedly added it, over against the Queen’s coming? The prominence of the sculptured royal arms over the doorway, with the initials “E.R.,” lend support to this view.

This very magnificent person might well “think himself great,” for he was the most considerable landowner in the district, and everywhere deferred to. Besides providing himself with a stately new residence he paid great attention to preserving game on his various estates, and is found in March 1585, about the time of Shakespeare’s alleged poaching exploit, in charge of a Bill in Parliament for its better preservation in the parks of England, which he would appear to have considered not sufficiently protected by the law of some twenty-three years earlier, prescribing three months’ imprisonment for deer-stealing and a fine of three times the damage done.

Here, then, you have a portraiture of that personage whom Shakespeare so grossly travestied. Nor did that impudent ballad suffice to clear the score, for he returned to him in later years, and in the Second Part of Henry the Fourth we find “Justice Shallow” at his country house in Gloucestershire, entertaining Sir John Falstaff, and bragging of what a gay dog and a wild fellow he was in his young days in London; “every third word a lie.” The “old pike” was, says Falstaff, “like a man made after supper with a cheese-paring,” a figure of fun.

“Old pike” gives the key to Shakespeare’s meaning, and must at the time have been well understood locally to refer to the luces, or pike, in the Lucy arms; but, growing bolder, he much more fully, offensively, and unmistakably caricatures Sir Thomas Lucy under the same name of “Justice Shallow” in the Merry Wives of Windsor. The play indeed most prominently opens with him represented as having come up to Windsor from Gloucestershire for the purpose of laying an information before the Star Chamber against Sir John Falstaff for having killed his deer—

Shallow. Sir Hugh, persuade me not. I will make a Star-chamber matter of it—if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.

Slender. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram.

Shallow. Ay, Cousin Slender, and cust-alorum.

Slender. Ay and ratalorum, too; and a gentleman born, master parson, who writes himself, armigero, in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, armigero.

Shallow. Ay, that we do, and have done any time these three hundred years.

Slender. All his successors, gone before him, have done’t; and all his ancestors, that come after him, may; they may give the dozen white laces in their coat.

Shallow. It is an old coat.

Evans. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well; it agrees well, passant; it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.

Another passage a little later contains an allusion which we try in vain to interpret. What was the story of the keeper’s daughter? There is more in this, we may say, than meets the eye. Who knows how the deer-stalking may have been complicated by some incident of a more tender and romantic nature? Keeper’s daughters are notoriously comely and buxom, and imagination may frame a pretty story out of this quaint disclaimer of Falstaff’s—

Falstaff. How, Master Shallow, you’ll complain of me to the king?

Shallow. Knight, you have beaten my men, killed my deer, and broke open my lodge.

Falstaff. But not kissed your keeper’s daughter?

Shallow. Tut, a pin! this shall be answered.

Falstaff. I will answer it straight.—I have done all this.—That is now answered.

Shallow. The Council shall know this.

Falstaff. ’Twere better for you, if it were known in counsel: you’ll he laughed at.

Falstaff’s last remark is a play upon the words “Council,” a more or less public body, and “counsel,” private talk. That is to say Shallow will be a fool, and laughed at if he takes so trivial an affair before so weighty a tribunal as the Star Chamber, and would be better advised to seek his friends’ counsel about the affair.

Perhaps the “keeper’s daughter” who was not kissed, was, after all, not kissable, or perhaps the allusion really was an insinuation that Sir Thomas Lucy himself kissed his keeper’s daughter. It was in any event obviously a gibe perfectly easy of comprehension at the time in Stratford and round about, and enshrines some forgotten scandalous gossip.

These are passages that the Baconians boggle at. They cannot be explained away by any ingenuity, and thus form a convincing stand-by for those hardened and unrepentant folk who still believe that Shakespeare wrote his own plays. The play upon the name of Lucy and the luces in the family arms is too direct to be mistaken. Master Shallow is a Justice of the Peace in Gloucestershire, and Sir Thomas Lucy was an ornament of the Bench both in that shire and in Warwickshire. The “dozen white louses,” instead of the three which would match with the number of luces in the Lucy arms, were no doubt a variant introduced by the dramatist in order to keep himself clear of those very Star Chamber proceedings with which Sir John Falstaff was threatened. One might not in those times defame with impunity a man’s coat of arms.

A further objection to the Baconian authorship, if necessary, is to be found in the extreme unlikeliness of Bacon, who himself was armigerous, casting such patent ridicule upon the heraldic achievement of one with whom he had no quarrel. In the case of Shakespeare, the animus is abundantly evident.

The way to Charlecote is over the Clopton Bridge and to the left. It is the Kineton road. Past Tiddington the way goes level, along the beautiful roads shaded by the luxuriant hedgerow timber we expect in these parts; and presently, when we have begun impatiently to wonder when Charlecote will come into view, a lodge and entrance are seen on the left side of the highway.

Lucy Shield of Arms

We hear much of the passing shows of this world, but we have often to marvel at their permanence. The kith and kin of Shakespeare are all gone long ago, but here at Charlecote are still Lucys. There have been Lucys of Charlecote since 1216, and their “old coat” is still displayed over this entrance to the park. They are not, it is true, of the old unmixed blood, and the present family own the name only by adoption, the direct line having been broken in 1786, when a second cousin, the Rev. John Hammond, inherited the property and assumed the name of Lucy. The present owner also, Mr. Fairfax-Lucy, assumed the name on marrying one of the two daughters of Mr. Henry Spenser Lucy, who died in 1890.

The “Tumble-Down Stile,” CharlecoteThere are but three luces, or pikes, in the old coat of the Charlecote Lucys. They are displayed, in herald’s language, thus: “gules, semÉe of crosses crosslet, three luces hauriant argent;” that is to say, on a red ground sown with silver crosses-crosslet, three silver pike in an upright position, rising to take breath. The family motto is “By truth and diligence.” On old deeds sealed with the Lucy seal the three pike are shown intertwined.

The park, well-wooded, but only about 250 acres in extent, presents a fine picture viewed from these gates, but the mansion is not seen; the chief approach being a considerable distance along the main road, and thence along a public by-road to the village of Charlecote. Crossing a bridge over the Wellesbourne stream which joins the Avon in the park, the locally celebrated “Tumble-down Stile” is immediately on the right hand. This is a wooden fence not by its appearance to be distinguished above any other fence of wood, but so contrived that the stranger unversed in its trick, and seeking to climb over it to the footpath beyond, suddenly finds one end collapsing and himself most likely on the ground. This contrivance, generally understood to have been a freak of the late Mr. Henry Spenser Lucy, keeps the village of Charlecote supplied with a stock of elementary humour all the year round, and is invariably pointed out by fly-men driving visitors from Stratford. Not every one who comes to Shakespeare Land comes with the capacity for fully understanding and being interested in its literary and historic features, but all have the comprehension of this within their reach.

There, on the left, stretches the woodland park, entered either by a rough five-barred rustic gate, or by the imposing modern ornamental gates flanked by clumsy sculptured effigies of boars squatting on their rumps. Entering by the unpretending gate first named, one comes beneath the trees of a noble avenue to the beautiful gatehouse standing in advance of the hall and giving admission to a courtyard filled with the geometrical patterns of a formal garden. The wild verdure of the park reigns here, outside that enclosure, and trim neatness forms the note within; a contrast greatly loved in those times when Charlecote was planned. It was to the planning of country mansions exactly what the antithetic manner is to literature: both give the spice of sharp contrast.

There are to this day deer couching in the bracken of the park, and they come picturesquely up to the gatehouse and peer within. There are also strange piebald sheep, with long fat tails, very curious to look upon. I do not know what breed they are, or whence they come, for the reply received to an inquiry elicited this strange answer from a typical Warwickshire boy: “Thaay be Spanish sheep from Scotland.” Possibly some of those who read these pages may recognise the kind; but if they came from Spain to Charlecote by way of Scotland they must have been brought somewhat out of their way.

The gatehouse, so strikingly set in advance of the mansion, is the most truly picturesque feature. Its red brick and stone have not been restored, and wear all those signs of age which have been largely smoothed out and obliterated from the residence. Charlecote is not what is known as a “show house.” It is not one of those stately mansions which are open to be viewed at stated times; and strangers are admitted only occasionally and by special grace. Long bygone generations of Lucys hang in portraitures by famous masters upon the walls of the great hall, the library, and the drawing-room; and the library contains a copy of the Merry Wives of Windsor, published in 1619; an edition which does not contain the opening scene with Mr. Justice Shallow.

The Gatehouse, Charlecote

Charlecote church was entirely rebuilt in 1852. Surviving views of the former church prove it to have been a small, mean building, unworthy of housing the fine tombs of the Lucys; and so we need not regret the rebuilding, except to be sorry it was not deferred a few years longer, until the efflorescent would-be Gothic of that period had abated. You who gaze upon the exterior of Charlecote can have not the least doubt about the enthusiasm of the designer, who seems to have been even more Gothic than the architects of the Middle Ages. It is a small church he has designed, but the exterior is overloaded with ornament; and if the building be indeed small, the gargoyles are big enough for a cathedral, while the interior has a much-more-than Middle Ages obscurity. It is a church of nave without aisles, and the nave has the unusual feature of being vaulted in stone. It is dark even on a summer day. The architect was also the designer of Bodelwyddan church, in North Wales.

North of the chancel, in a very twilight chapel, are the three ornate tombs of the Lucys. The first of these is of that Sir Thomas who was Shakespeare’s “Justice Shallow.” It is on the right hand. He lies there, in armoured effigy, beside his wife Joyce, who pre-deceased him in 1595. He survived until 1600. His bearded face has good features, and he certainly does not in any way look the part of Shallow. Nor does the noble tribute to his wife, inscribed above the monument, proclaim him other than a noble and modest knight—

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, Esquire, who departed out of this wretched world to her Heavenly Kingdom the 10th day of February, in the year of our Lord God, 1595, of her age lx. and iii. All the time of her lyfe, a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected in any crime or vice; in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithful and true; in friendship most constant. To what was in trust committed to her most secret. In wisdom excelling; in governing of her house, and bringing up of youth in the fear of God, that did converse with her most rare and singular; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless 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 by 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.

In front of the monument are little kneeling effigies of Thomas and Anne, the only son and daughter of this pair. On the left is the much more elaborate monument of Sir Thomas the Second, who died, aged fifty-four, in 1605, only five years later than his father. It is a gorgeous Renaissance affair of coloured marbles. This Sir Thomas lies in effigy alone, his first wife having no part or lot in the monument; the black-vestured and black-hooded kneeling effigy of Constance, his second, mounting guard in front in a very determined fashion. Her back is towards you in entering the chapel, and a very startling creature she is. An amazing line of little effigies of their children, each represented kneeling on his or her little hassock, decorates the front of the monument. There are six sons and eight daughters, earnestly praying.

Charlecote

The third and last tomb is that of yet another Sir Thomas, third son and successor of the last named. He was killed by a fall from his horse in 1640. He is sculptured beautifully in white marble, and is represented reclining on his elbow. He bears a strong resemblance to Charles the First. Beneath is the equally fine effigy of his wife Alice—a lovely work. She is wearing a chain like that of an Order, with a very large and prominent locket, or badge, about the size of an egg, which is, however, quite plain. The significance of it has been wholly lost. On either side of Sir Thomas are panels sculptured in relief: on the left a representation of him galloping on horseback, and on the right shelves of classic authors, possibly to indicate that he was a man of culture and refinement. This beautiful monument was executed in Rome, by Bernini, to the order of Lady Lucy, at a cost of 1500 guineas.

The exterior of this modern church is rapidly weathering, and the over-rich carving of it is being rigorously searched by rains, frosts and thaws. It will be better for sloughing off these florid adornments.