CHAPTER XII

Charlecote.

ToCharlecote, 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 ofthree 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 stateWe 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 thatsæva 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, SirThomas, 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 ofHenry the Fourthwe 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 theMerry Wives of Windsor. The play indeed most prominently opens with him represented as having come up to Windsorfrom 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, andcoram.Shallow. Ay, Cousin Slender, andcust-alorum.Slender. Ay andratalorum, 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.

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, andcoram.

Shallow. Ay, Cousin Slender, andcust-alorum.

Slender. Ay andratalorum, 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. 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 Tiddingtonthe 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,” Charlecote

There 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 theirrumps. 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 copyof theMerry 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 indeedsmall, 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.

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. ThisSir 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 resemblanceto 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.

Shakespeare the countryman.

Wehave abundant evidence of Shakespeare the countryman in his works, and of the Warwickshire man some evidences, too. In the splendid speech of the Duke of Burgundy, inHenry the Fifth, he makes the Frenchman talk with an appreciation of agricultural disaster which only an English farmer, and a Warwickshire or Gloucestershire farmer, too, could show. In the miseries of France, worsted by war, the Duke speaks thus—

“Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,Unprunèd dies: her hedges even-pleach’d,Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,Put forth disorder’d twigs: her fallow leasThe darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,Doth root upon; while that the coulter rustsThat should deracinate such savagery:The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forthThe freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,Conceives by idleness; and nothing teemsBut hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,Losing both beauty and utility.”

Bacon would not have made a Frenchman speak with so English a tongue, in the way of the Midlands, nor could he if he would, for he knew no more than the real Burgundy could have known, those details of agricultural life; and he certainly could not have identified a “kecksie,” or a “keck,” as the Warwickshire children still call the hemlock, of whose dried stems they make whistles.

“Easy it is of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know,” says Demetrius, inTitus Andronicus. That ancient Roman is made to talk like any Warwickshire agricultural labourer who takes his lunch in the hedgerow, off a “shive o’ bread, a bit o’ cheese or baacon and a drap o’ summit; maybe a tot o’ cider or maybe a mug of ale.” After which he will “shog off” to work again; using in that local word “shog” the expression Shakespeare places in the mouth of Nym, inHenry the Fifth. At the close of the day he will be “forewearied,” as King John describes himself.

In his plays Shakespeare follows the year all round the calendar and touches every season with magic. You feel convinced, from the sympathy, the joyousness, and the intimate touches, of his country scenes that he was a rustic at heart, and that he must have longed, during those many years when he was winning success in London, to return not only to his native place—to which the heart of every one turns fondly—but to the meadows, the cornfields, the hills and dales and the wild flowers around the town of Stratford-on-Avon. There again, when spring was come, to hear “the sweet bird’s note,” whether it were “the throstle with his note so true,” “the ousel cock so black of hue, with orange tawny bill,” “the wren with little quill;”

“The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,The plain-song cuckoo gray,”

or better still the mad joyous outbursts of the skylarks’ songs (“And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks”) in those wide horizons in May: these, you are certain, were Shakespeare’s ideals.

Of all the seasons, although he writes sympathetically of every one, Shakespeare best loved the spring. He is not exceptional in that, for it is the season of hopeand promise, when the risen sap in the trees makes the leaves unfold and the buds unsheath their beauties, when beasts and birds respond to the climatic change and hibernating small creatures and insects awake from their long sleep; and no less than the trees and plants, the animals and insects, all mankind finds a renewal of life.

“It was a lover and his lass,With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino,That o’er the green cornfield did passIn the spring-time, the only merry ring-time,When birds do sing, hey ding-a-dingSweet lovers love the spring.”

Thus the pages sung in the Forest of Arden; and Shakespeare, be sure, put something of himself into the character of Autolycus the pedlar, who after all was a man of better observation, judging by his song, than rogues of his sort commonly be—

“When daffodils begin to peer,—With hey! the doxy over the dale,—Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,—With hey! the sweet birds, O how they sing!—Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.The lark that tirra-lirra chants,—With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay:—Are summer songs for me and my aunts,While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

“When daffodils begin to peer,—With hey! the doxy over the dale,—Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,—With hey! the sweet birds, O how they sing!—Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark that tirra-lirra chants,—With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay:—Are summer songs for me and my aunts,While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

Shakespeare, we like to think, had the tenderest feeling for those same daffodils with which Autolycus begins his song; for in lines that are among the most beautiful he ever wrote, he makes Perdita speak of—

“Daffodils,That come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty.”

Here we find, not for once only, Shakespeare and that other sweet singer, Herrick, curiously in sympathy—

“Sweet daffodils, we weep to seeYou haste away so soon.”

He does not care so ardently for the rose, although he seems, rather indifferently it is true, to admit that it is the queen of flowers. But it delays until summer is upon us. It does not dare with the daffodil.

He returns again and again to the more idyllic simple flowers of nature that the gardener takes no account of. He paints the cowslips in a few words of close observation. They are Queen Mab’s pensioners—

“The cowslips tall her pensioners be;In their gold coats spots you see;Those be rubies, fairy favours,In those freckles live their savours.”

And in every cowslip’s ear the fairy hangs a pearl, from her harvest of dew-drops.

Shakespeare’s Warwickshire was rich—and it is so still, although it is a very much more enclosed countryside than in his day—in wild-flowers; the gillyflower, the wallflower that loves the nooks and crannies of ruined walls as much as does the jackdaw; the candy-tuft, the foxglove that still stands like a tall floral sentinel in many a hedgerow around Snitterfield; with many another.

“Here’s flowers for you;Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun.”

The “flowers,” however, mentioned in that quotation are, with one exception, herbs. Such as they grace and make fragrant the old gardens of many a cottage the casual tourist never sees. There they have grown for generations, in great clumps and beds; not in meagre and formal patches, as in some “Shakespearean gardens”that could be named. In the byways, in short, where things are not consciously on show, everything is, paradoxically enough, better worth seeing. There the homely virtues of the people are better displayed; the flowers are brighter and their scent sweeter; and there the sun is more mellow. In the byways old mossy walls still stand, russet brown and sere in drought, as though the moss were a dead thing, but green again so soon as ever the rain comes; and old roofs bear the fleshy house-leek in great patches, as though they had burst into some strange vegetable elephantiasis. That is Warwickshire as it is off the beaten track, yonder, at the horizon, where the sky meets the earth: a vague direction, I fancy, but sufficient. We must not divulge all things.

The ragged-robin that blooms later in every hedge; the “crow-flower” as Shakespeare names it; the “long purple,” otherwise the wild arum; pansies—“that’s for thoughts”—some call them “love-in-idleness”; all figure inHamlet, where you find a good deal of old country folklore in Ophelia’s talk. “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance”; fennel and columbines: “there’s rue for you; and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays;—you may wear your rue with a difference.”

There is sometimes an almost farmer-like practical philosophy underlying his observation, as where Biron says, inLove’s Labour’s Lost: “Allons allons! sow’d cockle reap’d no corn”; and inKing Lear, in the reference to—

“Darnel, and all the idle weeds that growIn our sustaining corn.”

The corn-cockle is of course better known as the “cornflower,” whose beautiful blue is so contrasting a colourwith the scarlet of the poppies, that equally fail to win the farmer’s admiration.

But the greater the study we give to Shakespeare and his treatment of flowers, the more evident it becomes that his sympathies were all with the earlier, springtime blossoms that dare, not quite with the daffodils, but soon after the roaring ides of March are overpast. Thus, he makes Perdita resume, with—

“Violets dim,But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyesOr Cytherea’s breath; pale primrosesThat die unmarried ere they can beholdBright Phœbus in his strength.”

The “daisies pied,” the “lady-smocks all silver-white,” that is to say, the white arabis which the Warwickshire children of to-day call “smell-smocks,” and the “cuckoo buds of yellow hue,” otherwise the buttercups, out of which the cuckoo is in old folklore supposed to drink, he tells us, all “paint the meadows with delight.” He could never have written those lines with care and thought and in cold blood: he must have seen those meadows with all the delight he expresses, and the words themselves must needs have been penned with enthusiasm. This is a thesis easily susceptible of proof. The lovely cuckoo-song at the close ofLove’s Labour’s Lost, which with a charm unmatched tells us of those flower-spangled meads, has no bearing upon the action of the play: it is written in sheer enjoyment, and it is in the same spirit that his other allusions to the fields and hedgerows and woodlands, the “bosky acres” and the “unshrubbed down,” are conceived. Ariel, that tricksy sprite ofThe Tempest, is a true countryman’s fancy, as clearly to be seen in the lines—

“Where the bee sucks, there suck I,In a cowslip’s bell I lie;There I couch when owls do cry,On the bat’s back I do fly.”

Here, as often elsewhere, the dramatist and the poet are at odds. Shakespeare the actor-playwright, with every necessity of the stage—its entrances and exits, and the imperative need for the action of the play to be maintained—halts the story so that the other Shakespeare, the idyllic poet, the lover of nature, shall picture some scene for which he cares everything, but which to the Greeks—for Greeks here read the London playgoers of his time—must have meant foolishness.

Such an instance, among many, is Oberon’s speech to Puck, inMidsummer Night’s Dream—

“I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine,With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:There sleeps Titania.”

For these lines and such as these Shakespeare risked the brickbats, the cat-calls and the obloquy that awaited the dramatist whose action dragged. There is no excuse for them—except that of their beauty, and that to the groundlings was less than nothing.

That bank whereon the wild-thyme grew must have been, I like to think, somewhere in The Dingles, a curious spot just north-east of Stratford, to the left of the Warwick road, as you go up to Welcombe. I think there are no “dingles” anywhere nearer London than the midlands; none in name, although there may be many in fact. By a “dingle” in the midlands a deep narrow vale, or natural gully is meant. The word is especially well known in Shropshire and the Welsh borders, where such features, between the enfolding hills, are plentiful. Here The Dingles are abrupt and deeply winding gullies, breaking away from the red earth of the Welcombe uplands: a very tumbled and unspoiled spot. Elms look down from the crest ofthem, and ancient thorn-trees line their sides. It seems quite a sure and certain thing that Shakespeare when a boy knew this spot well and frequented it with the other Stratford boys of his age; catching, perhaps the “earth-delving conies,” and I am afraid—for all boys are cruel except those in the Sunday-school books, and they are creatures in the nature of sucking Galahads imagined by maiden aunts—I am afraid, I say, also birds’-nesting.

The Dingles, doubtless, formed in Shakespeare’s mind the site of Titania’s bower. Perhaps you may find it yourself, if you seek there, somewhere about midsummer midnight, in the full of the moon, when possibly her obedient fairies will be as kind and courteous as of old to that gentleman who has the good fortune to discover the magic spot, and may—

“Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.”

If these adventures do befall you, tell no one; for you will not find belief, even in this same Shakespeare land.

It is, however, much more likely that your walk will be solitary, and that for the apricots and grapes you will have to wait until you have returned to your hotel in the town.

The last two years of Shakespeare’s life were concerned with a heated local question: none other than that of the proposed enclosure of the Welcombe common fields, including The Dingles, by William Combe who had by the death of his father become squire of Welcombe and had at once entered into an agreement with the lord of the manor and other landholders to enclose the land. The corporation and townsfolk of Stratford were bitterly opposed to this encroachment. Shakespeare’s interest in the matter appears to have been only thatof an owner of tithes in these fields, and his sympathies were clearly against any such extension of private rights. An entry under date of September 1615 among others in the still-existing manuscript diary of Thomas Greene, then clerk to the corporation, who calls Shakespeare his cousin, is to the effect that Shakespeare told J. Greene (brother of the town clerk) that he—Shakespeare—“was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe.” The ambiguous and ungrammatical wording of Greene’s diary often renders his meaning obscure and has caused a great conflict of opinion about Shakespeare’s attitude in this affair, some reading it as in favour of the enclosure. It really appears to have been one of benevolent neutrality, and could scarcely have been otherwise. He himself was a neighbouring landowner, and friendly with others, but sentimentally, he looked with aversion upon those proposed doings. He “was not able to bear” the enclosure of the place he had roamed when a boy, but that did not give him the right to intervene at law. The corporation went to law with Combe and his fellows and won their case, but by that time Shakespeare had passed from these transient scenes. To this day The Dingles is common land.

The ‘Eight Villages’—‘Piping’ Pebworth and ‘Dancing’ Marston.

Noone who has ever sojourned in Shakespeare land can remain in ignorance of what are the “Eight Villages.” The older rhymes upon them are printed upon picture-postcards, and on fancy chinaware, and reprinted in every local guide-book; and now I propose to repeat them, not only for their own sake and for the alleged Shakespearean authorship, but because the pilgrimage of those villages offers many points of interest. One need offer no excuse for this descriptive chapter, because although the rhymes themselves are trite, the places are by no means so well known; your average Shakespeare Country tourist being rarely so enterprising as he is commonly—and quite erroneously—supposed to be. Stratford-on-Avon, Evesham, Warwick, Kenilworth and Coventry, with their comfortable hotels, furnish forth the average pilgrim. But if you are to know Shakespeare land intimately, and if you would come into near touch with the poet and know him at closest quarters, you must linger in the villages that in every circumstance of picturesqueness are dotted about the valley of the Avon. There, as freshly as ever, when spring has not waned too far into summer, the

“Daisies pied and violets blue,And ladysmocks all silver-white,And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,Do paint the meadows with delight.”

“Shakespeare is Bacon,” dogmatically asserts theancient hyphenated baronet who in these latter days posts pamphlets broadcast (incidentally favouring me with one, uninvited) seeking to dethrone our sovereign bard. Well, let who will cherish the impious opinion; but all the countryside around Stratford disproves it; the trees, the fields, the wild flowers, the rustic talk, which Bacon could never have known, that are all faithfully mirrored in the plays.

But let us to the Eight Villages, whose fame rests upon a legend of olden drinking-bouts and of competitions between different towns and villages, to decide whose men could drink the most liquor. In Shakespeare’s time, it seems, Bidford held the championship of all this countryside, and had two valiant coteries of tipplers who drank not only for their own personal gratification, but went beyond that and inconvenienced themselves for the honour and glory of their native place. Further than this, local patriotism cannot go. So famous were the doings of the Topers and the Sippers of this spot that it became familiarly known as “Drunken” Bidford; an unfortunate adjective, for it was bestowed not by any means because those convivial clubmen could not carry their liquor like men, but was intended as a direct tribute of admiration to their capacity for it. In short, such was their prowess that they went forth, conquering and to conquer, in all the surrounding villages. On an historic occasion the daring fellows of Stratford went forth and challenged the Bidford men on their own ground, Shakespeare traditionally among them. The Topers were not at home; they had gone to drink Evesham dry; but the Sippers held the fort and duly maintained the honour of Bidford. At the “Falcon” inn the contest was waged, and the Stratford men were ignominiously worsted, drawing off from the stricken field while yet there remained somewith full command of their legs, and ability to carry away those of their number who had wholly succumbed. In this sort they went the homeward way towards Stratford, which is more than six miles distant, but they had proceeded no further than three-quarters of a mile when they sank down by the roadside and slept there the night, under a large crab-apple tree. When morning dawned—when night’s candles were burned out and jocund day stood tiptoe on the meadows—they arose refreshed, the majority eager to return to Bidford and try another bout; but Shakespeare refused. He had had enough of it. He had drunk with—

“Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,Haunted Hillborough, Hungry Grafton,Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford.”

Such is the legend. There are those who believe it, and there are again those who do not. The quatrain does not seem to fit in with the story, and indeed bears evidence of being one of those injurious rhymes respecting neighbouring and rival villages fairly common throughout England, often reflecting severely, not only upon the characteristics of those places, but also upon the moral character of their inhabitants. Indeed, the present rhymes are mildness itself compared with some, with which these pure pages shall not be sullied. But although we may not place much faith in the Shakespearean ascription, those go, surely, too far who refuse to believe Shakespeare capable of taking part in one of these old-time drinking-bouts. Shakespeare, we are nowadays told, could not have descended to such conduct; but in holding such a view we judge the poet and the times in which he lived by the standards of our own age; a very gross fallacy indeed. It is not, nowadays, “respectable” for any one, no matter the heightor the obscurity of his status, to drink more than enough; but he who in those times shirked his drink was accounted a very sorry fellow. What says Sir Toby Belch, inTwelfth Night? “He is a coward and a coystril that will not drink till his brains turn o’ the toe like a parish top.” To this day, in the banqueting-room of Haddon Hall, we may see what the jovial souls who were contemporary with Shakespeare did to the man who could not or would not finish his tankard. There is an ingenious handcuff in the panelling of that apartment in which the wrist of such an one was secured, and down his sleeve the drink he had declined was poured. Nay, only a hundred and fifty years ago, the hospitable hosts and the best of good fellows were those to whom it was a point of honour to see that their guests were made, in the modern police phrase, “drunk and incapable,” so that they had to be carried up to bed. Mr. Pitt did not commonly get much “forrarder” on three bottles of port, and generally made his best speeches in the House when, having generously exceeded that allowance, he was quite drunk. Mr. Fox was a worthy fellow to him. Nobody thought the worse of them—in fact, rather the better—for it. To be drunk was the mark of a gentleman; to be excessively drunk—the very apogee of inebriety—was to be “as drunk as a lord”; no man could do more.

The villages whose bygone outstanding features are thus rhythmically celebrated are scattered to the west and south-west of Stratford-on-Avon, between six and eight miles distant; the two first-named in that widespreading level which stretches almost uninterruptedly between that town and Evesham. Pebworth, whose name would seem to enshrine the personal name of some Saxon landowner—“Pebba’s weorth”—is quite exceptionally placed on a steep and sudden hill that rises ratherdramatically from the level champaign.

Piping Pebworth

There is more than a thought too much of new building and of corrugated tin roofing about the Pebworth of to-day, and when I came up along the village street a steam-roller was engaged in compacting the macadam of the roadway. I thought sadly that it was not at all Shakespearean; yet, you know, had the roads been of your true Shakespearean early seventeenth-century sort, one would not have penetrated to these scenes with a bicycle at all. No one pipes nowadays at Pebworth; there is not even a performer on the penny whistle to sound a note, in evidence of good faith. It is a pretty enough village, but not remarkably so, and offers the illustrator the smallest of chances, for the church which crowns the hill-top is so encircled with trees that only the upper part of its tower is visible. The church, in common with nearly all the village churches within the Shakespeareradius, is locked, doubtless with a view to extracting a sixpence from the amiable tourist. Old tombstones to a Shackel, Shekel or Shackle family—the name is spelled in many ways—abound here.

Long Marston lies in the midst of this pleasant, level country, six miles south-west of Stratford-on-Avon, and on a yet somewhat secluded road; its old-time retirement that recommended it to the advisers of the fugitive Charles the Second, when seeking a way for him to escape from the country after the defeat of his hopes at the Battle of Worcester, September 3rd, 1651, being little changed. Marston is the only village I have ever known which owns three adjectives to its name. “Long” Marston is the better known of them; “Dancing” Marston is another, and “Dry” Marston—or “Marston Sicca,” as the pedantic old topographers of some two centuries ago styled it forms the third. Whatever fitness may once have attached to the sobriquet of “Dancing” has long since disappeared, nor are the traditions of its olden morris-dancers one whit more marked than those of any other village. In the days when Marston danced, the neighbouring villages footed it with equally light heart and light heels, so far as we can tell. “Dry” Marston, too, forms something of a puzzle to the observer, who notes not only that it is low-lying and that the little Dorsington Brook meanders close at hand on the map, in company with other rills, but also observes that a stone-paved causeway extends for a considerable distance along the road at the northern end of the village; evidently provided against flooded and muddy ways. Finally, if “Marston” does not derive from “marshtown,” then there is nothing at all in derivatives. We are thus reduced to the better-known name, “Long” Marston.

“Dancing Marston”

Doubtless the stranger expects to find a considerable village, with a long-drawn street of cottages; but Marston is not in the least like that. Instead, you find ancient half-timbered and thatched cottages, scattered singly, or in groups of two or three, fronting upon the level road, each situated in its large garden, where it seems as much a product of the soil as the apples and pears, or the more homely cabbages, beans, and potatoes, and appears almost to have grown there, equally with them. A branch line of the Great Western Railway, it is true, runs by, with a station, but at Long Marston station the world goes easily and leisurely; sparrows chirp in the waiting-room and rabbits sport along the line; while such work as goes on in the goods-yard is punctuated by yawns and illuminative anecdotes. All this by way of praising these old-world surroundings.

Among the cottages is an older whitewashed group, set back from the road. In pre-Reformation times this was the Priest’s House. Across the way stands the pretty little fourteenth-century church, with little of interest within, but possessing a fine timbered north porch of the same period, the timbering at this present time of writing being again exposed to view after having been covered up with plaster for more than a century.

It was on the evening of September 10th, the seventh day after the disastrous Battle of Worcester, that King Charles and his two companions, Mr. Lassels and Jane Lane, came to Long Marston and found shelter at the house of Mr. John Tomes. The King was in the character of “Will Jackson,” servant of Mistress Jane Lane; in that capacity riding horseback in front of her, while she rode pillion behind him. We may readily picture the King, in his servant’s disguise, kept in his proper place in the kitchen, while Lassels and Jane Lane were entertained by the master of the house in the best parlour. Blount, in hisBoscobel, published in 1660, theyear of the Restoration, illuminates this historic incident with an anecdote that gives the brief sojourn at Long Marston as piquant and homely a savour as that of King Alfred’s burning the cakes in the cottage where he was in hiding, away down in the Somersetshire Isle of Athelney, nearly eight hundred years before the troubles of the Stuarts were heard of. Supper was being prepared for Mr. Tomes’ guests, and the cook asked “Will Jackson” to wind up the roasting-jack. “Will Jackson,” says Blount, “was obedient, and attempted it, but hit not the right way, which made the maid in some passion ask, ‘What countryman are you, that you know not how to wind up a jack?’ To which Charles, who was ever blessed with that happy quality the French callesprit, for which we have no exactly corresponding word, replied, ‘I am a poor tenant’s son of Colonel Lane, in Staffordshire; we seldom have roast meat, and when we have, we don’t make use of a jack.’”

Every one in Long Marston can point out “King’s Lodge,” as this historic house is now known. Somewhat altered, externally and internally, but still in possession of descendants of the John Tomes who sheltered the King after Worcester Fight, it still retains the famous roasting-jack, now carefully preserved in a glass-case, in the room that was in those times a kitchen, and later became a cider cellar, and is now the dining-room.

The Tomes family—who pronounce their name “Tombs,” and have many kinsfolk who also spell it in that fashion—have a curious and dismal pictorial pun upon their ancient patronymic, by way of coat of arms. It represents three white altar-tombs on a green ground; to speak in the language of heraldry: Vert, three tombstones argent.

Dining Room, Formerly the Kitchen, King’s Lodge

John Tomes suffered for his loyalty. Some of his lands were sequestrated and he was obliged to leave the country; nor did the Royal favour subsequently shown his family advantage them very greatly; the liberty granted them of hunting, hawking and fishing from Long Marston to Crab’s Cross, in the neighbourhood of Redditch, being, it may well be supposed, of little value.

Although, as already noted, changes have been made at “King’s Lodge,” one may yet, in the quaint dining-room which was then the kitchen, sit in the Ingle-nook of the great fireplace, in which it may be supposed “Will Jackson,” having doubtless kissed the cook—if indeed, she were a kissable cook—and thus made amends for his unhandiness with the roasting-jack, was afterwards allowed a seat.

The ‘Eight Villages’ (concluded).

‘Haunted’ Hillborough, ‘Hungry’ Grafton,

‘Dodging’ Exhall, ‘Papist’ Wixford,

‘Beggarly’ Broom, and ‘Drunken’ Bidford.

“HauntedHillborough,” which comes next in order in this rhymed survey, is geographically remote from Long Marston, not so much in mere mileage, for it is not quite three miles distant, measured in a straight line, but it is situated on the other, and Warwickshire, side of the Avon, at a point where the river is not bridged. In short, the traveller from Long Marston to Hillborough will scarcely perform the journey under six miles, going by way of Dorsington and Barton, always along crooked roads, and thence through Bidford. Dorsington is an entirely pretty and extremely small village with a church noticeable only for the whimsical smallness of its red-brick Georgian tower. Why, in a lesser-known local rhyme, which does not find celebrity upon postcards and fancy articles at Stratford-on-Avon, Dorsington should be known as “Daft” is more than I can say; unless it be that the facile alliteration is irresistible. There are reasons sufficient for this lack of popularity, in the lines in which Dorsington’s name occurs—

“Daft Dorsington, Lousy Luddington,Welford for witches, Hinton for bitches,An’ Weston at th’ end of th’ ’orld.”

Barton, through which we come into Bidford, is, as might perhaps be suspected from its name, merely arustic hamlet, for “barton” is but the old English word for a cow-byre or a barn. It is that “Burton Heath” mentioned in theTaming of the Shrew, of which Christopher Sly, “old Sly’s son,” “by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker,” was a native.

From Barton we cross the Avon into Bidford over an ancient bridge of eight arches built in 1482 by the brethren of Alcester priory to replace the ford by which travellers along the Ryknield Street had up to that time crossed the river. The eight arches of Bidford achieve the rather difficult feat of being each of a different shape and size, and the heavy stonework itself has been extensively patched with brick. Here the Avon is encumbered with eyots and rushes, very destructive to the navigation, but affording very useful foregrounds for the illustrator.

Bidford is wholly on the further, or Warwickshire, side of the river, and is a rather urban-looking place of one very long and narrow street. It has a population of over a thousand, and thus, I believe, comes under the official definition of a “populous place,” whose inns and public-houses are permitted to remain open until 11 p.m., which may or may not be a consideration here. The inns of Bidford are numerous, but they do not appear to enjoy their former prosperity. I adventured into one of them one thirsty summer day, for the purpose of sampling some of the “perry” advertised for sale within. There was no joy in the sour sorry stuff it proved to be. You get quite a quantity of it for three-halfpence; but it is odds against your drinking half of it. The landlady dolefully spoke of the state of trade. She had not taken half-a-crown that day. Truly, the glories of Bidford have departed!

“Drunken Bidford”

The old “Falcon” inn, an inn no longer, nor for many years past, stands in the midst of this very considerable village, close by the parish church, whose odd and not beautiful tower forms a prominent object in the view from the bridge. It is not in the least worth while to enter that church, for it has been almost wholly rebuilt. The nave has a ceiling, and there are deal doors, painted and grained to resemble oak. The chancel, reconstructed in the more florid and unrestrained period of the Gothic revival, is a lamentable specimen of architectural zeal not according to discretion.

The “Falcon,” Bidford

It is nearly a century since the “Falcon” ceased to be an inn. It then became a workhouse, and thus many a boozy old reprobate whose courses at the “Falcon” had brought him to poverty ended his days under the same roof. Cynic Fortune, turned moralist and temperance lecturer, surely was never in a more saturnine humour!

“Haunted Hillborough”

The old sign of the inn eventually found its way to Shakespeare’s birthplace. It pictured a golden falcon on a red ground, and bore additionally the arms of the Skipwith family, the chief landowners in Bidford. With the sign went an old chair in which Shakespeare is traditionally said to have sat. To-day the “Falcon” is let in tenements, and also houses the village reading-room and library. The building deserves a better fate, for, as will be noted from the accompanying illustration, it has that quality, as admirable in architecture as in men, character. It is of two distinct styles: the half-timbered gable noted along the street being doubtless the oldest portion, apparently of the mid-fifteenth century. This would seem to be the original inn. The main block seems to be about a century later, and would thus have been a recent building in Shakespeare’s youth. It was added apparently at a period of unbounded prosperity and is wholly of stone. The stone is of that very markedly striated blue lias much used in this district, and is set in a traditional fashion once greatly followed, that is to say, in alternate narrow and broad hands or courses.

Proceeding from Bidford along the Stratford road for Hillborough the haunted, the site of the ancient crab-apple tree is found, where the defeated Stratfordians slept off the effects of their carouse. The road is hedged now and the fields enclosed and cultivated, but in Shakespeare’s time the way was open. The spot is marked on Ordnance maps as “Shakespeare’s Crab,” and although the ancient tree finally disappeared in a venerable age on December 4th, 1824, when its remains, shattered in storms and hacked by relic-hunters, were carted off to Bidford Grange, a younger tree of the same genus has been planted on the identical site. We may note the spot, interested and unashamed, because although the rhymes upon the eight villages are almost certainly not Shakespeare’s—though probably quite as old as his period—that is no reason for doubting thepoet’s taking part in the drinking contest. “Because thou art virtuous, shall there be no cakes and ale?” and because we do not follow the customs of our ancestors shall we think them in their generation—and Shakespeare with them—disreputable? I think not, although, with these things in mind, I live in daily expectation of an article in some popular journal, asking, “Was Shakespeare Respectable?” I think the poet was, apart from his literary genius, an average man, with the weaknesses of such; and all the more lovable for it.

“Haunted Hillborough”

Hillborough is reached by turning in a further mile to the right, off the high road, at a point where a meadow is situated locally known as “Palmer’s Piece.” Palmer, it appears, was a farmer who drowned his wife in the Avon, and was gibbeted on this spot for the crime.

A mile’s journey along narrow roads, down towards the river, brings the pilgrim to Hillborough. Now Hillborough is not a village: it is not even a hamlet,and is indeed nothing but the remaining wing of an old manor-house, now a farm, and in a very solitary situation. It will thunder and lighten, and rain heavily when you go to Hillborough—it always does when you seek interesting places in remote spots—but these conditions seem only the more appropriate to the haunted reputation of the scene; although what was the nature of the hauntings has eluded every possible inquiry. It is thus curiously and wholly in keeping that the old manor-house and its surroundings should look so eerie. Noble trees romantically overhang the house; remains of old buildings whose disappearance mournful ghosts might grieve over, lend a dilapidated air of the Has Been to the place; and an ancient circular stone pigeon-house, a relic of the former manor, stands beside a dismal pond. But the ghosts have ceased to walk.

“Hungry Grafton”

A mile and a half across the Stratford road, is situated the fourth of these eight villages, “Hungry” Grafton. The real name of the place is Temple Grafton. “Hungry”is said to be an allusion to a supposed poverty of the soil, but farmers of this neighbourhood, although fully as dissatisfied as you expect a farmer to be, do not lend much help to the stranger seeking information. “I’ve varmed wuss land an’ I’ve varmed better,” was the eminently non-committal reply of one; while another was of the opinion that “it ’on’t break us, nor yet it ’on’t make us.”

The Shakespearean tourist will not be pleased with Grafton, for the squire of the adjoining Grafton Court practically rebuilt the whole village some forty years ago. It is true that was not a heroic undertaking, for it is a small village, but the doing of it very effectually quenches the traveller’s enthusiasm. Even the church was rebuilt in 1875: a peculiarly unfortunate thing, because the old building was one of those for which claim was made for having been the scene of Shakespeare’s marriage, that elusive ceremony of which no register survives to bear witness. It is only in practical, unsentimental England that these things are at all possible. A furious desire to obliterate every possible Shakespearean landmark would almost seem to have possessed the people of the locality, until quite recent years. Grafton, whose “Temple” prefix derives from the manor having anciently been one of the possessions of the Knights Templar, stands on a hill. The site is thought to have been covered in olden times with scrub-woods, “Grafton” or “Greveton,” taking its name from “greves”; a word signifying underwoods. Similar place-names are found in Northamptonshire, in Grafton Regis and Grafton Underwood, situated in Whittlebury Forest.

The only possible picture in “Hungry” Grafton is that sketched here, from below the ridge, where a brook runs beneath the road, beside a group of red-brickcottages. If you ascend the road indicated here and pass the highly uninteresting church and schools, you come to the hamlet of Ardens Grafton, a very much more gracious and picturesque place, although in extremely tumbledown and dilapidated circumstances. It is very much of a woodland hamlet, and appears to owe the first part of its name rather to that circumstance than to ownership at any time by the Arden family: Ardens in this case signifying a height overlooking a wooded Vale.

The Hollow Road, Exhall

The situation of the place does in fact most aptly illustrate the derivation, for it stands upon a very remarkable ridge, which must needs be descended by a steep and sudden hill if we want to reach Exhall. Descending the almost precipitous and narrow road with surprise, the nearly cliff-like escarpment is seen trending away most strikingly to the north.

“Papist Wixford”

We are now in the valley of the river Arrow. On the way to Exhall we come—not led by Caliban—to “where crabs grow,” for the hedgerows here are remarkable for the number of crab-apple trees. Shakespeare must have had them in mind when he wroteThe Tempest. Exhall lies in a beautiful country, on somewhat obscure byways that may have given the place that elusive character with strangers to which it owes its nickname of “Dodging”: although, to be sure there are the other readings of “Dadging,” whose meaning no one seems to comprehend; and “Drudging,” which it is held is the true epithet, given in allusion to the heavy ploughlands of the vale. Yet another choice has been found, in “Dudging,” supposed to mean “sulky”; but the ingenuity of commentators in these things is endless. There is, at any rate, in coming from Ardens Grafton, no modern difficulty in finding Exhall. It is a little village of large farms, with a small aisle-less Early English and Decorated church whose interest has been almost wholly destroyed by the so-called “restoration” of 1863. A window with the ball-flower moulding characteristic of the Decorated period remains in the south wall, and there are brasses to John Walsingham, 1566, and his wife; but for the rest, the stranger within these gates need not regret the church being locked, in common with most others in Shakespeare land. The hollow road at Exhall, with high, grassy banks and the group of charming old half-timbered cottages illustrated here is a delight. The builder who built them—they are certainly at least a century older than Shakespeare—built more picturesquely than he knew, with those sturdy chimney-stacks and the long flight of stairs ascending from the road.

Brass to Thomas de Cruwe and Wife, Wixford

There are orchards at Exhall where I think the “leather-coats” such as Davy put before Shallow’s guests yet grow: they are a russet apple, and, like the “bitter-sweeting,” own a local name which Shakespeare, the Warwickshire countryman, knew well enough, but of whose existence Bacon could have known nothing. What says Mercutio to Romeo? “Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting: it is a most sharp sauce.” And if you, tempted by the beautiful yellow of that apple, pick one and taste it, you will find the bitterness of it bite to the very bone.

Exhall takes the first part of its name, “ex,” from the Celtic worduisg, for water: a word which has given the river Exe its name, and masquerades elsewhere as Ouse, Exe, Usk, Esk, and so forth. But the river Arrow is a mile distant, and Wixford, which comes next, whose boundaries extend to that stream, is much better entitled to its name, which was originally “uisg-ford,” meaning “water-ford.”

“Papist” Wixford is said to have derived its nickname from the Throckmortons, staunch Roman Catholics, who once owned property here. The Arrow runs close by the scattered cottages of this tiny place, which might be styled merely a hamlet, except that it has a parish church of its own. A delightful little church it is, too, placed on a ridge and neighboured only by some timber-framed cottages. Luxuriant elms group nobly with it, and in the churchyard is a very large and handsome yew-tree, whose spreading branches, perhaps more symmetrical than those of any other yew of its size in this country, are supported at regular intervals by timber struts, forming a curious and notable sight. There are monumental brasses in the little church; by far the best of them, however, is the noble brass to Thomas de Cruwe and his wife Juliana, appropriately placed in the south chapel that was founded by him. Thomas de Cruwe—whose name was really “Crewe,” only our ancestors were used to spell phonetically—was scarcelythe warlike knight he would, from his plate-armour and mighty sword, appear to be. He was, in fact, chief steward to Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and attorney to the Countess Margaret, widow of his predecessor. He was, further, a “Knight of the Shire,” or member of Parliament, in 1404, and Justice of the Peace; and having filled these various professional and official positions, let us hope with as much satisfaction to his employers and others as obviously to his own advantage, he died at last in his bed, as all good lawyers, even of his date, the beginning of the fifteenth century, ought to do, in the year 1418. The date of his death is, however, not mentioned on the brass, the blanks in the inscription, left for the purpose, having never been filled. His wife Juliana, who had been the widow of one of the Cloptons, predeceased him, in 1411, and Thomas de Cruwe caused this beautiful and costly brass to be engraved in his own lifetime. The incomplete inscription is by no means unusual, numerous brasses throughout the country displaying similar unfilled spaces; pointing to the indifference with which the date of departure of the dear departed was all too often regarded by their more or less sorrowing heirs, executors, and assigns.

“Beggarly Broom”

This splendidly-engraved brass, which ranks among the largest and finest in England, is mounted on a raised slab measuring nine by four feet; the effigies five feet in height. A curious error of the engraver of this monument is to be noted, in the omission of Thomas de Cruwe’s sword-belt or baldrick, by which the sword hanging from his waist has no visible means of support. The odd badge—apparently unique in heraldry—of a naked human left foot is seen many times repeated on the brass. No explanation of it seems ever to have been offered. We might have expected a cock in theact of crowing, for “Crewe,” for our ancestors dearly loved puns upon family names and were never daunted by the vapidity or appalling stupidity of them; but in this case they forbore.

The penultimate village of these rhymes, “Beggarly” Broom, also stands upon the Arrow. Marston, as we have seen, dances no more, nor does Pebworth pipe; the supernatural no longer vexes Hillborough, and Grafton is not so hungry as you might suppose. Exhall is not difficult to find, and there are not any Roman Catholics at Wixford; while Bidford is not obviously drunken. But Broom is just as beggarly as ever.

Broom was originally a hamlet of squatters on a gorsy, or broom-covered heath, and a hamlet it yet remains. Modern times have brought Broom a railway junction and a bridge across the Arrow, where was until recently only a ford; but Broom is not to be moved into activity by these things, or anything. Anglers come by cheap tickets from Birmingham and fish in the Arrow, and swap lies at the “Hollybush” and “Broom” inns about what they have caught, but there still is that poverty-stricken air about the place which originally attracted the notice of the rhymester, centuries ago. A flour-mill, still actively at work by the river, and a new house being built, do little to qualify this ancient aspect of squalid decay, which seems to extend even to the inhabitants, who may be observed sitting stolidly and abstractedly, as though contemplating the immensities. They are probably only wondering whence to-morrow’s dinner is coming, a branch of philosophical inquiry of poignant interest.

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