his business and family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in
London.' The independent testimony of Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar
of Saperton, Gloucestershire, late in the seventeenth century, is to the
effect that Shakespeare 'was much given to all unluckiness in stealing
venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft
whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native
county to his great advancement.' The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz.
cap. 21) punished deer-stealers with three months' imprisonment and the
payment of thrice the amount of the damage done.

Unwarranted doubts of the tradition.

The tradition has been challenged on the ground that the Charlecote
deer-park was of later date than the sixteenth century. But Sir Thomas
Lucy was an extensive game-preserver, and owned at Charlecote a warren in
which a few harts or does doubtless found an occasional home. Samuel
Ireland was informed in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the deer, not from
Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few miles off, and Ireland supplied
in his 'Views on the Warwickshire Avon,' 1795, an engraving of an old
farmhouse in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he asserted that Shakespeare
was temporarily imprisoned after his arrest. An adjoining hovel was
locally known for some years as Shakespeare's 'deer-barn,' but no portion
of Fulbroke Park, which included the site of these buildings (now
removed), was Lucy's property in Elizabeth's reign, and the amended
legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter Scott in 1828 by the
owner of Charlecote, seems pure invention. {28}

Justice Shallow

The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have fastened on the park
gates of Charlecote does not, as Rowe acknowledged, survive. No
authenticity can be allowed the worthless lines beginning 'A parliament
member, a justice of peace,' which were represented to be Shakespeare's
on the authority of an old man who lived near Stratford and died in 1703.
But such an incident as the tradition reveals has left a distinct impress
on Shakespearean drama. Justice Shallow is beyond doubt a reminiscence
of the owner of Charlecote. According to Archdeacon Davies of Saperton,
Shakespeare's 'revenge was so great that' he caricatured Lucy as 'Justice
Clodpate,' who was (Davies adds) represented on the stage as 'a great
man,' and as bearing, in allusion to Lucy's name, 'three louses rampant
for his arms.' Justi