riage, espousals with the verba de præsenti. The Duchess of Malfi had misinterpreted the lawyers when she believed that a secret "contract in a chamber' was "absolute marriage," whether the engagernent was for the present or the future. Such a ceremonial, then, may have taken place in the presence of the young Shakspere, as he has himself described with inimitable beauty in the contract of his Florizel and Perdita. But under the happy roof at Charlcote there is no forbidding father; there is no inequality of rank in the parties contracted. They are near neighbours; a walk from Hampton Lucy through the grounds of Charlcote House brings the lover to the door of his mistress. And now, the contract performed, they merrily go forth into those grounds, to sit, with happiness too deep for utterance, under the broad beech which shades them from the morning sun; or they walk, not unwelcome visitors, upon the terrace of the new pleasure-garden which the good knight has constructed for the special solace of his lady. The relations between one in the social position of Sir Thomas Lucy and his humbler neighbours could not have been otherwise than kindly ones. The epitaph in which he speaks of his wife as "a great maintainer of hospitality" is tolerable evidence of his own disposition. Hospitality, in those days, consisted not alone in giving mighty entertainments, to the rich and noble, but it included the cherishing of the poor, and the welcome of tenants and dependents. The Squire's Hall was not, like the Baron's Castle, filled with a crowd of prodigal retainers, who devoured his substance, and kept him as a stranger amongst those who naturally looked up to him for protection. Yet was the Squire a man of great worship and authority. He was a Justice of the Peace; the terror of all depredators; the first to be appealed to in all matters of village litigation. "The halls of the justice of peace were dreadful to behold; the screen was garnished with corslets, and helmets gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberds. brown bilis, bucklers."* The Justice had these weapons ready to arm his followers upon any sudden emergency; but, proud of his ancestry, his fighting. gear was not altogether modern. The "old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate" is described "With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and bows, With old swords, and bucklers, that had borne many shrewd blows." † There was the broad oak-table in the hall, and the arm-chair large enough for a throne. The shovel-board was once there; but Sir Thomas, although he would play a quiet game with the chaplain at tric-trac, thought the shovelboard an evil example, and it was removed. Upon ordinary occasions the Justice sat in his library, a large oaken room with a few cumbrous books, of which the only novelty was the last collection of the Statutes. The book upon which the knight bestowed much of his attention was the famous book of John Fox, Acts and Monuments of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching Matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecutions, and horrible Troubles, that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates.' This book was next to his Bible. He hated Popery, as. he was bound to do according to law; and he somewhat dreaded the inroads of Popery in the shape of Church ceremonials. He was not quite clear that the good man to whom he had presented the living of Charlcote was perfectly right in maintaining the honour and propriety of the surplice; but he did not altogether think that it was the "mark of abomination." He reprobated the persecution of certain ministers "for omitting small portions or some ceremony prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer."§ Those ministers were of the new opinions which men began to call puritanical. The good knight's visits to Stratford may be occasionally traced in the Chamberlain's accounts, especially upon solemn occasions, when he went thither with "my Lady and Mr. Sheriff," and left behind him such pleasant memorials as "paid at the Swan for a quart of sack and a quartern of sugar, burned for Sir Thomas Lucy." | The "sack and sugar" would, we think, indispose him to go along with the violent denouncers of old festivals; and those who deprecated hunting and hawking were in his mind little better than fools. He had his falconer and his huntsman; and never was he happier than when he rode out of his gates with his hounds about him, and graciously saluted the yeomen who rode with him to find a hare in Fulbrooke. If, then, on the day of the troth-plight, Sir Thomas met the merry party from the village, he would assuredly have his blandest smiles in store for them; and as the affianced made their best bow and curtsey he would point merrily to the favour in the hat, the little folded handkerchief, with its delicate gold lace and its tassel in each corner.¶ See Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' book v. • Aubrey. + The Old and Young Courtier. § When in Parliament, in 1584, Sir Thomas Lucy presented a petition against the interference of ecclesiastical courts in such matters, wherein these words are used. Chamberlain's Accounts.-Halliwell, p. 101. "And it was then the custom for maids, and gentlewomen, to give their favourites, as tokens of their love, little handkerchiefs of about three or four inches square, wrought round about, and with a button, or a tassel at each corner, and a little in the middle, with silk or thread. The best edged with a little small gold lace, or twist, which being folded up in four cross folds, so as the middle might be seen, gentlemen and others did usually wear them in their hats, as favours of their loves and mistresses."- Howes's Continuation of Stow, p. 1039. 219 There is an early and a frugal dinner in the yeoman's house at Charlcote. Gervase Markham, in his excellent English Housewife,' describes "a humble feast or an ordinary proportion which any good man may keep in his family for the entertainment of his true and worthy friend." We doubt if so luxurious a provision was made in our yeoman's house; for Markham's "humble feast" consisted of three courses, the first of which comprised sixteen "dishes of meat that are of substance." Harrison, writing about forty years earlier, makes the yeoman contented with somewhat less abundance: "If they happen to stumble upon a piece of venison, and a cup of wine or very strong beer or ale (which latter they commonly provide against their appointed days), they think their cheer so great, and themselves to have fared so well, as the Lord Mayor of London."* But, whatever was the plainness or the delicacy of their dishes, there is no doubt of the hearty welcome which awaited all those who had claims to hospitality: "If the friends of the wealthier sort come to their houses from far, they are commonly so welcome till they depart as upon the first day. of their coming." Again: " Both the artificer and the husbandman are sufficiently liberal and very friendly at their tables; and when they meet they are so merry without malice, and plain without inward Italian or French craft or subtility, that it would do a man good to be in company among them."‡ Shakspere has himself painted, in one of his early days, the friendly intercourse between the yeomen and their better educated neighbours. To the table. where even Goodman Dull was welcome, the schoolmaster gives an invitation to the parson: "I do dine to-day at the father's of a certain pupil of mine; where if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the aforesaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto."§ And it was at this table that the schoolmaster won for himself this great praise: "Your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudence, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy." England was at that day not cursed with class and coterie society. The distinctions of rank were sufficiently well defined to enable men to mix freely, as long as they conducted themselves decorously. The barriers of modern society belong to an age of pretension. The early dinner at Charlcote finished, the young visitors from Stratford take a circuitous road home over the Fulbrooke hills. The shooting season is approaching, and they have to breathe their dogs. But after they have crossed Black Hill they hear a loud shouting; and they know that the hurlers are abroad. Snitterfield is matched against Alveston; and a crowd of players from each parish have, with vast exertion, been driving their ball "over hills, dales, nedges, ditches,-yea, and thorough bushes, briars, mires, plashes, and rivers."¶ The cottage at the entrance of Fulbrooke is the goal. The Stratford youths must see the game played out, and curfew has rung before they reach home. Description of England, 1586, p. 170 + Ibid., p. 168. § Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV., Scene II. + Ibid. Ibid., Act v., Scene 1 ¶ Carew's 'Survey of Cornwall." A few weeks roll on, and the bells of Hampton Lucy are ringing for a wedding. The out-door ceremonials are not quite so rude as those which Ben Jonson has delineated; but they are founded on the same primitive customs. There are "ribands, rosemary, and bay for the bridemen;" and some the rustics may exclaim- "Look! an the wenches ha' not found 'un out, And bays, to vill a bow-pot, trim the head Of my best vore-horse! we shall all ha' bride laces, one of Like the father in Jonson's play, the happy yeoman of Charlcote might say to his dame "To let no music go afore his child To church, to cheer her heart up.”* On the other hand, there are no court ceremonials here to be seen, "As running at the ring, plays, masks, and tilting." + There would be the bride-cup and the wheaten garlands; the bride led by fairhaired boys, and the bridegroom following with his chosen neighbours :— Glide by the banks of virgins then, and pass Your praise, and bless you, sprinkling you with wheat, 'Blest is the bride on whom the sun doth shine.'" The procession enters the body of the church; for, after the Reformation, the knot was no longer tied, as, at the five weddings of the Wife of Bath, at "church-door." The blessing is pronounced, the bride-cup is called for the accustomed kiss is given to the bride. But neither custom is performed after the fashion of Petrucio ::- "He calls for wine: A health,' quoth he; as it He had been aboard, carousing to his mates But that his beard grew thin and hungerly, : They drink out of the bride-cup with as much earnestness (however less the formality) as the great folks at the marriage of the Elector Palatine to the daughter of James I.:-"In conclusion, a joy pronounced by the King and Queen, and seconded with congratulation of the lords there present, which crowned with draughts of Ippocras out of a great golden bowl, as an health to the prosperity of the marriage, began by the Prince Palatine, and answered by the Princess." We will not think that "when they come home from church then beginneth * Tale of a Tub, Act II., Scene 1. + A New Way to pay Old Debts, Act IV., Scene III. Herrick's Hesperides." § Taming of the Shrew, Act III., Scene II. |