It was, indeed, in consequence of the amusement to be derived from this latter failing, that he had been once or twice invited by his companions to join in several of their poaching expeditions. The state of alarm he had been in, and the difficulties his associates had led him into, having furnished, even himself, with an endless theme of amusement after the exploit was over.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE HOSTEL.
At the present time, when every street and thoroughfare of a country town has its public-house filled with the noisy refuse of an overwhelming population, and absolutely roaring with ribaldry, many of our readers have but a faint idea of the quiet comfort and cozy appearance of a hostel in the olden time. Its ample kitchen hung around with articles and implements of the good wife's occupation, the chance guests, for the most part, assembled in such apartment, and the quiet retirement of its other rooms, engaged, as they not unfrequently were, by some well-to-do retired person, half sportsman, half soldier, who paid his shot weekly, and was dependent upon chance customers, and mine host, for companionship.
Such guest not unfrequently dubbed himself gentleman, upon the strength of possessing a half-starved steed and a couple of greyhounds. Sportsman he was, of course, for every man professed knowledge of, and had a taste for, field sports, when England was less cultivated, and her woods and wastes teemed with game.
The tavern we have named as the residence of Master Froth, was called the Lucy Arms, because upon its sign were displayed the three white pike fish, or lucies, which had been the cognomen of the knights of Charlecote from the time of the Crusades downwards.
Inn signs were, indeed, in former days for the most part of an heraldic character. Many of the town residences of the nobility and the great ecclesiastics were sometimes called inns, and in the front of them the family arms displayed. Such inns afterwards became appropriated to the purpose of the hostel, and the armorial decorations retained, under the denomination of signs, directed the guest to them as places of accommodation and refreshment. This we retain even in the present degenerate age, the signs of the white, red, black, and golden lions of the Crusades; and the blue boars, golden crosses, swans, dragons, and dolphins, which ornamented the knightly helmet or shield, now do duty at the entrance of the beer-shop.
"Thus chances mock and changes fill the cup of alteration."
It was one evening in the merry month of May, about a year after the marriage of young Shakespeare, that Jack Froth, and several of his associates, were assembled at the Lucy Arms.