Sir Thomas, however, was too irate to be so moved; he sought for proof of the guilt of the parties in this their sanctum, and, quickly proceeding to overhaul the lodgement of Froth, he found sufficient evidence of their poaching propensities; cross-bows, matchlocks, and snares of various sorts, were rummaged out and brought to light; and even the costume of Dreary Death, and other disguises, were produced. In fact, the query which had been often suggested by some of the more staid neighbours of the vicinity, as to how the swash-bucklers and rollicking blades constituting the society of the Lucy Arms, managed to live, was brought to light. They lived by their exertions on the road and the glade. They were squires of the night's body—Diana's foresters—gentlemen of the shade.
No sooner was Sir Thomas fully satisfied on this point than he retired from the interior, and, mounting his horse, ordered the men awaiting him at the town-end to be summoned.
"Master Grasp," he said, "I have more than once given this caitiff host notice to quit, and he hath still hung on and craved to remain my tenant. You have seen him this day evacuate the premises of his own free will, and I will now give my own people possession."
Thus saying, Sir Thomas ordered his men to enter the hostel, and proceed to unroof it,[17] after which he desired them with pick and spade to demolish and destroy as much as they could effect that night, and in the morning to return and level the Lucy Arms with the ground. That done, he reiterated his commands to the obsequious Grasp to proceed against the whole party as aiders and abetters in the robbery—William Shakespeare, in particular, as principal. To prosecute and persecute with the utmost rigour of the law. After which he turned his horse, and, grave and stately, attended by his keepers, rode off to Charlecote.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE LAMPOON.
On the morning of the day on which Sir Thomas paid a visit to the Lucy Arms, William Shakespeare, seated in a small parlour at the back of his house, was employed reading from a somewhat bulky volume certain matters which appeared deeply to interest him.
So much so, indeed, that albeit his attention was often called from the subject of his studies by the little crowing baby he held in one arm; still he ever returned with renewed avidity to devour a few more pages, as often as the playful infant gave him an opportunity of doing so.
The volume Shakespeare was reading from was a thick squat folio, then some thirty years printed, and called Hall's Chronicles. Many and various were the histories contained in this thick volume; and the deep interest young Shakespeare felt in their perusal, and the impression they made upon his mind, may be imagined when we enumerate them as set forth. First, then, there was "the unquiet time of King Henry ye Fourth." That was indeed a stirring page in England's history, "when trenching war channelled her fields," and intestine jars and civil butchery "daubed her lips with her own children's blood."