Their only daughter and heire being then of the
Adge of XII yeres was espoused to Sir Thomas LVCY
Of Charcot knight which Dame Ioyse in dutifull
Remembravnce of theis her loving parents
Hath erected this monument. Anno 1581.
Here we have the knight whom Shakespeare ridicules under the title of Justice Shallow in The Merry Wives of Windsor. What caused the Bard to hold up this Sir Thomas Lucy thus to ridicule no one appears to have discovered; the ancient story that the knight prosecuted Shakespeare for poaching his deer in Charlecote Park is out of court, for in those days there was neither park nor deer there.
As I was leaving the church I noticed a brass plate against the west wall about three feet from the pavement, bearing record that
On May 14th, 1886
The River Teme overflowed its Banks
And rose to the height of the mark
Placed below.
And to this day certain Tenbury folk date events "from the year of the flood," which to the unknowing sounds strangely of a period immeasurably remote.
I dined well at "The Swan" that night in the pleasant company of two anglers, one of whom had caught the big trout already mentioned. The simple dinner was excellently cooked, and my fellow-guests indulged in a bottle of good red wine; so also did I for sociability. Not but that
Pure water is the best of gifts
That man to man can bring;
But what am I that I should have
The best of everything?
Dinner ended, in the spirit of the Roman of old I could say, "Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."
We three made merry over our meal (fishermen, sailors, and artists all seem to possess cheerful souls); we talked and we joked and "the good wine quaffed"; fishing stories went round the table, true every one of them—or at least they were not impossible. I scorn that cruel libel that declares "the angler goes out in the morning full of hope, returns at evening full of whisky, and the truth is not in him." But we did not talk of fishing alone; we talked of many charmed spots where tranquil rivers flow, of sleepy pools where the big trout lie, of mountain streams with their heathery banks, streams that gurgle and splash along their rocky beds; and I learnt that a trout rises to a fly either because he is hungry, or merely out of curiosity; if the former you may surely land him, if the latter it is a touch and go if you do. Many days the trout have had their fill, so they "rise short," being only curiously minded; then the angler changes his flies, but it is not a fresh fly that is needed, but a hungry trout.
Much has been said of the joys of the gentle craft.