About four miles from Stratford stands a fine old Elizabethan manor-house, Charlecote, in whose deer-park tradition says that Shakespeare went poaching. Many old accounts of the poet's life state that he left Stratford and went to London in fear of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, whose deer he had stolen from the park. It is not at all certain that this happened, but that Shakespeare did not like Sir Thomas Lucy is very plain from his works. In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" there is a "Mr. Justice Shallow," of whom the poet makes great fun, and draws in a very ridiculous light. It is clear from many little touches that Shakespeare had Sir Thomas Lucy in his mind when he drew this portrait of a pompous country squire.
The mansion of Charlecote is of great interest in itself as a perfect specimen of an Elizabethan manor-house. Save for a couple of rooms added to the structure, it stands exactly as Sir Thomas Lucy built it in 1558. It was built originally with a front and two projecting wings, and it was visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1572. In honour of this visit Sir Thomas added a porch and adorned it with the Queen's arms and monogram. By this addition the plan of the house was made to exactly resemble a capital E, and thus commemorate the royal visit.
Charlecote is approached from the road through an ancient gatehouse, a most beautiful and picturesque building which opens upon a courtyard or walled flower-garden, and the whole place is in most perfect order and preservation. It is an Elizabethan home lasting unchanged until the twentieth century.
AN OLD ENGLISH HOUSE.
England is full of castles, abbeys, and manor-houses, which are still occupied by the descendants of those who built them or by those into whose hands they have passed in later days, and among these stately piles it is hard to pick one as a type of a fine old English house. But, putting aside the great castles, like Warwick, whose frowning walls and grim battlements tell of an age when defence was the first thought in the mind of a builder, let us take a mansion erected at a more peaceful time. Such a mansion is to be found in Compton Wynyates, a fine old Warwickshire house, built in 1509.
Compton Wynyates stands in a very secluded spot, some twelve miles from Stratford, hidden away in a thickly-wooded dell. You approach the house along a mere byway, and do not see it until you are close upon it. Then a picturesque medley of gables, turrets, battlements and chimneys, springs to view, and you stand to wonder at so splendid a house being built in so hidden and solitary a place.
Compton Wynyates was built at a time when the bare lofty walls of a castle-keep were being deserted for the brighter, more cheerful rooms of a mansion whose walls were pierced by many windows. But at the same time it was not wise to live entirely without protection, so a moat was dug round the house and entrance could only be gained by a drawbridge. In our quiet days a bridge of stone has replaced the wooden bridge which rose and fell, but the old oak doors which once barred the archway leading to the house are still in position, and we can see upon them the marks of musket-balls fired at the defenders of the place in troublous times.