[58] Dugdale has preserved a curious and interesting document in connexion with the Chapel, being the “Covenants of Agreement between the Executors of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, viz. Thomas Huggeford, Nich. Rodye, and Wm. Berkswell, and the severall Artists that were employed in the most exquisite parts of its fabrick and ornaments—as also of the costly Tombe before specified, bearing date xiii Junii, 32 H. 6.”

These are the covenants of John Essex, Marbler; Will. Austen, Founder; Thomas Stevyns, Coppersmith; Bartholomew Lambespring, Dutchman and Goldsmith. John Prudde, of Westminster, Glasier, further covenanted to glase all the windows in the new Chappell in Warwick, with Glasse beyond the Seas, and with no Glasse of England; and that in the finest wise, with the best, cleanest, and strongest glasse of beyond the Sea that may be had in England, and of the finest colours of blew, yellow, red, purpure, sanguine, and violet, and of all other colours that shall be most necessary, and best to make rich and embellish the matters, Images, and stories that shall be delivered and appointed by the said Executors by patterns in paper, afterwards to be newly traced and pictured by another Painter in rich colour at the charges of the said Glasier. All which proportions the said John Prudde must make perfectly to fine, glase, eneylin it, and finely and strongly set it in lead and souder, as well as any Glasse is in England. Of white Glasse, Green Glasse, black Glase, he shall put in as little as shall be needfull for the shewing and setting forth of the matters, Images, and storyes. And the said Glasier shall take charge of the same Glasse, wrought and to be brought, to Warwick, and set up there, in the windows of the said Chapell; the Executors paying to the said Glasier for every foot of Glasse ii s. and so for the whole xci li. i s. x d.

[59] While standing among the graves of generations of the family, and noting down the words in which were recorded their claims to live in memory, we heard suddenly from a young woman who guided us to the church—and who conveyed the sad intelligence with tearful eyes—that on the very morning of our visit another of the Lucys had been summoned to take his place among the dead. George Lucy, Esq., the Lord of Charlecote, died on the 1st of July, 1845—somewhat suddenly; leaving, however, a son, not yet of age, to inherit the honours and estates. The circumstance was to us peculiarly unfortunate; for Mr. Lucy had courteously offered to supply us with all the information in his power to give, concerning the neighbourhood and its several associations. We found that his loss was felt in the cottages almost as bitterly as in the mansion; and obtained certain assurance that he, like his progenitors, had been a generous landlord, and a kind friend to the poor.

[60] The painting is so well described by Washington Irving that we quote his words:—

“The picture gives a lively idea of the costume and manners of the time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff and doublet; white shoes with roses in them, and has a peaked yellow, or, as Master Slender would say, a cane-coloured beard. His lady is seated on the opposite side of the picture, in wide ruff and long stomacher, and the children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family group; a hawk is seated on his perch in the foreground, and one of the children holds a bow; all intimating the knight’s skill in hunting, hawking, and archery, so indispensable to an accomplished gentleman in those days.”

[61] It is now generally admitted, however, that the lines beginning—

“A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, in London an asse,”

were—neither the whole nor a part—written by Shakspere, the lampoon containing no indications of genius; it is a libel on the memory of the poet to assert that they were the offspring of his mind—to say nothing of the “poorspite” they would have manifested,—a feeling totally away from so great a soul. The story of Shakspere’s early transgression and its consequences is thus related by Rowe: “An extravagance that he was guilty of first forced him out of his country, and that way of living which he had taken up; and though it seemed at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exerting one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in dramatic poetry. He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, amongst them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, engaged him more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford; for this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought somewhat too severely; and, in order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him.” That Shakspere engaged in a frolic similar to the one related of him, is by no means improbable; freaks of the kind are common enough to “young fellows;” and although it is impossible to imagine that the poet took part in this, from any motive other than that love of risk and adventure inseparable from great minds in the bud, we may readily believe tradition to be in the main correct. That Sir Thomas Lucy was not a man of even poor understanding is sufficiently proved by the epitaph to the memory of his wife.

[62] Mr. Wheeler, a most intelligent gentleman of Stratford, who has given much time and thought to all subjects connected with Shakspere’s history,—and by whom we had the advantage of being accompanied to the church—directed our attention to the fact, that formerly a charnel-house adjoined the chancel, from which there was a communicating door. Here the bones of the neglected or forgotten were gathered:

“The vault
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air comes in,
* * * * * * an ancient receptacle,
Where for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed.”