ENTRANCE TO CHARLECOTE HALL
We must not assume that Sir Thomas was fairly represented in the character of Justice Shallow. On the contrary, he appears to have been an able man and magistrate, and very genial withal. The Stratford records bear frequent testimony to his judicial services; and his attendance on such occasions is generally coupled with a charge for claret and sack or similar beverages. It is rather amusing that these entries occur even when he is sitting in judgment on tipplers. In the records for 1558 we read: "Paid for wine and sugar when Sir Thomas Lucy sat in commission for tipplers, xx d."
SIR THOMAS LUCY
That he was a good husband we may infer from the long epitaph of his wife in Charlecote Church, which, after stating that she died in 1595, at the age of 63, goes on thus: "all the time of her life a true and faithful servant of her good God; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithful and true; in friendship most constant; to what in trust was committed to her most secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing of her house and bringing up of youth in the fear of God that did converse with her, most rare and singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters, misliked of none unless of the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a woman so furnished and garnished with virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled by any. As she lived most virtuously, so she died most godly. Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true, Thomas Lucy."
The author of this beautiful tribute may have been a severe magistrate, but he could not have been a Robert Shallow either in his official capacity or as a man.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
Stratford lies on a gentle slope declining to the Avon, whose banks are here shaded by venerable willows, which the poet may have had in mind when he painted the scene of poor Ophelia's death:—
"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,