nd when eighteen years old agreeing to marry her; she was
twenty-six. No record is found of the marriage. But we should think of
her gratefully, for no doubt it was she who started the lad off for
London.

That's the way I expressed it to my new-found friend, and he agreed with
me, so we shook hands and parted.

Charlcote is as fair as a dream of Paradise. The winding Avon, full to
its banks, strays lazily through rich fields and across green meadows,
past the bright red-brick pile of Charlcote Mansion. The river-bank is
lined with rushes, and in one place I saw the prongs of antlers shaking
the elders. I sent a shrill whistle and a stick that way, and out ran
four fine deer that loped gracefully across the turf. The sight brought
my poacher instincts to the surface, but I bottled them, and trudged on
until I came to the little church that stands at the entrance to the
park.

All mansions, castles and prisons in England have chapels or churches
attached. And this is well, for in the good old days it seemed wise to
keep in close communication with the other world. For often, on short
notice, the proud scion of royalty was compelled hastily to pack a
ghostly valise and his him hence with his battered soul; or if he did not
go himself he compelled others to do so, and who but a brute would kill a
man without benefit of the clergy! So each estate hired its priests by
the year, just as men with a taste for litigation hold attorneys in
constant retainer.

In Charlcote Church is a memorial to Sir Thomas Lucy; and there is a
glowing epitaph that quite upsets any of those taunting and defaming
allusions in "The Merry Wives." At the foot of the monument is a line to
the effect that the inscription thereon was written by the only one in
possession of the facts, Sir Thomas himself.

Several epitaphs in the churchyard are worthy of space in your
commonplace book, but the lines on the slab to John Gibbs and wife struck
me as having the true ring:

"Farewell, proud, vain, false, treacherous world,
We have seen enough of thee:
We value not what thou canst say of we."

When the Charlcote Mansion was built, there was a housewarming, and Good
Queen Bess (who was not so awful good) came in great state; so we see
that she had various calling acquaintances in these parts. But we have no
proof that she ever knew that any such person as W. Shakespeare lived.
However, she came to Charlcote and dined on venison, and what a p