of the people.

Even the fish in the Avon, Severn and Bay were registered and claimed by
scrubs of royalty for their exclusive use, fine and imprisonment being
imposed for hunting on the land and fishing in the streams that God made
for all men.

These parliamentary laws should be voted or bulleted out of the statute
books, and the people again inherit their inalienable rights.

My friend William was arrested by the malicious Lucy, and the gamekeeper,
Tom Snap, swore to enough facts to exile, hang and quarter the Bard.

Through the influence of his father and John A. Combe, William, the chief
culprit, was not imprisoned, but compelled to pay a fine of one pound ten.

He did not have but three shillings, yet the boys secretly passed the hat
around in the court yard and tavern, and soon extricated our chum from the
toils of Sir Thomas Lucy.

William did not have the courage to face his wife after a week's absence,
and told me privately that he was going off instanter by the way of Oxford
to London and seek his fortune.

I applauded his spunk and determination, and, at his solicitation willingly
joined him in his eloquent rambles. My parents were both dead, and being of
a bohemian tendency, my home has ever been on any spot of the earth where
the sun rose or set. Pot luck suits me.

Natural freedom of body and mind has ever been my greatest delight and the
artificial fashions and tyrannical laws of society I despise and defy, and
shall to my dying day. My mind is my master.

Right is my religion and God is my instructor!

_"I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind
To blow on whom I please."_

The evening before we left Stratford William wrote a short note to his wife
and said that he would take her advice, leave the town, and seek his
fortune in the whirlpool of grand old London.

I imagine that Anne was delighted to receive his impromptu note, for it
left her one less mouth to feed; and William was equally satisfied to be
relieved of the role of playing husband without any of the practical moral
adjuncts.

In passing by the entrance gate to the lordly estate of Sir Thomas Lucy, or
Justice Shallow, William nailed up the following poetic shot to the
hot-headed old squire, which was read and copied the next morning, by all
the market men going to town, and the tavern lads going to their country
ploughs:

_"The tyrant Thomas Lucy
Lets no one go to mass,
He's a sq