his own son, was visited by a pursuivant, forced to dismiss all his servants, and incurred much persecution. So, too, as regards marriage; the non-performance of the ceremony at the Parish Church always aroused suspicions that the services of a priest had been secretly employed. Thus Arden, we find, was examined concerning his daughter's marriage to Somerville. "Where was he married? in what church? and by what minister? Did not Hall the priest marry Somerville and your daughter at a Mass, at which you were present ? Shakespeare, then, like his connection Somerville, may have been secretly married by some priest, and when the persecution waxed hot in 1581-82, obtained a licence from the Bishop of Worcester, both to screen his secret espousals and to obtain a legal certificate of his union. His burial in the Protestant Church proves nothing as to his religion, for it was the only official place of interment, for priests as well as laity, when there were no Catholic cemeteries. F. Thurston mentions three priests, besides Dr. Petre, Vicar of the Western District in the last century, all of whom were buried in Protestant Churches.2

The performance of these three rites according to the new creed prove, then, nothing conclusively as to the poet's religion. We believe, however, that surer evidence as to his religion is to be found by considering the creed and politics of his friends,

1 Dom. Eliz., vol. clxvii. No. 59.

2 Month, May 1882, 12.

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associates, and patrons. The Protestant and Catholic parties in Warwickshire, as well as in every part of the kingdom, were in a position of bitter antagonism, and in this strife the poet soon became involved. The leader of the Protestant party in Shakespeare's county was the new upstart favourite Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Absolutely devoid of principle, religious or other, and at times indeed favourable to Catholics, as for instance in his relations with Campion, he found it to his interests in Warwickshire to play the part of a zealous Puritan; and he thus secured the support of the Grenvilles, Lucys, the Combes, the Porters and others, all zealous adherents of the new religion. Leicester's iniquities, his criminal relations with the Lady Sheffield and Lady Essex, his murder of both their husbands and of his own wife at Cumnor, were condoned or ignored by his partisans, in return for his Puritan zeal.1 Not so, however, with the Catholics, and conspicuous among them in his sturdy independence was Edward Arden, the Squire of Parkhall, and the cousin of Shakespeare's mother. He refused to wear the Earl's livery, and openly expressed his disgust at his infamies. Arden was supported in his contest by the prayers and good wishes of all that was respectable in the county, but the Earl had the machinery of Cecil's statecraft at his command, and knew how to use it. In 1583, Somerville, Arden's son-in-law, a youth of naturally weak mind, which had become still further

1 Parsons, "Leicester's Commonwealth."

unbalanced by his brooding over the wrongs of Catholics, went up to London with the avowed purpose of shooting the Queen. This was Leicester's opportunity. Somerville was arrested, as were also the Ardens and Hall, their chaplain. They were indicted for treason at Warwick, but fearing Arden's popularity there, Leicester got the venue changed to London. They were all condemned. Somerville was found strangled in Newgate, Arden suffered a traitor's death at Smithfield, his wife, his daughter, Mrs. Somerville, and Hall the chaplain endured a long imprisonment at the Tower. One of Leicester's henchmen, meanwhile, was in possession of Arden's and Somerville's estates, till he was finally ejected by Arden's son.

But what has this to do with Shakespeare? Mr. Simpson hazarded the supposition that he had served Arden in the capacity first of a page, and then in that of a legal secretary or agent, under the assumed name of William Thacker. The Edinburgh Reviewer has, however, since shown that William Thacker was a real personage. But, even though Shakespeare had not been a member of the Arden household, the poet's blood connection with the Ardens could have scarcely suffered him to remain indifferent to the bitter persecutions they endured. He was, at this time, an ardent youth of nineteen; was there any one on whom he could in any way avenge the wrong done to his own kith and kin? Within a few miles of Stratford lay the property of Sir Thomas Lucy, the

THE DEER-KILLING INCIDENT

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Puritan tool of Leicester, and the persecutor of the Warwickshire Papists. He had twice summoned Shakespeare's father for recusancy, and was a leading member of the commission on Somerville and Arden. In those days deer-killing was not a mere poaching venture for gain's sake, but was employed by both sides as an act of retributive justice or revenge. Thus in 1556 divers "ill-disposed" showed their hostility to Heath, the Archbishop of York and Queen Mary's Chancellor, by destroying his deer, and in 1600 the "evil affected" slew the cattle of William Brettergle, High Constable of the county, doubtless in revenge for his persecuting tactics.1 And it is just about the date of the Arden and Somerville trials, i.e. 1583, that, as all the poet's biographers agree, Shakespeare was forced to leave Stratford, because of the unduly severe punishment that he received from Sir T. Lucy, for killing his deer. Halliwell, indeed, thinks that nothing short of persecution could have provoked an attack from one usually so moderate and gentle as the poet. That the persecution in question arose from the poet's indignation at Lucy's treatment of his relations, there is, we think, good reason, from what has been said, for believing. Later on he revenged himself again on his persecutor by holding him up to ridicule in the person of Mr. Justice Shallow, whose identity is determined by the "luces" in the Shallow Coat-of-Arms, explained by Parson Evans

1 Dom. Eliz., vol. cclxxv. No. 115.

in his equivocal speech; "the dozen white louses do become an old coat well."

ac

In 1584-85, Shakespeare, then "having" cording to the Rev. T. Davis, a Protestant clergyman, writing eighty years after the poet's death"been oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned" by Lucy, found himself obliged to fly to London. For a young man in trouble the stage presented perhaps the only opportunity of a livelihood, and to Catholics it offered special attractions. They were trained by their religion to delight in the dramatic representations employed by the Church in her services. The Corpus Christi and other processions were duly held during Mary's reign, and had been only of late prohibited. The stage again offered peculiar protection for suspected persons against domiciliary visits, tests, and oaths-for actors were classed as vagabonds, or persons having no fixed address. The theatre thus became held in favour by Papists, as the following petition from a Puritan soldier will show:

"The dailie abuse of Stage Playes is such an offence to the godly, and so great a hindrance to the gospell, as the papists do exceedingly rejoice at the bleamysh thereof, and not without cause; for every day in the weeke the players' bills are sett up in sundry places of the cittie, some in the name of her Majestie's menne, some the Earl of Leicester, some the Earl of Oxford, the Lord Admyralles, and divers others; so that when the belles tole to the