Robbing on the highway, although by no means so common as in the preceding reign, was still frequent. The woods were thick in this part of Warwickshire, and the gentlemen of the shade found it easy to elude pursuit after a highway robbery. Nay, but a few short years before, and during the York and Lancaster feuds, which had deluged the land with blood; what with disbanded men-at-arms, thieves, and caitiffs of one sort or other, the roads were but cut-throat defiles, and the country round a continued battle-field.
So that during the troublous reign of Henry VI. it had been especially ordered, that between the towns of Coventry, Warwick, and Stratford-upon-Avon, the highways should be widened, by cutting down trees on either hand, in order that travellers and wayfarers might have more room to defend themselves against the numerous robbers and caitiffs infesting those parts.
On the morning following the transactions we have recorded in the foregoing chapter, there were several subjects of interest commented upon and discussed in the little back room which constituted the office of one Pouncet Grasp, the head-lawyer of the town. One was the sojourn of several strangers, whom no one knew anything about, at one of the hostels: another was a dark and alarming rumour of a suspicious sort of illness having broken out in the suburbs: and another was the circumstance of a man, having all the appearance of a person of condition, having been found, stabbed in several places, and lying, with the pockets of his doublet rifled, a stiffened and unhandsome corse, in the road leading to the ferry beyond the church.
Master Pouncet Grasp himself was seated upon a high stool near the window of his office, which looked into a green and bowery garden, having at its further extremity a most pleasant bowling-green; the river just to be distinguished in the distance beyond, amongst the marshy meadows.
Some two or three clerks were seated in different parts of the apartment, all busily engaged, pen in hand, scrawling strange hieroglyphics upon certain sheets of parchment before them, making a dreadful sound of incessant scribbling with their pens.
Master Grasp himself, the monarch of all he surveyed, and an especial tyrant over the unfortunate clerks he presided over, was the only personage in that small apartment who seemed to have freedom of thought and motion, and license to take his attention from the crackling parchments beneath his nose.
If our readers have ever taken the trouble to picture to themselves the clerk of Chatham, with his pen and ink-horn hung round his neck, they will have some idea of the figure of our Stratford lawyer in his own office. Only that, whereas we imagine the clerk of Chatham to have been a sort of dreamy, drawling person, Master Pouncet was rather more swift, sententious, and mercurial. Law had sharpened his wit, irritated his temper, levelled his honesty, and urged his avarice.
Any one to have watched him when alone in his glory, and only seen by his clerks, would have taken him to be half insane. The moment, however, a client or a stranger appeared, he put on a new face and a demeanour suited to the occasion; appearing wise in council, amiable in disposition, and staid and sober in manners, whereas before he had been like a chattering ape irritated with a hot chestnut.
"Now do I wonder who these strangers may be," he said, leaving off his writing and jumping round in his seat; "truly I must run down to goodman Doubletongue and confer with him on the subject. Will Shakespeare," he said, jumping back again, "get thee down to——Ah, I forgot that pestilent Shakespeare hath not been to the office for a whole week. Ah, the caitiff! Oh, the villain! See, too," he said, opening his desk and searching amongst his papers, "the vile rubbish he inditeth when he is here in place of copying what is set before him. What! you grin there, do ye? driving wights that ye are. Grin, my masters, whilst ye work, an ye list. But, an ye leave off to grin, see an I brain ye not with this ruler. Shakespeare—ah, a pretty name that, and a precious hounding scamp is the fellow that owns it. Here's goodly stuff toward! Here's loves of the gods and goddesses for you! Here's Venus, Adonis, Cytherea, hid in the rushes; Proserpina and Pluto, besides half a dozen heathen deities, devils, satyrs, and demigods, all dancing the hays in a lump!" So saying, Pouncet Grasp turned over the leaves of a sort of manuscript poem, written upon a quantity of backs of letters and dirty sheets of paper, and, after glancing through the contents, sent them fluttering and flying at the head of one of his clerks.
"There," said he, "that's the way my ink is spoiled, and my documents destroyed. I suppose now, that your friend and crony there," he continued, addressing himself to the young man at whose head he had thrown the manuscript, "I suppose your unintelligible friend calls that incomprehensible and unaccountable rubbish a sort of rough draught of a poem. I'm not learned in such productions, but methinks he that wrote of such lewd doings ought to be whipped at the cart's tail, or put in the stocks at least."
"I was not aware," said the youth addressed, (and who under cover of his industry had been laughing all the time Master Grasp was reading the poem), "I was not aware William Shakespeare has ever written a poem about the gods."
"Si-lence," cried Grasp, sticking his pen behind his ear and looking fierce, as he wheeled round and faced about, first to one and then to another of his clerks. "Si-lence, ye scoundrel scribblers, or by the Lord Harry——"
The clerk, who knew from experience the irritable nature of his taskmaster, took the hint and redoubled his exertions with the pen and parchment before him, only occasionally, as he stole a furtive glance at his companions and observed the lawyer's attention in another direction, lolling out his tongue or executing a hideous grimace at him.
"I pr'ythee, sirs, inform me," said Grasp, again interrupting the silence he had commanded, "when was that mad-headed ape last in this office?"
"Of whom was it your pleasure to speak?" inquired the youth who had received the compliment of the poem at his head.
"Of whom should I speak, sinner that I am, but of him of whom I last spoke—that incomprehensible, uncontrollable varlet—that scribbler of bad verse—that idle companion of thine?"
"He was here but yesterday," said the lad.
"Yesterday!" said Grasp, "why I saw him not; I heard him not; neither did he indite a line of that I left for him to work at."
"He was fetched away almost as soon as he came," said the lad.
"Fetched away! who should fetch William Shakespeare away I trow, and from my house, without leave, licence, and permission granted from and by me to take the person of the said Shakespeare?"
"Master Walter Arderne, from the Hall, called for him, and they went away together," said the lad.
"Master Arderne, an called for one of my lads here! why what's in the wind now I trow, and why sent ye not to the Falcon for me, ye sinner?"
"He asked not for you, sir," returned the lad, "he asked for William Shakespeare."
"Now the fiend take thee for a stupid dolt," said Grasp; "what an if he did ask for William Shakespeare, of course it was me he wished to confer with; only, as he found I was out, he inquired for the first idiot who had sense enough to take his message, and the chance fell upon the greatest scrape-grace and the most consummate ape in the whole lot.
"Miserable sinner that I am! That varlet hath forgotten to deliver the message he received from Master Arderne. Who knoweth the import of such message, so entrusted, and confided, and given, and—and—lost perhaps for ever?——Ah! and——Peradventure Sir Hugh Clopton hath been seized with apoplexy, and I have been sent for to confer about his will, or mayhap Master Arderne hath wished for my advice, anent drawing up the articles of marriage betwixt himself and that most beautified of young ladies his cousin.——Or, peradventure the match may have been broken off, and he may wish for my advice on the let and hindrance thereof. Nay, it is impossible to say in how much I am deteriorated and damaged, both in purse, person, and