Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/326

 "LUSTY" STUCLEY

F Devonshire has turned out a number, and a very considerable number, of gallant and honourable gentlemen, she has also given birth to some great scoundrels, and one of these was Thomas Stucley or Stukeley.

His life was worked out with great pains and elaboration by the late Richard Simpson in his School of Shakespeare, London, 1878. Indeed, it occupies one hundred and thirty-nine pages in the first volume of that work. To give the biography at all fully here is not possible, space is not at one's disposal for all details; it is also unnecessary, since that exhaustive account by Simpson is accessible to every one. The utmost we can do is to give a summary of the chief events of his chequered career. Captain Thomas Stucley was the third son of Sir Hugh Stucley, of Affeton in the parish of West Worlington, near Chumleigh. Hugh Stucley, the father of our Thomas, was Sheriff of Devon in 1544; his wife was Jane, daughter of Sir Lewis Pollard. Sir Hugh died in 1560.

The eldest son, Lewis Stucley, was aged thirty at the death of his father. He became standard-bearer to Queen Elizabeth.

It was rumoured during the life of Thomas that he was an illegitimate son of Henry VIII, like Sir John Perrot. "Stucley's birth," says Mr. Simpson, "must have occurred at the time when the King, tired of his 262