Page:Notes and Queries - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/14

4 of hunger, a watch, a purse of gold, a small treatise on fortification, an album filled with songs, receipts, prayers, and charms, and the George with which, many years before, King Charles the Second had decorated his favourite son."—Hist. Eng. i. pp. 616—618. 2nd edition.

Now, this is all extremely admirable. It is a brilliant description of an important historical incident. But on what precise spot did it take place? One would like to endeavour to realise such an event at the very place where it occurred, and the historian should enable us to do so. I believe the spot is very well known, and that the traditions of the neighbourhood upon the subject are still vivid. It was near Woodyate's Inn, a well-known roadside inn, a few miles from Salisbury, on the road to Blandford, that the Duke and his companions turned adrift their horses. From thence they crossed the country in almost a due southerly direction. The tract of land in which the Duke took refuge is rightly described by Mr. Macaulay, as "separated by an inclosure from the open country." Its nature is no less clearly indicated by its local name of "The Island." The open down which surrounds it is called Shag's Heath. The Island is described as being about a mile and a half from Woodlands, and in the parish of Horton, in Dorsetshire. The field in which the Duke concealed himself is still called "Monmouth Close." It is at the north-eastern extremity of the Island. An ash-tree, at the foot of which the would-be-king was found crouching in a ditch and half hid under the fern, was standing a few years ago, and was deeply indented with the carved initials of crowds of persons who had been to visit it. Mr. Macaulay has mentioned that the fields were covered—it was the eighth of July—with standing crops of rye, pease, and oats. In one of them, a field of pease, tradition tells us that the Duke dropped a gold snuff-box. It was picked up some time afterwards by a labourer, who carried it to Mrs. Uvedale of Horton, probably the proprietor of the field, and received in reward fifteen pounds, which was said to be half its value. On his capture, the Duke was first taken to the house of Anthony Etterick, Esq., a magistrate who resided at Holt, which adjoins Horton. Tradition, which records the popular feeling rather than the fact, reports, that the poor woman who informed the pursuers that she had seen two strangers lurking in the—Island her name was Amy Farrant—never prospered afterwards; and that Henry Parkin, the soldier, who, spying the skirt of the smockfrock which the Duke had assumed as a disguise, recalled the searching party just as they were leaving the Island, burst into tears and reproached himself bitterly for his fatal discovery.

It is a defect in the Ordnance Survey, that neither the Island nor Monmouth Close is indicated upon it by name.

I know not, Mr. Editor, whether these particulars are of the kind which you design to print as "." If they are so, and you give them place in your miscellany, be good enough to add a "" addressed to your Dorsetshire correspondents, as to whether the ash-tree is now standing, and what is the actual condition of the spot at the present time. The facts I have stated are partly derived from the book known as Addison's Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 12. 1794, 8vo. They have been used, more or less, by the late Rev. P. Hall, in his Account of Ringwood, and by Mr. Roberts, in his Life of Monmouth.

With the best of good wishes for the success of your most useful periodical,

Yours very truly, .

In "The Life of Shakespeare," prefixed to the edition of his Works I saw through the press three or four years ago, I necessarily entered into the deer-stealing question, admitting that I could not, as some had done, "entirely discredit the story," and following it up by proof (in opposition to the assertion of Malone), that Sir Thomas Lucy had deer, which Shakespeare might have been concerned in stealing. I also, in the same place (vol. i. p. xcv.), showed, from several authorities, how common and how venial offence it was considered in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. Looking over some MSS. of that time, a few weeks since, I met with a very singular and confirmatory piece of evidence, establishing that in the year 1585, the precise period when our great dramatist is supposed to have made free with the deer of