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Updated: June 4, 2025
It was surely this continual presence of "men of worship," this atmosphere of admiration and respect and trust, in which Shakespeare must have lived, which tamed down the wild self-will of the deer-stealing fugitive from Stratford, into the calm large-eyed philosopher, tolerant and loving, and full of faith in a species made in the likeness of God. Not so with Burns.
He had a large, but not, I think, very remunerative practice amongst the poaching, deer-stealing, smuggling community of those parts, to whom it was of vital importance that the hurts received in their desperate pursuits should be tended by some one not inclined to babble of the number, circumstances, or whereabouts of his patients.
The exploit, however, had nearly involved disastrous consequences; for the crew of juvenile depredators were captured, like Shakespeare and his deer-stealing colleagues, and nothing but the respectability of Goldsmith's connections saved him from the punishment that would have awaited more plebeian delinquents.
Deer he had taken; and the whole tale of the deer-stealing, which was a common offence in that part of Wiltshire down to about 1834, sounds strange at the present day. Large herds of deer were kept at that time at an estate a few miles from Winterbourne Bishop, and it often happened that many of the animals broke bounds and roamed singly and in small bands over the hills.
I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim's devotion, but I had a desire to see the old family seat of the Lucy's at Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in company with some of the roisterers of Stratford, committed his youthful offense of deer-stealing.
As soon as the first fury of the storm had subsided and given place to common sense, a plan was devised for immediate and ample vengeance; the daring culprit should be seized, and, as he could now be easily convicted of deer-stealing, should be transferred to the hands of justice, and thence, after all due formalities, to Bremerholm.
The different courts, gateways, and gables, are therefore most picturesque. The former is the most interesting of all the apartments, for here one stands in the very room where Shakespeare is said to have been questioned by the pompous Sir Thomas Lucy, after the deer-stealing episode.
"As one having authority, a head and shoulders above him and all his prating, just as you would talk to your every-day next neighbor, read him without any fear of his old deer-stealing ghost? Why, Miriam, he knew himself better than we knew him. He had no more idea of being a genius than you have! He was a sort of artesian well of a man, and could not help spouting platitudes, that was all.
"'He looks marvellously like Arnold Sheafe, who was outlawed for deer-stealing, said Osmond Crooke, regarding him steadfastly. "'I am no outlaw, neither am I called Arnold Sheafe, replied the other. 'My name is Philip Urswick, and I can render a good account of myself when it shall please the king's highness to interrogate me.
He sometimes talked with all the unction of an old debauchee, of former exploits, such as deer-stealing, orchard-robbing, drunken gambols, and desperate affrays in which he had been engaged in the earlier part of his life, sung bacchanalian and amorous ditties, dwelt sometimes upon adventures which drove Phoebe Mayflower from the company, and penetrated even the deaf ears of Dame Jellicot, so as to make the buttery in which he held his carousals no proper place for the poor old woman.
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