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 smock-frock 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 "NOTES." If they are so, and you give them place in your miscellany, be good enough to add a "QUERY" 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, Believe me, Mr. Editor, Yours very truly, JOHN BRUCE. * * * * * SHAKESPEARE AND DEER-STEALING. In "The Life of Shakespeare," prefixed to the edition of his Works I saw through the press three of 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 the knight of Charlcote, nearly all the cooks'-shops and ordinaries of London were supplied with stolen venison. The following letter from the lord mayor (which I copy from the original) of that day, Thomas Pullyson, to secretary Walsingham, speaks for itself, and shows that the matter has been deemed of so much important as to call for the interposition of the Privy Council: the city authorities were required to take instant and arbitrary measures for putting an end to the consumption of venison and to the practice of deer-stealing, by means of which houses &c. of public resort in London were furnished with that favourite viand. The letter of