The leading qualifications for the author of Shakespeare’s Plays to possess are summed up on the medallion of Sir Anthony Sherley’s picture, Antonius Sherleyus Anglus Eques aurati (Annals of the Shirley Family, second edition, p. 297, “Multorum mores hominum qui vidit et urbes”), and it was his and his alone to fulfil them to the letter. He must have a familiarity with sylvan life, its beauties, its copses, and its ferns and flowers; must have mixed in youthful sports, hawked, _hunted the hare_, and chased the roe and conies in his father’s park at Wiston (there is an ancient picture of the Lord of the Manor there, issuing forth on a sporting expedition, p. 264). He no doubt visited Chartley (Erdeswick’s Staffordshire). “The park is very large and hath therein red deer, fallow deer, wild beasts, and swine,” passed on to Tamworth, the ancient seat of Ferrers family (see Shirley Annals, p. 183). “In the principal chamber is a very noble chimney piece of dark oak, reaching to the ceiling, carved with the story of Venus and Adonis, and the arms of Ferrers and the motto, {20} ‘_only one_.’” May be the young Southampton was with him there. His education must have been liberal—Oxford, Hart and All Souls’ Colleges—he was at them both. He must have studied at the bar and had great legal knowledge—“Inns of Court” gave him that. English court life, its pageants, its courtiers, he knew them well. Camps he had commanded at Zutphen. His friends and kinsmen were Essex, Lord Southampton, the latter to whom he dedicated his Venus and Adonis, had like himself married a sister Vernon, a cousin of Lord Essex. The fickleness of sovereigns he had felt, he had in some way offended Elizabeth, and that spiteful woman never him forgave; she cut off his kinsman Essex’s head and stole his books. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” _Val_ to _Duke_: “These banished men that I have kept withal, Are men endued with worthy qualities, Forgive them what they have committed here, And let them be recalled from their exile: They are reformed, civil, full of good, And fit for great employment.” Sherley Brothers, p. 27, to Sir Cecill, “his whole object being if possible to conciliate the Queen, and to obtain leave to return to England. Elizabeth however remained inexorable.”—A.D. 1600. P. 34. Venice, “which city remained his head quarters for some years.”—1601. P. 50. A.D. 1605.—“Four months abode in Saphia, kept open house . . .; to supply his own turn for money he got credit of Jews to take up money, and pay them in moriscos, but at an excessive rate, almost fifty for an hundred.”