little volume. With this explanation, which will advise the reader of one of the things he is to criticise, the study is respectfully submitted to an over-kind public.

HARTFORD, June 1, 1897.

C. D. W.

The People

for whom

Shakespeare Wrote

CHAPTER I

QUEEN ELIZABETH being dead about ten o'clock in the morning, March 24, 1603, Sir Robert Cary posted away, unsent, to King James of Scotland to inform him of the "accident"; and got made a baron of the realm for his ride. On his way down to take possession. of his new kingdom the king distributed the honor of knighthood right and left liberally; at Theobald's he created eight-and-twenty knights, of whom Sir Richard Baker, afterwards the author

of "A Chronicle of the Kings of England," was one. "God knows how many hundreds he made the first year," says the chronicler, "but it was indeed fit to give vent to the passage of Honour, which during Queen Elizabeth's reign had been so stopped that scarce any county of England had knights enow to make a jury."

Sir Richard Baker was born in 1568, and died in 1645; his "Chronicle" appeared in 1641. It was brought down to the death of James in 1625, when, he having written the introduction to the life of Charles I., the storm of the season caused him to "break off in amazement," for he had thought the race of "Stewards" likely to continue to the "world's end"; and he never resumed his pen. In the reign of James two things lost their lustre-the exercise of tilting, which Elizabeth made a special