This draft is undated. But it was prepared during a plague, and located the Queen’s men at the Boar’s Head; and as they may reasonably be supposed to have exchanged the Boar’s Head for the Red Bull (q.v.) before the plague of 1606 began, it may be conjecturally assigned to that of 1603–4. Probably it never passed the Great Seal, for if it had there would have been no necessity, so far as one can judge, for a later patent of 15 April 1609, which is on the rolls, and which closely follows the earlier draft in its terms, except that it omits the reference to the plague, names the Red Bull instead of the Boar’s Head as one of the company’s regular houses, and adds a saving clause for the rights of the Master of the Revels. Here is the text:[654]

It will be observed that the documents quoted disclose no change in the composition of the Queen’s official servants between 1604 and 1609. But the question of personnel is not really quite so simple as this, since the members of a company under a trade agreement were not always the same as those named in the authority under which it performed. Before discussing this complication, it will be simplest first to set out separately the notices of the Queen’s men, which have been preserved in London and in provincial records respectively.

Queen’s men played at Court on 30 December 1605, in Heywood’s How to Learn of a Woman to Woo, which is not extant. They played also on 27 December 1606. For both years their payee was, as in 1604, John Duke. During 1607 Dekker and Webster’s Sir Thomas Wyatt and Day, Wilkins, and Rowley’s Travels of Three English Brothers were printed with their name on the title-pages. The latter play, according to the entry of 29 June 1607 in the Stationers’ Register, was acted at the Curtain. But it is shown by a passage in The Knight of the Burning Pestle to have been also on the stage of the Red Bull. In this house Thomas Swinnerton, one of the men named in the patents, acquired an interest between 24 March 1605 and 23 March 1606, and all the evidence is in favour of a continuous sojourn of Queen’s men there until 1617. The first quarto of Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, also printed in 1607, does not bear their name, but it is on that of the ‘third edition’ of 1617. They are not named as playing at Court during the winter of 1607–8, but in the course of 1608 Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece was printed, as played by them at the Red Bull. They gave five plays at Court in the winter of 1608–9, one on 27 December 1609, three on 10 and one on 27 December 1610. Heywood’s Golden Age was printed, as played by them at the Red Bull, in 1611. The Court records of 1611–12 are a little confused.[655] But they appear to have played Cooke’s City Gallant on 27 December, his Tu Quoque, which is in fact the same play, on 2 February, to have joined with the King’s men in performances of Heywood’s Silver Age and Rape of Lucrece on 12 and 13 January, and to have played unnamed pieces on 21 and 23 January. From 1609 to 1612 their payee was Thomas Greene. Webster’s White Devil and Dekker’s If It be not Good, the Devil is in It, were printed as theirs in 1612, the former with a laudation of the acting of ‘my freind Maister Perkins’, the latter as played at the Red Bull. They did not play at Court during the winter of 1612–13, but did on 24 December 1613 and 5 January 1614. Tu Quoque was printed as theirs in 1614. In the winter of 1614–15 they gave three plays at Court. Heywood’s Four Prentices of London was printed in 1615 as played by them at the Red Bull, and their name is also on The Honest Lawyer, registered on 14 August 1615 and printed in 1616. They gave four plays at Court during the winter of 1615–16. For all their Court plays from 1613–16 Robert Lee was payee, but Ellis Worth replaces him for a Somerset House performance before Queen Anne on 17 December 1615. When they were called with other companies before the Privy Council on 29 March 1615 to answer for playing in Lent, they were represented by Lee and Christopher Beeston. The records of the Middlesex justices contain a note of 4 October 1616 that Beeston and the rest of the players at the Red Bull were in arrears to the extent of £5 on an annual rate of £2 agreed to by them for the repair of the highways.

Provincial visits of Queen’s men are recorded in November 1605 at Dover; in 1605 at Leicester; in 1605–6 at Bath, Coventry, Saffron Walden, and Weymouth; on 25 July 1606 at Ipswich; on 4 September 1606 at Ludlow; in 1606 at York; in 1606–7 at Bath (twice), Coventry, Exeter, and Ipswich; on 14 August 1607 at Oxford; on 12 September 1607 at Belvoir (Earl of Rutland’s);[656] in 1607 at Barnstaple, Leicester, and Reading; in 1607–8 at Coventry, Oxford, Reading, and Shrewsbury; on 6 June and 26 September 1608 at Leicester;[657] in 1608–9 at Coventry,[658] Marlborough, and Shrewsbury; between 8 July and 9 August 1609 at Dover; on 15 October 1609 at Norwich; in 1609 at Canterbury; in 1609–10 at Shrewsbury and Stafford; about 23 March 1610 at Maidstone; on 2 November 1610 at Ipswich; on 31 December 1610 at Leicester; in 1610–11 at Shrewsbury and Southampton; on 27 February 1611 (for a week) at Norwich; between 11 April and 9 May and between 29 August and 29 September 1612 at Dover; on 14 June and 26 October 1612 at Leicester; in 1611–12 at Saffron Walden; in 1612–13 at Barnstaple, Coventry (perhaps twice), and Ipswich; on 18 February 1613 at Marlborough; on 16 March 1613 at Leicester; between 13 April and 15 May 1613 at Dover; on 2 November 1613 at Marlborough; on 22 December 1613 at Leicester; in 1613–14 at Saffron Walden, Marlborough, Oxford, and Shrewsbury; on 27 April 1614 (for three days) at Norwich;[659] between 3 and 29 September 1614 at Dover; in 1614–15 at Barnstaple and Doncaster (perhaps twice); on 15 April 1615 at Coventry; in April or May 1615 at Leicester; on 6 May 1615 at Norwich;[660] on 16 October 1615 and again later in 1615 and on 22 February 1616 at Leicester;[661] on 7 November 1615 at Marlborough; in 1615–16 at Barnstaple, Dunwich (thrice), Southampton, and Weymouth; in January 1616 at Nottingham; between 20 January and 17 February 1616 and between 11 May and 8 June at Dover; on 17 February 1616 at Coventry; on 22 February 1616 at Leicester; between 1 and 6 April (four days) and on 29 May 1616 at Norwich;[662] on 26 October 1616 at Marlborough; and on 6 February 1617 and again later in 1617 at Leicester.[663]

There were thus tours in each year, which sometimes extended over periods during which the London theatres must have been open. The Leicester notices of 1608, 1615, and 1617 suggest that more than one company was at work, and the explanation certainly is that some of the players named in the patent, instead of joining the London organization, had recourse to making up companies of their own for provincial purposes. Of this there is further evidence. The Southampton archives contain a copy of the following warrant from Queen Anne herself, dated on 7 March 1606:[664]

Of these three men, Lee, and Lee alone, appears in the London lists of 1603, 1604, and 1609. Of Barfield’s career nothing more is known. Martin Slater, whose name can be divined under that of Statier, had left the Admiral’s in 1597. He was probably in Scotland during 1599, and if so his patronage by Anne may be analogous to the patronage by James, which brought Laurence Fletcher’s name into the King’s men’s patent. In 1603 he was payee for Hertford’s men. Presumably the enterprise of 1606 did not last long, for in the spring of 1608 Slater became manager for the King’s Revels. His place in the provinces may have been taken by Thomas Swinnerton, who was leading a company of Queen’s men at Coventry in 1608–9, and whose departure from the London company is perhaps indicated by the fact that at about the same time he sold a share, which he had held in the house of the Red Bull. Swinnerton was travelling again in 1614–16 and using an exemplification of the patent of 1609. In 1616 he was accompanied by Robert Lee, who for two years before had been acting as payee for the London company. Lee came again with the exemplification to Norwich on 31 May 1617, and it was then noted to have been taken out on 7 January 1612. A few days later, on 4 June 1617, a copy was entered in the Norwich court books of a warrant by the Lord Chamberlain of 16 July 1616, condemning the use of such exemplifications, and specifying amongst others two taken out by Thomas Swinnerton and Martin Slater, ‘beinge two of the Queens Maiesties company of Playors hauing separated themselves from their said Company’.[665] Slater had, therefore, returned to the provincial field, and there were now two travelling companies of Queen’s men. I take it that in 1617 the Lord Chamberlain succeeded in suppressing them, and that the Queen’s men who continued to appear in the provinces up to Anne’s death on 2 March 1619 were the London company.[666] Lee joined the Queen’s Revels as reorganized under a licence of 31 October 1617. Slater, about the same time, joined the Children of Bristol, for whom, with John Edmonds and Nathaniel Clay, he got letters of assistance in April 1618. In these all three are described as her Majesty’s servants. Swinnerton apparently succeeded in keeping on foot a company of his own, which visited Leicester in 1619.[667] The Bristol company was in fact under Anne’s patronage, but Lee and Swinnerton, no less than Slater and Edmonds, remained technically the Queen’s servants, and are included with the London men in a list of the players who received mourning at her funeral on 13 May 1619.[668] These were Robert Lee, Richard Perkins, Christopher Beeston, Robert Pallant, Thomas Heywood, James Holt, Thomas Swinnerton, Martin Slater, Ellis Wroth, John Comber, Thomas Basse, John Blaney, William Robinson, John Edmonds, Thomas Drewe, Gregory Sanderson, and John Garret.

The list of seventeen names includes seven of the ten patentees of 1609. I do not know what had become of John Duke and Robert Beeston. Thomas Greene had died in August 1612, having made on 25 July a will, amongst the witnesses to which were Christopher Beeston, Heywood, and Perkins. The disposal of his property led many years afterwards to a lawsuit, which gives valuable information as to both the personnel and the organization of the London company. After providing for his family and making some small legacies, including one to John Cumber, and 40s. to ‘my fellowes of the house of the Redd Bull, to buy gloves for them’, he left the residue to his widow and executrix, Susanna Greene, formerly wife of one Browne.[669] In June 1613 she took a third husband, James Baskervile. The following is her account in 1623 of certain transactions with the company. Shortly before Greene’s death had died George Pulham, a ‘half sharer’ in the company, which is described as being in 1612 ‘the companie of the actors or players of the late queenes majestie Queene Anne, then vsuallie frequentinge and playinge att the signe of the Redd Bull in St. Johns Street, in Clerkenwell parishe, in the county of Middlesex’. His representatives received £40 from the company in respect of his half-share. This was under an agreement formerly made amongst the company ‘concerninge the part and share of euerie one of the sharers and half sharers of the said companie according to the rate and proporcion of their shares or half shares in that behalfe’. Under the same agreement Susanna Greene, whose husband was ‘one of the principall and cheif persons of the said companie, and a full adventurer, storer and sharer of in and amongst them’, claimed £80, together with £37 laid out by him before his death in ‘diuers necessarie prouisions’ for the company. In order to get satisfaction she had to appeal to Viscount Lisle, Chamberlain of the Queen’s Household, ‘who hadd a kind of gouernment and suruey ouer the said players’. It was arranged that Mrs. Greene should receive a half-share in the profits until the debt was paid. By the time, however, of her marriage with Baskervile, she had only received £6. In June 1615 negotiations took place between the Baskerviles and the company, who then included Worth, Perkins, and Christopher Hutchinson, alias Beeston, by which the Baskerviles agreed to invest £57 10s. in the enterprise and to accept in discharge of their claims a pension for their joint lives of 1s. 8d. a day ‘for euerye of sixe daies in the weeke wherin they should play’. The company defaulted, and in June 1616 a second settlement was made, whereby the Baskerviles invested another £38, a further pension of 2s. a day was established, and the life of Susan’s son, Francis Browne (or Baskervile), was substituted for her husband’s. The players were Christopher Beeston, Thomas Heywood, Ellis Worth, John Cumber, John Blaney, Francis Walpole, Robert Reynolds, William Robins, Thomas Drewe, and Emanuel Read.[670] Again they defaulted, and moreover fell into arrear for the wages of another of Susan Baskervile’s sons, William Browne, who played with them as a hired man. A third settlement, reassuring the pensions, and substituting William Browne for Francis, who was now dead, was made on 3 June 1617, when the company were ‘now comme, or shortlie to comme from the said Playhowse called the Redd Bull to the Playhowse in Drurie Lane called the Cockpitt’; and to this the parties, so far as the company were concerned, were Beeston, Heywood, Worth, Cumber, Walpole, Blaney, Robins, and Drewe. Apparently Reynolds and Read, and also Perkins and Thomas Basse, although their names were recited in the deed, refused to seal. Some further light is thrown on this by allegations of Worth, Cumber, and Blaney, in opposition to those of Mrs. Baskervile in 1623. The company of 1617 contained some members ‘new come into’ it, ‘which were of other companyes at the tyme of graunting the first annuity’. The terms of the agreement were carefully looked into, and were found to bind the company to procure the subscription of any future new members to its terms. This was inconsistent with a proviso of 1616 that the pensions should only last so long as four of those then signing should play together; and therefore, while some of the company signed and gave bonds by way of security on an oral promise by Mrs. Baskervile that this proviso should in fact hold good, others refused to do so. These were the wiser, for in 1623, when Worth, Cumber, and Blaney were the only three of the 1617 signatories who still held together, Mrs. Baskervile sued them on their bonds, and although they applied to Chancery for equitable enforcement of the alleged oral promise, Chancery held that the agreement, being made between players, was ‘vnfitt to be releeued or countenaunced in a courte of equitie’. In some other respects the players’ account of the transactions differs from Mrs. Baskervile’s, and in particular they alleged that the Baskerviles had secured their interest by bribing Beeston, to whom ‘your oratours and the rest of thier fellowes at that tyme and long before and since did put the managing of thier whole businesses and affaires belonging vnto them ioyntly as they were players in trust’, so that she knew well that whatever he promised the rest ‘would allowe of the same’. This Mrs. Baskervile repudiates as regards the bribe, and does not wholly accept as regards Beeston’s position in the company, although she admits that both before and after her husband’s death they ‘did putt much affiance in the said Huttchinson alias Beeston, concerninge the managing of their affaires’.

I am afraid that Beeston’s character does not come altogether unstained out of another suit brought by one John Smith in the Court of Requests during 1619 for a sum of £46 5s. 8d. in respect of ‘tinsell stuffes and other stuffe’ delivered on Beeston’s order to Worth, Perkins, Cumber, and others at the Red Bull between 27 June 1612 and 23 February 1617, since when they had ‘fallen at variance and strife amongst themselves and separated and devided themselves into other companies.’ He accuses these four men of conspiring to keep him out of payment. Worth, Perkins, and Cumber asserted that the liability was Beeston’s. The company had ‘required divers officers and that every of the said actors should take vpon them some place & charge’. Beeston was charged with the provision of furniture and apparel, which needed ‘a thriueing man & one that was of abilitie & meanes’. He was to ‘defaulke outt of the colleccions and gatheringes which were made continually when-soeuer any playe was acted a certen some of money as a comon stock.’ to pay for purchases out of this, and to account to the company for the balance. No one else was privy to his transactions. The arrangement lasted for seven or eight years, and they believe that he ‘much enritched himself and rendered a false account for expenditure of £400. He is now conspiring with Smith and hoping for a chance to ‘exclayme on’ them. If he incurred debt, he had certainly taken funds to meet it. From the beginning he had ‘a greater care for his owne privatt gaine’. Now he has ‘of late given over his coate & condicion & separated and devided himself’ from the company, carrying away all the furniture and apparel. Beeston says that he has long been ill. On Queen Anne’s death he left the company and joined Prince Charles’s men. The Queen’s had ten sharers, and sometimes one, sometimes another, provided the clothes. He denies liability. Several witnesses, including William Freshwater, merchant tailor and ‘a workman to the said company’, spoke to Beeston’s liability.[671] One John King says that the company allowed Beeston ‘one half of the profitt that came of the gallyryes’, and that they began to break up about three years ago. At a hearing on 16 June 1620 Beeston got the case deferred on the ground that Emanuel Read, a material witness, was in Ireland until Michaelmas. Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Perkins, said that Read had been there for two or three years, was over at Easter, and was not expected again. Smith got in a blow at Beeston’s credit with an affidavit that he had said ‘it was nothing for him to put in a false answere into the Court of Requestes, for that it was not punishable’. The result of the suit is unknown.

We may perhaps reach the following conclusions as to the composition of the London company after the deaths in 1612 of Pulham, presumably a recent comer since 1609, and Greene. Their nucleus consisted of two of the patented men, Christopher Beeston and Heywood, who probably remained with them throughout. Of the other patentees, Swinnerton kept to the provinces. Lee had rejoined them from the provinces by 1613 or 1614, and went back to the provinces about May 1616. Perkins was apparently not of their number in June 1616, but was in June 1617. Holt is not traceable; perhaps he also went to the provinces. Pallant joined the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1614 and had passed to Prince Charles’s by 1616. All these five men, however, appear with Beeston and Heywood as Anne’s servants at her funeral. Here too are Slater and Edmonds, then of the Bristol, and apparently never of the London company; also Worth, Cumber, Blaney, Drewe, and Robinson, presumably identical with Robins, all of whom had joined the London company by June 1616, Basse, formerly of the Lady Elizabeth’s, who joined it between June 1616 and June 1617, and Gregory Sanderson and John Garret, who, if they belonged to the London company at all, must have joined it after June 1617.[672] The list does not contain the names of two men who belonged to the company in 1616 and 1617. One was Emanuel Read, who joined it from the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1613 or later; the other, Robert Reynolds, whose attachment to the company must have been rather loose, as he was travelling in Germany in July 1616 and again in 1618. Evidently, as the lawsuits suggest, the organization of the Queen’s men during its later years was rather unstable. Into its attempts to hold together after Anne’s death and the after-careers of its members, it is not necessary to go.

In June 1617 the Queen’s were come, or shortly to come, from the Red Bull to the Cockpit. In fact they were at the Cockpit, then a new house, on 4 March 1617, when it was sacked by prentices in a Shrovetide riot.[673] But they may have returned to the Red Bull for a time, while the Cockpit was being repaired, as they did again after they lost it on the separation from Christopher Beeston, who seems to have been its owner, in 1619.

xxii. THE DUKE OF LENNOX’S MEN

The first notice of Lennox’s men is on 13 October 1604, when he gave an open warrant of assistance in their behalf addressed to mayors, justices, and other local officers, some of whom had apparently refused the company permission to play (App. D, no. cxxxvii). On 16 March 1605 Francis Henslowe gave his uncle Philip a bond of £60 to observe articles of an agreement he had entered into with John Garland and Abraham Savere ‘his ffellowes, servantes to the most noble Prince the duke of Lennox’; and on 1 March 1605 Savere had given Francis Henslowe a power of attorney to recover £40 on a forfeited bond from John Garland of ‘the ould forde’, securing delivery of a warrant made to Savere by Lennox (Henslowe Papers, 62). Some other traces point to a connexion between Savere and Francis Henslowe, which was ended by the latter’s death in the middle of 1606 (Henslowe, ii. 277), and an undated loan of £7 by Philip Henslowe to his nephew ‘to goyne with owld Garlland and Symcockes and Saverey when they played in the duckes nam at ther laste goinge owt’ (Henslowe, i. 160) makes it possible to add one more to the list of the company. It does not seem to have played in London, but is traceable at Canterbury in 1603–4, Barnstaple, Coventry, and Norwich in 1604–5, and Coventry again in 1607–8. Both Garland and Henslowe had been Queen Elizabeth’s men, and it is possible that, when these men were left stranded by her death in 1603, they found a new patron in Lennox. John Garland had joined the Duke of York’s men by 1610, and it has been suggested that this company may have been a continuation of Lennox’s.

xxiii. THE DUKE OF YORK’S (PRINCE CHARLES’S) MEN
The Duke of York’s Men (1608–12); The Prince’s Men (1612–16)

A company under the patronage of Prince Charles, then Duke of York, first makes its appearance during 1608, and in the provinces. A visit of ‘the younger princes’ men to Ipswich is recorded on 20 October. During 1608–9 the company was also at Bath, and it is at least possible that it was ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple London’ rewarded at Leicester in 1608. The Boar’s Head (q.v.) may have been roughly spoken of as in Whitechapel, and although there is no proof that the Duke of York’s men occupied it after the Queen’s moved to the Red Bull, there is nothing to connect them during the earlier years of their career with any of the better-known London houses. On 30 March 1610 they received, like other London companies, a patent, of which the following are the terms:[674]

The only member of the Duke of York’s men, of whose previous history anything is known, is John Garland. He was of the Duke of Lennox’s men in 1605. Perhaps the whole company was taken over from the Duke of Lennox. Mr. Fleay says that the Duke of York’s men arose ‘immediately after the disappearance of the King’s Revels Children’,[675] and appears to suggest a continuity between the two companies; but he must have overlooked the fact that the Duke of York’s were already performing in the provinces, while the King’s Revels were in all probability still at Whitefriars.[676]

Some reconstruction doubtless took place about the date of the issue of the patent, for the pleadings in the equity suit of Taylor v. Hemynges in 1612 recites an agreement of 15 March 1610, which provided for the continuance of fellowship during three years and the forfeiture of the interest in a common stock of ‘apparrell goodes money and other thinges’ of any member, who left without the consent of the rest. It was made between Garland on the one side and Taylor, Rowley, Dawes, and Hobbes on the other, and these four gave Garland a bond of £200 as security. On 8 May the five bought some ‘olde clothes or apparrell which formerly weare players clothes or apparrell’ from John Heminges of the King’s men for £11, and gave a bond of £20 for payment. Apparently payment had not been made by Easter 1611, when Taylor ‘by the licence and leave of his said Master the Duke vpon some speciall reason ... did give over and leave to play in the company’. Under the agreement the apparel passed to his fellows, and according to Taylor they paid Heminges the £11 or otherwise satisfied him, and then ‘havinge conceaued some vndeserued displeasure’ against Taylor for leaving them, conspired with Heminges to defraud him of £20 on the bond. According to Heminges no payment was made, and he sued Taylor as ‘the best able to paye and discharge the same’. Taylor was arrested and in February 1612 brought his suit in equity to stay the common law proceedings. The result is unknown.

The company frequently played at Court, but, as it would seem, only before the younger members of the royal family. Their first appearance was before Charles and Elizabeth on 9 February 1610. In 1610–11 they were at Saffron Walden. They came before Charles and Elizabeth on 12 and 20 December 1610 and 15 January 1611, and before Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth on 12 and 28 January and 13 and 24 February 1612. On this last occasion they played William Rowley’s Hymen’s Holiday, or Cupid’s Vagaries. After Henry’s death, on 7 November 1612, they became entitled to the designation of the Prince’s players. In 1612–13 they were at Barnstaple and Ipswich. On 2 and 10 March 1613 they gave the two parts of The Knaves, perhaps by Rowley, before Charles, Elizabeth, and the Palsgrave. In 1613–14 they were at Barnstaple, Dover, Saffron Walden, and Coventry. They were not at Court for the winter of 1613–14. In November 1614 they were at Oxford, Leicester, and Nottingham. At the Christmas of 1614–15 they gave six plays before Charles, and on 11 February they were at Youghal in Ireland. Ten days later R. A.’s The Valiant Welshman was entered and in the course of the year published as theirs. Their leader seems to have been Rowley. He both wrote plays for them and acted as payee for all their court rewards from 1610 to 1614. In 1611 they lost Taylor and in 1614 Dawes to the Lady Elizabeth’s men; and these transferences seem to have led to a temporary amalgamation of the two companies, which Mr. Fleay and Dr. Greg place in 1614, but for which their distinct appearances at Court in the following winter suggest 1615 as the more likely date.[677] On 29 March 1615 William Rowley and John Newton were called with representatives of other companies before the Privy Council to answer for playing in Lent. No separate representation of the Lady Elizabeth’s is indicated by the list. In 1614–15 the Prince’s were at Norwich, Coventry, Winchester, and Barnstaple. In the winter of 1615–16 they gave four plays before Prince Charles, and the payee was not Rowley, but Alexander Foster, formerly of the Lady Elizabeth’s. Rosseter’s patent of 3 June 1615 for a second Blackfriars theatre contemplates its use by the Prince’s men and the Lady Elizabeth’s, as well as by the Queen’s Revels, and Field’s Amends for Ladies was actually played in the Blackfriars, probably in this house before it was suppressed, by the two first-named companies. After Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616, the combination, whatever its nature, was probably broken up, and separate companies of Prince’s men and Lady Elizabeth’s men were again formed. But both of the original companies continued to be represented in one which remained at the Hope. This is shown by an agreement entered into with Alleyn and Meade on 20 March 1616, and signed in the presence of Robert Daborne and others by William Rowley, Robert Pallant, Joseph Taylor, Robert Hamlen, John Newton, William Barksted, Thomas Hobbes, Antony Smith, William Penn, and Hugh Attwell.[678] This recites that the signatories and others had given bonds to Henslowe and Meade for the repayment of sums lent them by Henslowe, for a stock of apparel worth £400, and for the fulfilment of certain Articles of Agreement; and that at their entreaty Alleyn had agreed to accept £200 in discharge of their full liabilities. They covenant to pay the £200 by making over to Alleyn one-fourth of the daily takings of the whole galleries at the Hope or any house in which they may play, and to carry out the Articles with Alleyn and Meade by so playing. Alleyn and Meade agree to cancel the bonds when the £200 is paid, except any which may relate to private debts of any of the men to Henslowe, and also to make over to them any apparel which they had received from Henslowe, Alleyn, or Meade. The rights of Alleyn and Meade against any bondsmen not taking part in the new agreement are to remain unaffected. That the signatories to this document used the name of Prince Charles’s men seems pretty clear from the reappearance of several of their names in two later lists of the Prince’s men, one in Rowley and Middleton’s Mask of Heroes (1619), the other in the records of King James’s funeral on 20 May 1625.[679] This last contains also the name of Gilbert Reason, who is not one of the signatories of 1616, but was in that year travelling the provinces with an irregularly obtained exemplification of the 1610 patent.[680] An undated letter from Pallant, Rowley, Taylor, Newton, Hamlen, Attwell, and Smith to Alleyn, which may belong to some time in 1616 or 1617, shows that, in spite of the easy terms which the company seem to have received by the agreement, the subsequent relations were not altogether smooth. They write to excuse their removal from the Bankside, where they had stood the intemperate weather, until ‘more intemperate Mr. Meade thrust vs over, taking the day from vs w^ch by course was ours’. They ask Alleyn to find them a house and in the meantime to lend them £40, on the security that ‘we haue to receiue from the court (w^ch after Shrouetide wee meane to pursue w^th best speede) a great summe of monie’, amounting to more than twice the loan desired.[681] It is to be presumed that the ‘course’ to which they refer was some distribution of days between playing and bear-baiting. In 1619 the company was joined by Christopher Beeston, formerly of the Queen’s, and his house of the Cockpit became available for their use.

xxiv. THE LADY ELIZABETH’S MEN

This company seems to have come into existence in 1611 under the following patent of 27 March:[682]

The company is first traceable in the country, at Bath during 1610–11 and at Ipswich on 28 May 1611. The names of Moore and Townsend render possible its identification with an unnamed company, which on 29 August 1611 gave duplicate bonds of £500 to Henslowe for the observance of certain articles of agreement of the same date. Unfortunately the articles themselves are not preserved, but it is likely that they contained an arrangement for the housing and financing of the company by Henslowe.[683] The signatories to both bonds include John Townsend, Joseph Taylor, William Ecclestone, Thomas Hunt, John Rice, Robert Hamlen, Joseph Moore, William Carpenter, Thomas Basse, and Alexander Foster. To these one adds Giles Gary and William Barksted and the other Francis Waymus. The names recited in the bodies of the documents agree with the signatures, except that Gary appears in both. Several of these men now come into London theatrical history for the first time, but Gary is probably the Giles Cary who with Barksted played in Epicoene for the Queen’s Revels in 1609, Taylor came from the Duke of York’s, and Rice from the King’s. One Hunt, whose Christian name is unknown, was with the Admiral’s in 1601. Alexander Foster received payment on behalf of the Lady Elizabeth’s men for three plays given at Court during the Christmas of 1611–12. The first was on 19 January 1612 before Elizabeth and Henry; the second was The Proud Maid’s Tragedy, on 25 February before James; and the third was on 11 March, again before Elizabeth and Henry. In 1611–12 the company were at Dover and Coventry, and on 30 July 1612 at Leicester. On 20 October they played before Elizabeth and the Palsgrave, shortly after the latter’s arrival in England, in the Cockpit. This was perhaps the play paid for out of the private funds of Elizabeth, as the result of a wager with Mr. Edward Sackville.[684] During Christmas they played twice before Charles, Elizabeth, and the Palsgrave, showing Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan on 25 February and Raymond Duke of Lyons on 1 March. For 1612–13 Joseph Taylor was payee.

The names of Taylor and Ecclestone are found in another document in the Dulwich collection, which pretty clearly belongs to the Lady Elizabeth’s men, and which shows that about the spring of 1613 their business relations with Henslowe entered upon a somewhat troubled phase. This is shown by internal evidence to have been written in the course of 1615. It is here reproduced:[685]