[82] Cf. ch. v and Mediaeval Stage, i. 400.

[83] The T. C. Accounts show a reward of £200 to Cornish on 30 Nov. 1516, of which the occasion is not specified, and a payment of £18 2s. 11½d. for ‘ij pagentes’ on 6 July 1517. With these possible exceptions, no expenditure on the disguisings or the interludes which formed part of them as distinct from the independent interludes by the Children, for which Cornish received £6 13s. 4d. each, seems to have passed through these accounts. Any remuneration received by Cornish or his fellows or children for their personal services probably passed through the Revels Accounts.

[84] Wallace, i. 16, 50. He light-heartedly accuses my friend Mr. Pollard, me, and others of perpetuating an old mis-ascription on the strength of Bale, ‘generally without consulting the Scriptores’, in the first edition of which (1548) Bale says that Rastell ‘reliquit’, and in the second that he ‘edidit’ The Four Elements. This Professor Wallace regards as revision by Bale of an incorrect assertion that Rastell was the author into an assertion that he was the publisher. But Bale elsewhere uses ‘edidit’ to indicate authorship, as Professor Wallace might have learnt from the notice of Heywood which he quotes on p. 80. As to The Four P. P. there are three early editions by three different publishers, and they all assign it to Heywood.

[85] Wallace, i. 61, 69; ii. 63, from patents and Exchequer payments. The Elizabethan patent is in Rymer, xv. 517.

[86] Rimbault, viii, quoting only the words ‘in anie churches or chappells within England to take to the King’s use, such and so many singing children and choristers, as he or his deputy should think good’. Stopes, 12, gives Lansd. MS. 171, and Stowe MS. 371, f. 31^v, as references, but the commission is not in either of them.

[87] Matthew Welder appears as a lute and viol at Court in 1516 and 1517. Peter Welder was appointed in 1519 and is traceable to 1559, as a lute, viol, or flute. Henry van Wilder was a ‘musician’, 1553–8. Philip Welder or van Wilder himself is first noted as a ‘minstrel’ in 1526. Later he was a lute up to 1554. In 1547 he was also ‘of the Privy Chamber’ and keeper of the King’s musical instruments (Nagel, 6, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 27; Lafontaine, 8, 9, 12; Brewer, i, cxi). He died 24 Jan. 1554, leaving a son, Henry, probably the one noted above (Fry, London Inquisitions, i. 117). The Chamber Accounts for 1538–41 show an allowance to him of £70 ‘for six singing children’ (Stopes, 12). Several references to ‘Philippe and his fellows yong mynstrels’ and to ‘the children that be in the keeping of Philip and Edmund Harmon’ appear in Green Cloth documents from 30 June 1538 to 1544 (H. O. 166, 172, 191, 208; Genealogist, xxx. 23). Edmund Harmon was one of the royal Barbers. Finally, livery lists of 1547 show nine singing men and children under ‘M^r. Phelips’ (Lafontaine, 7). An earlier company of ‘the King’s young minstrels’ than this of 1538–50 seems to have been lodged at court c. 1526 (Brewer, iv. 1. 865), and there were ‘troyes autres nos ioesnes ministralx’ as far back as 1369 (Life Records of Chaucer, iv. 174). Elizabethan fee lists continue to make provision for ‘six children for singing’, but there is no indication that the posts were filled up.

[88] Wallace, ii. 63, from docquet in B. M. Royal MS. 18, C. xxiv, f. 232. By an obvious error, the name is written by the clerk as ‘Gowre’.

[89] Wallace, i. 77.

[90] Cf. p. 12.

[91] It is possible that the Treasurer of the Chamber did not pay all the rewards for plays during the earlier years of the reign; but the suggestion of Wallace, i. 108, that, if we had the Books of Queen’s Payments, more information might be available, seems to show a failure to realize the identity of the Tudor Books of King’s Payments with the T. of C. Accounts. There might, however, be rewards in a book subsidiary to the Privy Purse Accounts. I do not think that much can be made of the recital of ‘playes’ as well as ‘maskes’ in the preamble of the Revels Accounts for 1558–9, during which the T. of C. paid no rewards, since this may be merely ‘common form’.

[92] Feuillerat, Eliz. 34; cf. Appendix A. Naturally no ‘reward’ would be paid in such circumstances. Fleay, 16, 32, 60, conjectures that the play was Misogonus.

[93] Strype, Survey of London (App. i. 92), gives the date from Bower’s tombstone at Greenwich, and as his death is recited in Edwardes’ patent (Stopes, Hunnis, 146) and his will of 18 June 1561 was proved on 25 Aug. 1561 (Wallace, i. 106), it is clear that the entry of Rimbault, 1, ‘1563. Rich. Bower died, M^r of the children, A^o 5^to’, must be an error.

[94] Wallace, Blackfriars, 65, from Privy Seal in P. R. O. The patent dated 10 Jan. 1562 is on Patent Rolls, 4 Eliz. p. 6, m. 14 dorso.

[95] This is recorded in a Revels document, and seems a clear case of a play given by the Chapel and not paid for by the T. of C.

[96] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[97] Rimbault, 2. On Hunnis, cf. ch. xxiii.

[98] Stopes, 295, translates the patent of appointment from Auditors Patent Books, ix, f. 144^v; the Privy Seal is in Privy Seals, Series iii, 1175. Stopes also prints the patent and Wallace, ii. 66, the Signet Bill (misdescribing it as a Privy Seal) for the commission; it is enrolled on Patent Rolls, 9 Eliz. p. 10, m. 16 dorso. It is varied from the model of 1562 by the inclusion of power to the Master to take up lodging for the children in transit, and to fix ‘reasonable prises’ for carriage and necessaries at his discretion.

[99] Hazlitt-Warton, iv. 217, citing f. xii of the pamphlet. I know of no copy. One is catalogued among Bishop Tanner’s books in the Bodleian, but Stopes, 226, ‘went to Oxford on purpose to see it, but found that it had utterly vanished’. Macray, Annals of the Bodleian, 211, thinks that it may have been destroyed when Tanner’s books fell into a river during their transit from Norwich to Oxford in Dec. 1731. The pamphlet is also cited for an example of the use of the term ‘spur money’ (Bumpus, 29, with date ‘1598’). F. T. Hibgame (10 N. Q. i. 458) describes a collection of pamphlets seen by him in New York under the general title of The Sad Decay of Discipline in our Schools (1830), which included Some Account of the Stripping and Whipping of the Children of the Chapel, containing a ‘realistic account of the treatment of the boys at one of the royal chapels’, of which he thought the author might be George Colman.

[100] Cf. ch. vii.

[101] Feuillerat, Eliz. 244, ‘Holly, Ivye, firr poles & Mosse for the Rock ... Hornes iij, Collers iij, Leashes iij & dogghookes iij with Bawdrickes for the hornes in Hvnnyes playe’.

[102] Variorum, iii. 439.

[103] Cf. ch. xxiii (Gascoigne).

[104] W. Creizenach (Sh.-Jahrbuch, liv. 73) points out that the source must have been Livy, xxvi. 50.

[105] Cf. infra (Windsor).

[106] Rimbault, 2.

[107] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). The bare fact of this early use of the Blackfriars has, of course, long been known from the reference to comedies at the Blackfriars in Gosson, P. C. 188 (App. C, No. xxx), and the prologues to Lyly’s Campaspe and Sapho and Phao. Fleay, 36, 39, 40, guessed that the early Blackfriars performances were at an inn, and by the Paul’s boys, and that the euphuistic prose plays at the Bel Savage mentioned by Gosson, S. A. 39 (App. C, No. xxii), in 1579 were early Chapel versions of Lyly’s above-named plays. But there is no evidence that either of the boy companies ever used an inn.

[108] Cf. p. 38.

[109] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[110] Rimbault, 3. The Blackfriars correspondence shows that the date 1581 given in Rimbault, 56, is wrong. A warrant of 1582 for a lease in reversion to his widow Anne is in Hatfield MSS. ii. 539.

[111] App. C, No. xlv.

[112] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[113] Wallace, i. 156; Stopes, Hunnis, 252; from S. P. D. Eliz. clxiii. 88.

[114] Cf. p. 50, which suggests that the boys occasionally ate in hall at festival times.

[115] The Chamber Accounts show no renewal of the payments.

[116] Cf. ch. xxiii (Hunnis).

[117] Cf. ch. xiii (Oxford’s), ch. xxiii (Lyly).

[118] Feuillerat, Eliz. 470. Sapho and Phao might, however, have been the unnamed Chapel play of Shrove Tuesday (27 Feb.) 1582.

[119] Perhaps Lyly was still associated with him. F. S. Boas (M. L. R. vi. 92) records payments in connexion with a visit by Leicester to Christ Church, Oxford, to Mr. Lyly and his man for the loan of apparel, as well as one of £5 to one Tipslowe ‘for the Revels’ (January 1585).

[120] Cf. supra (Paul’s).

[121] I have no means of dating ‘The order of the show to be done at the Turret, entring into the parke at Grenewich, the musick being within the turrett’, which is preserved in Egerton MS. 2877, f. 182, as ‘acted before Q. Elizabeth’. A speech of forty lines beginning ‘He Jove himselfe, that guides the golden spheare’, was delivered by ‘one of the biggest children of her Ma^tes Chappell’ as Goodwill, and was followed by a song beginning ‘Ye Helicon muses’.

[122] Rimbault, 4. A note of Anthony Wood’s (cf. D. N. B.) suggests that Bull joined the Chapel about 1572.

[123] Ashmole, Antiquities of Berks (ed. 1723), iii. 172, from tombstone at St. George’s, Windsor. The inscription gives him 49 years as Master at Windsor, in error for 39. A second stone described as also his by Ashmole is clearly his wife’s.

[124] Wallace, ii. 59, prints both from the Privy Seals of 2 and 3 July in the R. O. The appointment is enrolled in Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz. p. 12, and the commission in Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz. p. 9, m. 7 dorso. The appointment is for life, the commission not so specified, and therefore during pleasure only.

[125] The operative words of the appointment are ‘pro nobis heredibus et successoribus nostris damus et concedimus dilecto seruienti nostro Nathanieli Giles officium Magistri puerorum Capellae nostrae Regiae ... habendum ... durante vita sua naturali Damus etiam ... praefato Nathanieli Giles vada siue feoda quadraginta librarum sterling percipienda annuatim ... pro eruditione duodecem puerorum eiusdem Capellae nostrae ac pro eorum conveniente exhibitione vestiturae et lectuarii ... vnacum omnibus et omnimodis aliis vadis feodis proficubus iurisdiccionibus aucthoritate priuilegiis commoditatibus regardis et aduantagiis quibuscunque eodem officio quoquo modo debitis ... ac ... praedicto Nathanieli Giles locum siue officium illud vnius generosorum nostrorum dictae Capellae nostrae Regiae ... vnacum feodo seu annuali redditu triginta librarum ...’

[126] E. v. K. 211; K. v. P. 224, 230, 233 (misdated 44 Eliz. for 42 Eliz.), 239. These are only short recitals in the lawsuits. Apparently the fragmentary descriptions of the theatre in Wallace, ii. 39, 40, 41, 43, 49, are from a fuller Latin text of the terms of the lease, possibly recited in a common-law suit, which he has not printed in full.

[127] K. v. P. 230, 234.

[128] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.

[129] Fleay, 124, 153; Wallace, ii. 56; cf. M. L. R. iv. 156. An initial date for the enterprise in 1600 fits in exactly with the seven years during which there had been plays at the house where K. B. P. was produced and the ten years’ training of Keysar’s company up to 1610 (cf. p. 57).

[130] Cf. ch. xi.

[131] Fleay, 127. Burn, 152, notes from Bodl. Tanner MS. 300 that among the misdemeanours punished in the Star Chamber was ‘Taking up a gentleman’s son to be a stage player’.

[132] Wallace, ii. 84, gives the endorsed date omitted by Greenstreet and Fleay, as ‘Marti decimo quinto Decembris Anno xliiij Elizabeth Regine’; the date set down for trial is indicated as ‘p Octab Hillar’. This agrees with the time indication of the offence in the complaint itself as ‘about one yere last past, and since your maiesties last free and generall pardon’. The pardon referred to must be that of 1597–8 (39 Eliz. c. 28; cf. R. O. Statutes, iv. 952). There was another passed by the Parliament of 1601 (43 Eliz. c. 19; cf. Statutes, iv. 1010) for all offences prior to 7 Aug. 1601, but presumably this was not yet law when the complaint was drawn. The Parliament sat to 19 December. Clifton, however, was only just in time.

[133] K. v. P. 248. The date is recited as ‘in or about the three and ffortieth yeare’ of Elizabeth, i.e. 1600–1, which is not exact. The reference can hardly be to any other than the Clifton affair. No Chancery documents in the case, other than the complaint, are known. It may be presumed that censure fell on Giles and Robinson, as well as Evans, but they were not concerned in K. v. P. Evans, of course, was technically acting as deputy to Giles under his commission, and Wallace, ii. 71, is not justified in citing the case as evidence that ‘These powers to Giles were supplemented by official concessions to Henry Evans that enabled him to rent the Blackfriars theatre and train the Queen’s Children of the Chapel there, with remunerative privileges’.

[134] K. v. P. 224, 230, 236, 242, 244, 248, 250.

[135] E. v. K. 211, 216; K. v. P. 237, 240, 245. These are recitals. Wallace, ii. 91, says that he has found two copies of the original bond, but the text he prints adds nothing to K. v. P. 240. Clearly he is wrong in describing it as ‘containing the Articles of Agreement’. That was a much more detailed document, which Evans unfortunately thought so ‘long and tedious’ that he did not insert it at large in his Answer in K. v. P. It was doubtless analogous to the King’s Revels Articles of 1608 (cf. infra). It provided for the rights of the partners to the use of rooms (E. v. K. 211) and presumably for the division of profits (K. v. P. 237).

[136] K. v. P. 244. Wallace, ii. 102, adds the actual terms of the bond. He takes Evans’s explanation to mean that hitherto Evans had maintained the boys and the plays out of official funds supplied through Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels, but that now Evans’s name was to be kept out of the business, and disbursements made by his partners, who were to pay him 8s. a week as a kind of steward. I cannot suppose that Kirkham had been the channel of any official subvention, and, on the whole, think it probable that the second ‘compl^t’ in the extract from the pleading is an error for ‘def^t’. This leaves it not wholly clear why Evans should allege his relief from great weekly disbursements as a reason for receiving 8s. a week; but if we had the Articles of Agreement, the point would probably be clear. Possibly Evans had in the past made the equivalent of a weekly sum of 8s. out of board-wages passed on to him by Giles.

[137] Wallace, ii. 88.

[138] E. v. K. 213, 217, 220.

[139] G. von Bülow and W. Powell in R. H. S. Trans. vi. 26; Wallace, ii. 105; with translations.

[140] Wallace, ii. 126, summarizes his theory; cf. my review in M. L. R. v. 224.

[141] Wallace, ii. 99.

[142] E. v. K. 217; K. v. P. 224, 227, 229, 231, 236, 248.

[143] Wallace, ii. 73.

[144] Wallace, ii. 75, shows that the Blackfriars repertory would require twenty or twenty-five actors.

[145] Gawdy, 117.

[146] Wallace, ii. 95. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on 29 Dec. 1601 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxxii. 48), ‘The Q: dined this day priuatly at my L^d Chamberlains; I came euen now from the blackfriers where I saw her at the play with all her candidae auditrices’; cf. M. L. R. ii. 12.

[147] K. v. P. 235.

[148] Wallace, ii. 89, says that Evans paid £11 0s. 2d. for repairs on 8 Dec. 1603.

[149] M. S. C. i. 267, from Patent Roll, 1 Jac. I, pt. 8. Collier, i. 340, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 40, print the signet bill, the former dating it 30 Jan. and the latter 31 Jan., and misdescribe it as a privy seal. Collier, N. F. 48, printed a forged letter from Daniel to Sir T. Egerton (cf. Ingleby, 244, 247) intended to suggest that Drayton, and perhaps also Shakespeare, had coveted his post.

[150] Wallace, ii. 80, mentions a case of the employment of a boy at the Blackfriars during James’s reign under a contract with his mother.

[151] M. S. C. i. 359. On 7 Oct. 1605 the Wardrobe provided holland for shirts for the 12 children and ‘for James Cutler, a Chappell boy gone off’ (Lafontaine, 46, from L. C. 804).

[152] Rimbault, 60; Stowe, Annales (ed. Howes), 1037. An order of 17 July 1604 (H. O. 301) continued the allowance of an increase of meat at festival times which the children had presumably enjoyed under Elizabeth.

[153] Middleton, Father Hubbard’s Tales (Works, viii. 64, 77). A reference in the same book to an ant as ‘this small actor in less than decimo sexto’ recalls the jest in the Induction to the Malcontent at the boys who played Jeronimo ‘in decimo sexto’.

[154] Cf. ch. xi.

[155] K. v. B. 340.

[156] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. plays named.

[157] Kirkham and Kendall were still associated in Aug. 1605, when apparel and properties were obtained from them for the plays at James’s visit to Oxford (M. S. C. i. 247). There was a performance at the Blackfriars as late as 16 June 1605 (Wallace, ii. 125), a date connected with a dispute in settlement of which Kirkham’s bond of £50 to Evans was exchanged for a new one to Hawkins (K. v. P. 244).

[158] Cf. M. L. R. iv. 159. The t.p. of Sophonisba only specifies performance ‘at the Blackfriars’; those of The Fleir and The Isle of Gulls ‘by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars’. Probably the ‘Children of the Revels’ of the t.p. of Day’s Law Tricks (1608) is also the Blackfriars company. No theatre is named, but the play is too early for the King’s Revels, who, moreover, do not seem to be described on other t.ps. as ‘Children of the Revels’ pure and simple. I take it that these t.p. descriptions follow the designations of the companies in use when the plays were last on the stage before publication, rather than those in use at the times of first production.

[159] Cf. ch. x.

[160] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Day.

[161] Keysar was certainly associated with Kendall by the Christmas of 1606–7, when they supplied apparel and properties for the Westminster plays; cf. Murray, ii. 169.

[162] K. v. P. 249.

[163] M. S. C. i. 362, from P. R. O., Patent Roll, 4 James I, p. 18, dorso. Collier, i. 446, long ago noted the existence of a similar clause in a Caroline commission to Giles of 1626. It was probably the choristers who assisted in a quasi-dramatic performance on 16 July 1607, when James dined with the Merchant Taylors, and Giles received the freedom of the company in reward; cf. ch. iv.

[164] Cf. App. I.

[165] E. v. K. 221; K. v. P. 246. ‘The Children of the Revells’ who appeared at Leicester on 21 Aug. 1608 (Kelly, 248) might have been these boys, but might also have been the King’s Revels, if the King’s Revels were still in existence under that name, which is very doubtful.

[166] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman.

[167] S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 73. The mine was no doubt the silver mine discovered at Hilderston near Linlithgow in 1607, and worked as a royal enterprise with little success; cf. R. W. Cochran-Patrick, Early Records relating to Mining in Scotland (1878), xxxvii. 116.

[168] Cf. ch. xxiii.

[169] K. v. B. 342.

[170] E. v. K. 222; K. v. P. 225, 231, 235, 246.

[171] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[172] K. v. P. 225, 249.

[173] E. v. K. 221; K. v. P. 245. In the earlier suit Evans says that the royal prohibition was ‘vpon some misdemeanors committed in or about the plaies there, and specially vpon the defendants [Kirkham’s] acts and doings thereabout’. Unless Kirkham was more directly concerned in the management during 1608 than appears probable, Evans must be reflecting upon the whole series of misdemeanours since 1604.

[174] On 9 May John Browne, ‘one of the playe boyes’, was buried at St. Anne’s.

[175] K. v. B. 347, gives the date of surrender in 1610 as ‘about the tenth of August last past’. Probably a year’s sub-tenancy under the King’s men explains the discrepancy with the ‘about August in the sixt year of his Majesties raigne’ of K. v. P. 235, and the confirmatory date of the King’s men’s leases.

[176] Cf. ch. supra (Paul’s). K. v. B. 355 tells us that Rosseter was in partnership with Keysar.

[177] M. S. C. i. 271, from P. R., 7 Jac. I, p. 13. Ingleby, 254, gave the material part in discussing a forged draft by Collier (N. F. 41), in which the names of the patentees are given as ‘Robert Daiborne, William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Field and Edward Kirkham’. A genuine note of the patent is in Sir Thomas Egerton’s note-book (N. F. 40). Ingleby adds that the signet office records (cf. Phillimore, 103) show that the warrant was obtained in Dec. 1609 by the influence of Monson. He was Anne’s household Chancellor and to him Rosseter and Campion dedicated their Book of Airs (1601) and Campion his Third Book of Airs (1617).

[178] K. v. B. 343.

[179] K. v. B. 343, 350.

[180] Evans, Mrs. Evans, Field, Underwood, Ostler, Baxstead, Rosseter, Marston, and Mrs. Hawkins were to be examined for the King’s men.

[181] E. v. K. 213. I presume that some of these are amongst the ‘twelve additional suits’ which Wallace, ii. 36, claims to have found.

[182] E. v. K. 218. In K. v. P. 225, he put the total annual profits during 1608–12 at £160.

[183] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317; cf. Hist. Hist. 416 (App. I), ‘Some of the chapel boys, when they grew men, became actors at the Blackfriars; such were Nathan Field and John Underwood’.

[184] The Chamber Accounts record no payment to the company (cf. App. B, introd.).

[185] Cf. ch. xvi.

[186] Murray, i. 361.

[187] E. Ashmole, Institution of the Garter (1672), 127; R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, i. 426, 477; Report of Cathedrals Commission (1854), App. 467; V. H. Berks, ii. 106; H. M. C. Various MSS. vii. 10.

[188] Tighe-Davis, ii. 45, from Stowe’s account ‘of the Castell of Wyndsore’ (Harl. MS. 367, f. 13).

[189] Nichols, i. 81, and Collier, i. 170, print a copy in Ashm. MS. 1113, f. 252, from the Elizabethan commission preserved at Windsor, as follows:

A further copy from Ashm. MS. 1113 is in Addl. MS. 4847, f. 117. Copies or notes of the three earlier commissions are in this MS. and in Ashm. MS. 1124. In Ashm. MS. 1132, f. 169, is a letter of 18 April 1599 from the Chapter to Sir R. Cecil defending their conduct in taking a singing man from Westminster.

[190] Gee, 230, in a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia (1571), 688, ‘Magistri Musices ... Prestonus in oppido Vindelisoriensi’. Can this Preston be the playwright (cf. ch. xxiii)?

[191] Rimbault, 1; Stopes, Shakespeare’s Environment, 243.

[192] Ashm. MS. 1132, f. 165^a.

[193] Rimbault, 2.

[194] M. L. R. (1906), ii. 6.

[195] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[196] Cf. App. B.

[197] Rimbault, 3; H. M. C., Hatfield MSS. ii. 539.

[198] Rimbault, 182; Musical Antiquary, i. 30; 10 N. Q. v. 341. A Christ Church, Oxford, MS., dated 1581, assigns to Farrant (cf. ch. xxiii) a possibly dramatic lament of Panthea for the death of Abradates, beginning ‘Ah, ah, alas ye salt sea Gods’. This is assigned to Robert Parsons by Addl. MSS. 17786–91, which assign to Farrant a song which may come from a play in which Altages is a character. The writer in the Musical Antiquary thinks that a lament for Guichardo (not from either of the known Gismund texts) in the Ch. Ch. MS. is much in Farrant’s style.

[199] Ashmole, Antiquities of Berks (ed. 1723), iii. 172; cf. p. 41.

[200] Ashm. MS. 1125, f. 41^v.

[201] Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain’s).