[872] Cf. App. D, No. clviii, and ch. xiii, s.v. Anne's.
[873] Cf. ch. xii, s.v. King's Revels. A later warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 deals with the same abuse of players and others who 'without the knowledge and approbacon of his maiesties office of the Revels' travel 'by reason of certaine grants comissions and lycences which they haue by secret meanes procured both from the Kings Maiestie and also from diuerse noblemen' (Murray, ii. 351).
[874] M. S. C. i. 284; Murray, ii. 192.
[875] The Lord Coke his Speech and Charge. With a Discouerie of the Abuses and Corruption of Officers (1607) H2. There is an epistle to the Earl of Exeter signed R. P., said (D. N. B.) to be Robert Pricket.
[876] Coke, Preface to 7th Report, 'libellum quendam ... rudem et inconcinnum ... quem sane contestor non solum me omnino insciente fuisse divulgatum, sed ... ne unam quidem sententiolam eo sensu et significatione, prout dicta erat, fuisse enarratam'; cf. Gildersleeve, 40; J. Haslewood in Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvi. 1. 205; 1 N. Q. vii. 376, 433.
[877] Prynne, 492, 497.
[878] Hazlitt, E. D. S. 67.
[879] Murray, ii. 77, gives records of seventy-nine 'Lesser Men's Companies', many of which appear at one town only, while all have a narrow range. Naturally the names of the great nobles carried weight over a wider area. The players in Ratseis Ghost (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326) 'denied their owne Lord and Maister, and used another Noblemans name'.
[880] The showman of the royal ape in Taylor's Wit and Mirth (cf. p. 267) wears 'a brooch in his hat, like a tooth drawer, with a Rose and Crowne, and two letters'.
[881] Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), 135, 'I will neither end with sermon nor with prayer, lest some wags liken me to my L. (____) players, who when they have ended a bawdy comedy, as though that were a preparative to devotion, kneel down solemnly, and pray all the company to pray with them for their good Lord and master'; A Mad World, my Masters, v. ii. 200, 'This shows like kneeling after the play; I praying for my good lord Owemuch and his good countess, our honourable lady and mistress'. This prayer might be combined with one for the Sovereign and estates; cf. chh. xviii, xxii.