[892] Henslowe, ii. 324.
[893] Cf. Middleton, A Mad World, my Masters (1608), I. i. 38, 'Tis Lent in your cheeks; the flag's down'; T. Earle, Microcosmography, char. 64, of a player, 'Shrove-tuesday hee feares as much as the bawdes, and Lent is more damage to him then the butcher'.
[894] Variorum, iii. 65, from Sir Henry Herbert's papers, which also record a similar payment in 1618 'for toleration in the holydays'. Herbert himself sold similar indulgences and in a list of customary Revels fees drawn up in 1662 includes £3 'for Lent fee', together with £3 'for Christmasse fee' (Variorum, iii. 266). Prynne, Histriomastix (1633), 784, notes the custom of suppressing plays 'in Lent, till now of late'.
[895] Cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's). About 1617 Prince Charles's men were complaining to Alleyn that 'intemperate Mr. Meade' had taken 'the day from vs which by course was ours'.
[896] By 1574 the City had offers to farm their licensing rights 'to the relefe of the poore in the hospitalles'; but their regulations of Dec. 1574 provide for direct contributions to the poor and sick by holders of licences for playing-places. A weekly subsidy to the poor from every stage is suggested by Walsingham's correspondent of 1587. Hunsdon, in asking for the use of the Cross Keys in 1594, promised that his men would 'be contributories to the poore of the parishe where they plaie accordinge to their habilities'. In 1600 the Southwark Vestry were negotiating with the players for tithes and contributions for the poor on the basis of an 'order taken before my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels'. In the same year the inhabitants of Finsbury recite the 'very liberall porcion' of money promised weekly for the relief of the poor as one of their grounds for assenting to the building of the Fortune. The accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden between 1611 and 1621 show varying sums, amounting to about £4 or £5 a year, as received during several years from the players at the Swan.
[897] The Middlesex records for 1616 show the Queen's men at the Red Bull as in arrear for their contribution, 'being taxed by the bench 40s. the yeare by theire own consentes'.
[898] Cf. ch. viii.
[899] As far back as 1549 the City had appointed two Secondaries of the Compters to license plays; but this arrangement doubtless terminated when the King and Council assumed the function; cf. ch. ix. In 1572 the Council were pressing the City to appoint 'discreet persons' for the purpose, and in 1574 suggested the suitability of one Mr. Holmes. But the City, who claimed to have had profitable offers to farm the licensing, repeated a former refusal to commit it to any private person. The regulations of 1574 provide for the appointment by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of persons to peruse and allow plays. But the Council are still urging, and the City promising, the appointment of licensers in 1582.
[900] Cf. ch. iii.
[901] The unauthorized company which stole this licence (cf. ch. xiii, s.v. Worcester's) is probably that which appeared as the Master of the Revels' players at Ludlow on 7 Dec. 1583 and at Bath and Gloucester in 1583-4 (Murray, ii. 201, 282, 325). I do not think that Tilney himself had a company. His predecessor had. Plomer (3 Library, ix. 252) notes a Canterbury payment, omitted by Murray, in 1569-70, to 'Syr Thomas Bernars [? Benger's] players, Master of the Quenes Majesties Revells'. But this was before the Act of 1572.