The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1

by E. K. Chambers

'I was entertayned your Maiesties servant by your owne gratious ffavour, stranghthened with condicions, that I should ayme all my courses att the Revells (I dare not saye, with a promise, butt a hopeffull Item, of the Reversion); ffor the which, theis tenn yeares, I haue attended, with an vnwearyed patience, and I knowe not whatt crabb tooke mee ffor an oyster, that, in the middest of the svnnshine of your gratious aspect, hath thrust a stone betwene the shelles, to eate mee alyve, that onely lyve on dead hopes.'

The date of this petition is probably 1598, since a second letter to Cecil, dated 9 September 1598, specifies the same period of 'ten yeres', during which Lyly had had 'nothing applied to my wantes but promises'. On 27 February 1601, a third letter to Cecil, asking for his aid in obtaining a grant out of property forfeited after the Essex conspiracy, suggests that 'after 13 yeres servic and suit for the Revells, I may turne all my forces & frends to feed on the Rebells'. This was written in connexion with a second petition to the Queen, in which occurs the following passage:

'It pleased your Maiestie to except against Tentes and Toyles. I wishe, that ffor Tentes I might putt in Tenementes: soe should I bee eased with some Toyles; some landes, some goodes, ffynes, or fforffeytures, that should ffall, by the just ffall of these most ffalce Traytours, that seeinge nothinge will come by the Revells, I may praye vppon Rebells. Thirteen yeares, your Highnes Servant, butt yett nothinge....'[325]

The general drift of these documents is fairly clear. It would seem that Lyly received promises of advancement from Elizabeth about 1585, probably as a result of the success of his plays; that in 1588 he was 'entertained the queen's servant', with a more or less authorized expectation of place in the Revels; that in 1597 his claims were set aside in favour of Buck; and that, after unavailing protests, he made the best of the situation and attempted to obtain what compensation he could for his disappointment. I find some confirmation of the view that about 1588 Lyly came to be regarded, possibly on account of the aid rendered by his pen to the bishops against Martin Marprelate, as having some right of succession to a place at Court, in an allusion of Gabriel Harvey, who in his Advertisement for Papp-Hatchett, dated 5 November 1589, but not published until it was included in his Pierce's Supererogation of 1593, says of Papp-Hatchett, who is almost certainly Lyly, 'He might as truly forge any lewd or villanous report of any one in England; and for his labour challenge to be preferred to the Clerkship of the whetstone'; and again, 'His knavish and foolish malice palpably bewrayeth itself in most odious actions; meet to garnish the foresayd famous office of the whetstone'.[326] The actual phrasing of Lyly's letters is, of course, characteristically obscure. It is possible that the 'keper' referred to in the first of them is the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, to whom, if Collier may be trusted, Buck sent, in 1605, a copy of a poem called ΔΑΦΝΙΣ ΠΟΛΥΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΣ, with some lines referring to an obligation of long standing towards his patron.[327] The allusion to 'Tentes and Toyles' may mean that, after giving up hope of the Mastership of the Revels, Lyly had turned his thoughts to the Mastership of the Tents and Toils, the actual holder of which, in 1601, Henry Sackford, had been appointed to the Tents as far back as 1559, and must therefore have been an oldish man; or possibly that, if he could not have the higher place, Lyly would have been content with the reversion of one of the two subordinate appointments, the Clerkship or the Clerk Comptrollership, which the Revels shared with the Tents.[328]

I may complete the story by pointing out that Buck, no less than Lyly, was making interest with Cecil. As a connexion of the Howards, he had of course a powerful influence behind him, and after the death of Nicasius Yetswiert, French Secretary and Clerk of the Signet, Lord Howard of Effingham had written to Cecil on 28 April 1595[329]:

'In favour of Mʳ. Buck, whom Her Majesty, talking with Mʳ. John Stanhope, herself named, showing a gracious disposition to do him good, and think him fit, as sure he is, for one of the two offices of Mʳ. Necasius, that is called unto God's mercy. For the French tongue he can do it very well to serve her Majesty.'

Four years later, on 1 June 1599, Buck himself wrote to the Secretary[330]:

'I understood by a friend of mine, not many months since, that you were very well affected to mine old long suit, and of your own disposition offered to move the Queen in my behalf. Ever since I reckoned myself in your good favour till yesterday that I heard you had given your goodwill to another, and besides had persuaded one of my chiefest friends to be solicitor for him. My interest therein accrued out of frank almoin, and therefore I can claim no estate but during pleasure, yet I hoped, as other poor true tenants do, not to be turned out so long as I performed my honest duties.'

This may reasonably be taken as referring to the Mastership of the Revels, and makes it clear that, whatever Elizabeth had said or done in 1597, she had not given Buck any irrecoverable promise. Very likely she never did. But early in the new reign, on 23 June 1603, Buck received a formal grant by patent of the reversion to Tilney.[331] On the same day was issued a new commission for the office, similar to that of 1581, but in Buck's name instead of Tilney's, from which it is to be inferred that he had become the acting Master.[332] On 23 July 1603 he was knighted.[333] Tilney, however, continued to render the accounts, which, with two exceptions, only exist for the whole of the reign of James in a summary form. The account for 1609-10 is by Tilney's executor, Thomas Tilney; and from 1610-11 onwards Buck is accounting officer, and in full enjoyment of the Mastership.[334] One of the two detailed accounts is Tilney's for 1604-5, the other Buck's for 1611-12. These are made interesting by their schedules of Court performances, the authenticity of which may now be regarded as fairly vindicated.[335] They show that the establishment remained precisely upon its sixteenth-century lines. The close of Elizabeth's reign witnessed the termination by death of Blagrave's fifty-seven years' service in the Revels.[336] William Honing, the former Comptroller, returned to the Office as Clerk in his room, under a patent made retrospective to 25 March 1603.[337] He was still there, as was Edward Kirkham, the Yeoman, in 1617.[338] On the other hand there was a rather rapid succession of Clerk Comptrollers: Edmund Pakenham to 1605-6, Edmund Fowler from 1606-7 to 1608-9, William Page in 1609-10, and Alexander Stafford from 24 April 1611 to 1617 or later.[339] The Groom or Purveyor, like the Porter of St. John's, appears to have been a servitor and not an officer by patent. During 1603-15 he was Stephen Baile, who had succeeded Thomas Clatterbocke. The Porter of St. John's, during the same period, was Richard Prescot.[340]

The change of reign brought with it another change in the financial arrangements for the office. The 'composition' introduced by Burghley in 1597 was abandoned, and henceforth the Master regularly received an imprest of £100 at the beginning of each financial year, together with the balance due on an account rendered by him for all charges since the time of the last imprest. The total amount passing through his hands was not large. During the earlier years of the reign it varied from £150 to £300, and during 1611-15 from £300 to £500.[341] In 1617 the 'ordinary' issues for the Revels were still estimated at £300.[342] Nor was there any special need for 'extraordinary' issues, since the organization of the masks, in which Jacobean Court extravagance centred, was not entrusted to the Revels at all, but to some nominated officer, under the direct supervision of the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Horse, who received funds direct from the Treasury for any expenditure which did not fall within the provinces of the Wardrobe or the Office of Works.[343] The Revels Officers continued indeed to give their personal attendance on mask nights, and to charge for their diet accordingly. But their actual responsibility for the entertainments appears to have been limited to the supervision of the fittings, such as the 'music house' in the hall or banqueting-house, and in particular of the elaborate arrangements for lighting. The wire-drawer's bill is the chief outgoing represented in the annual accounts. There is very little else except the personal allowances for the officers and the Master's four servants, their office expenses and boat-hire, the audit and exchequer costs, and occasional repairs to the 'tiring-house' used for rehearsals and other parts of the premises which they occupied. The Master charges diet for himself and his men for every day between All Hallows and Ash Wednesday, together with an extra amount for each actual night of play or mask, and for a varying number of days of tilting and running at the ring and twenty days of 'airing' in the summer. The Comptroller, Clerk, and Yeoman get £13 6s. 8d. each and the Groom £6 13s. 4d. for the whole of their required attendance. Beyond a stray property or garment here and there, there is nothing spent on emptions of stuff or on tailors and the like. I think it is clear that the result of the policy initiated by Burghley had been to reduce the Revels, regarded as a branch of the Household organization, to comparative insignificance. Henceforward its domestic duties sink into the background of the quasi-political functions given to the Master as stage censor by the commissions of 1581 and 1603. But these functions were peculiar to the Master, who carried them out with the aid of his personal servants.[344] The other Revels officers had no claim to share in them, and though Tilney and Buck built up a considerable income out of licensing fees, which probably accounts for the discontinuance in Buck's case of the 'better recompense' of £100 granted by Elizabeth to Tilney, no penny of these fees ever passed through the Revels Accounts.