Authority was given for the erection of a new theatre by the following patent of 3 June 1615:[1451]
De concessione regard Phillippo Rosseter et aliis.
Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes, and to all other our Officers, Ministers, and loving Subiectes, to whome these presentes shall come, greeting. Whereas wee by our letteres Patentes sealed with our great seale of England bearing date the ffourth day of Ianuary in the seaventh yeare of our Raigne of England Fraunce and Ireland and of Scotland the three and ffortieth for the consideracions in the same letteres patentes expressed did appoint and authorise Phillipp Rosseter and certaine others from tyme to tyme to provide, keepe, and bring vppe a convenient nomber of children, and them to practise and exercise in the quallitie of playing by the name of the children of the Revelles to the Queene, within the white ffryers in the Suburbs of our Cittie of London, or in any other convenient place where they the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his partners should thinke fitting for that purpose, As in and by the said letteres patentes more at large appeareth, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his said partners have ever since trayned vppe and practised a convenient nomber of children of the Revelles for the purpose aforesaid in a Messuage or mansion house being parcell of the late dissolved Monastery called the white ffryers neere Fleetestreete in London, which the said Phillipp Rosseter did lately hold for terme of certaine yeres expired, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter, together with Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, to continue the said service for the keeping and bringing vppe of the children for the solace and pleasure of our said most deere wife, and the better to practise and exercise them in the quallitie of playing by the name of children of the Revelles to the Queene, have latelie taken in lease and farme divers buildinges, Cellers, sollars, chambers, and yardes for the building of a Play-house therevpon for the better practising and exercise of the said children of the Revelles, All which premisses are scituate and being within the Precinct of the Blacke ffryers neere Puddlewharfe in the Suburbs of London, called by the name of the lady Saunders house, or otherwise Porters hall, and now in the occupation of the said Robert Iones. Nowe knowe yee that wee of our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere mocion have given and graunted, And by theise presentes for vs, our heires, and successors, doe give and graunte lycense and authoritie vnto the said Phillipp Rosseter, Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, at their proper costes and charges to erect, build, and sett vppe in and vppon the said premisses before mencioned one convenient Play-house for the said children of the Revelles, the same Play-house to be vsed by the Children of the Revelles for the tyme being of the Queenes Maiestie, and for the Princes Players, and for the ladie Elizabeths Players, soe tollerated or lawfully lycensed to play exercise and practise them therein, Any lawe, Statute, Act of Parliament, restraint, or other matter or thing whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding. Willing and commaunding you and every of you our said Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes and all other our officers and ministers for the tyme being, as yee tender our pleasure, to permitt and suffer them therein, without any your lettes, hinderance, molestacion, or disturbance whatsoever. In witnes whereof, &c. Witnes our selfe at Westminster the third day of Iune.
per breve de priuato sigillo &c.
The statements made in the patent as to the objects of the promoters can be confirmed from other sources. We know that the lease of the Whitefriars expired at the end of 1614, that there had been an amalgamation of the Queen’s Revels and the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613, and that in all probability this arrangement was extended to bring in Prince Charles’s men during 1615. Unfortunately for Rosseter and his associates, the patent had hardly been granted before it was called in question. Presumably the inhabitants of the Blackfriars, who had already one theatre in their midst, thought that that one was enough. At any rate the Corporation approached the Privy Council, and alleged divers inconveniences, in particular the fact that the theatre, which was described as ‘in Puddle Wharfe’, would ‘adjoine so neere vnto’ the church of St. Anne’s as to disturb the congregation.[1452] The Council referred the patent to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, no friend of players, or of the royal prerogative which expressed itself in patents; and when he found a technical flaw, in that the Blackfriars, having been brought within the City jurisdiction by the charter of 1608, was not strictly within ‘the suburbs’, ordered on 26 September 1615 that the building, which had already been begun, should be discontinued. Nevertheless, the work must have gone so far as to permit of the production of plays, for the title-page of Field’s Amends for Ladies (1618) testifies that it was acted ‘at the Blacke-Fryers both by the Princes Servants and the Lady Elizabeths’. Moreover, on 27 January 1617 the Privy Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, enjoining him to see to the suppression of a play-house in the Blackfriars ‘neere vnto his Majestyes Wardrobe’, which is said to be ‘allmost if not fully finished’.[1453]
It does not appear possible to say exactly where in the Blackfriars’ precinct the Porter’s Hall once occupied by Lady Saunders stood. It was certainly not the porter’s lodge at the north-west corner of the great cloister, for this was still in 1615, as it had been since 1554, part of the Cobham house. One Ninian Sawnders, a vintner, took a lease of the chancel of the old conventual church from Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1553, and this would have been close to St. Anne’s, which stood at the north-east corner of the great cloister. But Ninian died in 1553 and never got knighted. On the other hand, the rooms on the south side of the great cloister, generally described as Lygon’s lodgings, had been in the tenure of one Nicholas Saunders shortly before their sale by Sir George More to John Freeman and others in 1609. Nicholas Saunders is said to have been knighted in 1603.[1454] These lodgings adjoined More’s own mansion house, and might at some time have served as a lodge for his porter.[1455] But I do not feel that they would very naturally be described either as ‘near’ or ‘in’ Puddle Wharf, or as ‘near’ the Wardrobe. These indications suggest some building approached either from Puddle Wharf proper or from the hill, afterwards known as St. Andrew’s Hill, which ran up from it to the Wardrobe, outside the eastern wall of the Priory precinct. The Cawarden estate did not extend to this wall, and the Saunders family may quite well, in addition to Lygon’s lodgings, have had a house, either on the site of the old convent gardens, or higher up the hill on the Blackwell estate, near where Shakespeare’s house stood, and near also to St. Anne’s. Perhaps there had been a porter’s lodge on the east of the old prior’s house.
XVII
THE PRIVATE THEATRES
i. THE BLACKFRIARS
[Bibliographical Note.—Many documents bearing upon the history of the theatre are preserved at Loseley, and the most important are collected by Professor A. Feuillerat in vol. ii of the Malone Society’s Collections (1913). A few had been already printed or described by A. J. Kempe in The Loseley Manuscripts (1835), by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in Outlines, i. 299, by J. C. Jeaffreson in the 7th Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission (1879), by Professor Feuillerat himself in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xlviii (1912), 81, and by C. W. Wallace, with extracts from others, in The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare (1912, cited as Wallace, i). In the same book and in The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908, cited as Wallace, ii), Professor Wallace prints or extracts documents from other sources, chiefly lawsuits in the Court of Requests and elsewhere, which supplement those discovered by J. Greenstreet and printed in F. G. Fleay, Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890). The references to the theatre in J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry (1837 and 1879), are seriously contaminated by forgeries. Some material for the general history of the precinct is furnished in the various editions of John Stowe, Survey of London (1598, 1603, ed. Munday, 1618, ed. Strype, 1720, ed. Kingsford, 1908), in W. Dugdale, Monasticon (1817–30), by M. Reddan in the Victoria History of London, i. 498, and in the Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91. A. W. Clapham, On the Topography of the Dominican Priory of London (Archaeologia, lxiii. 57), gives a valuable account of the history and church of the convent, but had not the advantage of knowing the Loseley documents, and completely distorts the plan of the domestic buildings and the theatre. An account by J. Q. Adams is in S. P. xiv (1917), 64. The status of the liberty is discussed by V. C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama, 143.]
The Dominicans, also called the ‘preaching’ or ‘black’ friars, came to England in 1221. Their first house was in Holborn.[1456] In 1275 they acquired a site on the sloping ground between St. Paul’s and the river, just to the east of Fleet ditch, and obtained leave to divert the walls of the City so as to furnish a north and north-west boundary to their precinct. Here grew up a very famous convent, the motherhouse of all the Dominican settlements in the country. It received favours from several sovereigns, notably from Edward I and his Queen Eleanor, who were regarded as its founders; and in return held its great buildings available for national purposes. In 1322–3 it furnished a depository for state records. It housed divers parliaments, at first in its church and later in a great chamber which will be of singular interest to us, and from as early as 1311 was often found a convenient meeting-place for the Privy Council. In 1522 it was the lodging of the Emperor Charles V, and a wooden bridge and gallery were carried over the Fleet, to facilitate communications with his train in Bridewell palace. In 1529 its parliament chamber was the scene of the legatine sittings which tried the case of divorce between the same Emperor’s niece Katharine and the conscience-stricken Henry VIII.[1457]