[73] Collier, i. 46; cf. Wallace, i. 12. I am not sure that Collier meant 1485.
[74] Reyher, 504, from Harl. MS. 69, f. 34v. Wallace, i. 13; ii. 69, citing the same MS., misdates ‘1490’, and says that eight children took part. Four singing children who had appeared in another disguising a day or two before were probably also from the Chapel.
[75] Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 28, 38; Bernard Andrew, Annales Hen. VII (Gairdner, Memorials of Hen. VII), 104; Halle, i. 25; Professor Wallace seems to think that the annual Christmas rewards paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber to the Gentlemen, which went on to the end of the reign, were for plays. But these were of £13 6s. 8d., whereas the reward for a play was £6 13s. 4d. They were paid on Twelfth Night, and are sometimes said to be for ‘payne taking’ during Christmas. In 1510 they had an extra £6 13s. 4d. for praying for the Queen’s good deliverance. The ‘payne taking’ was no doubt as singers. An order of Henry VII’s time (H. O. 121) for the wassail on Twelfth Night has, ‘Item, the chappell to stand on the one side of the hall, and when the steward cometh in at the hall doore with the wassell, he must crie three tymes, Wassell, wassell, wassell; and then the chappell to answere with a good songe’. The Gentlemen also had 40s. annually from the Treasurer of the Chamber ‘to drink with their bucks’ given them for a summer feast, which was still held in the seventeenth century (Rimbault, 122).
[76] Stopes, Shakespeare’s Environment, 238; Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 149, 289. Professor Feuillerat says that one of the documents relating to the play refers to the ‘Children of the Chapel’, and doubts whether there is a real distinction between the ‘Gentlemen’ and the ‘Children’ as actors.
[77] Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 3, 255. The conjecture is supported by the fact that garments belonging to the Revels were in possession of two Gentlemen of the Chapel in April 1547 (ibid., 12, 13).
[78] Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 38, 65, 70; Brewer, xiv. 2. 284; Kempe, 69; Collier, i. 78; Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 266, 288. The ‘iiij Children yt played afore ye king’ on 14 Jan. 1508 were not necessarily of the Chapel.
[79] Cf. ch. viii and Mediaeval Stage, ii. 192, 215.
[80] Wallace, i. 33. No patent is cited, but the privy seal for the payment to Cornish of the Exchequer annuity was dated 1 April 1510, and he was shortly afterwards paid for the Christmas and Easter quarters. Newark had died in Nov. 1509. It is therefore a little puzzling to find in a list of Exchequer fees payable during the year ended Michaelmas 1508 (R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain3, xii. 457) the item ‘Willelmo Cornysshe magistro puerorum capellae regis pro excubitione eorundem puerorum 26li. 13s. 4d.’ Probably the list was prepared retrospectively in Henry VIII’s reign (cf. the analogous list in Brewer, ii. 873), and the name rather than the date is an error.
[81] The data are: (a) Exchequer Payments (Wallace, i. 34), Mich. 1493, ‘Willelmo Cornysshe de Rege’, 100s.; (b) T. C. Accounts, ‘to one Cornysshe for a prophecy in rewarde’, 13s. 4d. (12 Nov. 1493); ‘to Cornishe of the Kings Chapell’, 26s. 8d. (1 Sept. 1496); ‘to Cornysshe for 3 pagents’ (26 Oct. 1501); ‘mr kyte Cornisshe and other of the Chapell yt played affore ye king at Richemounte’, £6 13s. 4d. (25 Dec. 1508); (c) Household Book of Q. Elizabeth, 25 Dec. 1502, ‘to Cornisshe for setting of a Carrall vpon Cristmas Day in reward’, 13s. 4d.; (d) John Cornysh in list of Gent. of Chapel 23 Feb. 1504, and William Cornysh in similar lists c. 1509 and 22 Feb. 1511 (Lafontaine, 2, from Ld. Ch. Records); (e) Songs by ‘W. Cornishe, jun.’ in Addl. MS. 5465, by ‘John Cornish’ in Addl. MS. 5665, by ‘W. Cornish’ in Addl. MS. 31922 (Early English Lyrics, 299); (f) A Treatise betweene Trouthe and Enformacon, by ‘William Cornysshe otherwise called Nyssewhete Chapelman with ... Henry the VIIth his raigne the xixth yere the moneth of July’ [1504], doubtless the satirical ballad on Empson referred to by Stowe, Annales, 816 (B. M. Royal MS. 18, D. 11). I think they yield an older William and a John Cornish, of whom one, probably John, arranged the three pageants at Arthur’s wedding, and a William ‘jun.’ who must have joined the Chapel in 1503 or 1504 and became Master of the Children. The older William may be identical with the Westminster (q.v.) choir-master of 1479–80. A Christopher or ‘Kit’ Cornish, referred to by Stopes, 17, and elsewhere, had no existence. This is a ghost-name, due to the juxtaposition of ‘kyte’, i.e. Sir John Kite, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, and ‘Cornisshe’ in the 1508 record above.
[82] Cf. ch. v and Mediaeval Stage, i. 400.