Certen players came before Mr Mayor at the Hall there beinge present Mr John Tatam, Mr George Tatam, Mr Morton & Mr Worship: who sayed they were the Earle of Wosters men: who sayd the forsyd playors were not lawfully aucthorysed, & that they had taken from them there commyssion, but it is untrue, for they forgat there box at the Inne in Leicester, & so these men gat yt & they sed the syd Haysell was not here hymself and they sent the same to Grantom to the syd Haysell who dwellith there.
William Earle of Worcester &c. hath by his wrytinge dated the 14 of Januarye Anno 25o Eliz. Reginae licensed his Seruants viz. Robert Browne, James Tunstall, Edward Allen, William Harryson, Thomas Cooke, Rychard Johnes, Edward Browne, Rychard Andrewes to playe & goe abrode, vsinge themselves orderly &c. (in theise words &c.) These are therefore to require all suche her Highnes offycers to whom these presents shall come, quietly & frendly within your severall presincts & corporacions to permytt & suffer them to passe with your furtherance vsinge & demeanynge themselves honestly & to geve them (the rather for my sake) suche intertaynement as other noble mens players haue (In Wytnes &c.)
- Mr Mayor
- Mr Jo. Heyrycke
- Mr Noryce
- Mr Ja. Clarke
- Mr George Tatam
- Mr Morton
- Mr Robt Heyrycke
- Mr Ellys
- Mr Newcome.
Memorandum that Mr Mayor did geve the aforesaid playors an angell towards there dinner & wild them not to playe at this present: being Fryday the vjth of Marche, for that the tyme was not conveynyent.
The foresaid playors mett Mr Mayor in the strete nere Mr Newcomes housse, after the angell was geven abowte a ij howers, who then craived lycense ageyne to play at there inn, & he told them they shold not, then they went away & seyd they wold play, whether he wold or not, & in dispite of hym, with dyvers other evyll & contemptyous words: Witness here of Mr Newcome, Mr Wycam, & William Dethicke.
More, these men, contrary to Mr Mayors comandment, went with their drum & trumppytts thorowe the Towne, in contempt of Mr Mayor, neyther wold come at his comandment, by his offycer, viz. Worship.
| William Pateson my lord Harbards man |  | these ij |
| Thomas Powlton my lord of Worcesters man |
were they which dyd so much abuse Mr Mayor in the aforesayd words.
Nota. These sayd playors have submytted them selves, & are sorye for there words past, & craved pardon, desyeringe his worship not to write to there Master agayne them, & so vpon there submyssyn, they are lycensed to play this night at there inn, & also they have promysed that vppon the stage, in the begynyng of there play, to shoe vnto the hearers that they are licensed to playe by Mr Mayor & with his good will & that they are sory for the words past.
The latter part of this record is intelligible enough; evidently there was a repetition of the misrule at Norwich. But the earlier part, which refers to a different matter altogether, is distinctly puzzling. The ‘theys’ in the first sentence of the Corporation minute of 6 March are complicated, and it has sometimes been supposed that there was really a company of Master of the Revels’ men, and that it was Worcester’s men who questioned the licence of these.[632] On the whole, I think that a different interpretation of the documents is the more natural one. No doubt Worcester’s men had found it necessary, as a result of the powers granted to Tilney as Master of the Revels by the patent of 24 December 1581, to renew the authority under which they travelled. In addition to a fresh warrant from their lord licensing them to travel as his household servants, and dated 14 January 1583, they obtained on the following 6 February a further licence from Tilney, issued under the clause of his commission which appointed him to ‘order and reforme, auctorise and put downe’ all players in any part of England, whether they were ‘belonginge to any noble man’ or otherwise.[633] This licence, but not the other, they left at their inn in Leicester, while passing through on some previous occasion; and here it was found by some unlicensed players, who appropriated it, and either through misunderstanding or through fraud, imposed it upon the Corporation as an instrument constituting a Master of the Revels’ company. There are two difficulties in this theory. One is that George Haysell, to whom Tilney’s licence was issued, is not one of the actors named in the Earl of Worcester’s warrant. But there are other cases in which the constitution of a company in the eyes of its lord was not quite the same as its constitution from the point of view of business relations, and I should suppose that Haysell, who was evidently not himself acting at the time, was the financier of the enterprise, and gave the bonds which Tilney would probably require for the satisfaction of the covenants of his indenture of licence. The other difficulty is that Leicester is not the only place in which the presence of a Master of the Revels’ company is recorded. Such a company was at Ludlow on 7 December 1583 and at Bath in 1583–4.[634] But, after all, this need mean no more than that the bogus company kept up their fraud for two or three months before they were exposed. If Tilney had really started a company of his own, it might have been expected to have a longer life. The establishment in 1583 of the Queen’s men makes it the less probable that he did so.