De licentia agendi Tragedias &c. pro Johanne Garland & aliis.
Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Iustices, Mayors, Sheriffes, Baylies, Constables, hedboroughes and other our loveing subiectes and officers greetinge. Knowe ye that wee of our especyall grace, certen knowledge, and meere mocion haue lycensed and aucthorized, and by theis presentes doe lycence and authorise Iohn Garland, Willyam Rowley, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Dawes, Ioseph Taylor, Iohn Newton, and Gilbert Reason, alreadye sworne servauntes to our deere sonne the Duke of York and Rothesay, with the rest of their company, to vse and exercise the arte and quality of playing Comedyes, Tragedies, histories, Enterludes, Moralles, Pastoralles, Stagplayes, and such other like as they haue already studdied or hereafter shall studye or vse, aswell for the recreacion of our loveing subiectes, as for our solace and pleasure when wee shall thinke good to see them, and the said Enterludes or other to shewe and execise publiquely to their best aduantage and commoditie, aswell in and about our Cittye of London in such vsuall howses as themselues shall provide, as alsoe within anye Townehalles, Mootehalles, Guildhalles, Schoolehowses, or other convenient places within the lybertye and freedome of any other Cittye, vniversity, Towne, or Boroughe whatsoever within our Realmes and Domynions, willing and comaundinge you and everie of you, as you tender our pleasure, not onlye to permitt and suffer them herein without any your lettes, hindraunces, molestacions or disturbances during our said pleasure, but alsoe to be ayding and assisting vnto them, if any wronge be vnto them offered, and to allowe them such former curtesies as hath byne given to men of their place and quality, And alsoe what further favor you shall shewe them for our sake wee shall take yt kyndlye at your handes. Prouided alwaies and our will and pleasure is that all authority, power, priviledg, and proffitt whatsoever belonging and properly apperteyninge to the Master of our Revelles in respect of his Office and everie article and graunt contayned within the lettres patentes or Commission, which haue byne heretofore graunted or directed by the late Queene Elizabeth our deere sister or by our selfe to our welbeloved servantes Edmond Tillney Master of the said Office of the said Revelles, or to Sir George Bucke knight, or to eyther of them, in possession or Revercion, shall remayne and abyde entire and in full force, estate and vertue and in as ample sort as if this our commission had never bene made. Witnes our selfe att Westminster the thirtith daye March.
per breve de priuato sigillo &c.
The only member of the Duke of York’s men, of whose previous history anything is known, is John Garland. He was of the Duke of Lennox’s men in 1605. Perhaps the whole company was taken over from the Duke of Lennox. Mr. Fleay says that the Duke of York’s men arose ‘immediately after the disappearance of the King’s Revels Children’,[675] and appears to suggest a continuity between the two companies; but he must have overlooked the fact that the Duke of York’s were already performing in the provinces, while the King’s Revels were in all probability still at Whitefriars.[676]
Some reconstruction doubtless took place about the date of the issue of the patent, for the pleadings in the equity suit of Taylor v. Hemynges in 1612 recites an agreement of 15 March 1610, which provided for the continuance of fellowship during three years and the forfeiture of the interest in a common stock of ‘apparrell goodes money and other thinges’ of any member, who left without the consent of the rest. It was made between Garland on the one side and Taylor, Rowley, Dawes, and Hobbes on the other, and these four gave Garland a bond of £200 as security. On 8 May the five bought some ‘olde clothes or apparrell which formerly weare players clothes or apparrell’ from John Heminges of the King’s men for £11, and gave a bond of £20 for payment. Apparently payment had not been made by Easter 1611, when Taylor ‘by the licence and leave of his said Master the Duke vpon some speciall reason ... did give over and leave to play in the company’. Under the agreement the apparel passed to his fellows, and according to Taylor they paid Heminges the £11 or otherwise satisfied him, and then ‘havinge conceaued some vndeserued displeasure’ against Taylor for leaving them, conspired with Heminges to defraud him of £20 on the bond. According to Heminges no payment was made, and he sued Taylor as ‘the best able to paye and discharge the same’. Taylor was arrested and in February 1612 brought his suit in equity to stay the common law proceedings. The result is unknown.
The company frequently played at Court, but, as it would seem, only before the younger members of the royal family. Their first appearance was before Charles and Elizabeth on 9 February 1610. In 1610–11 they were at Saffron Walden. They came before Charles and Elizabeth on 12 and 20 December 1610 and 15 January 1611, and before Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth on 12 and 28 January and 13 and 24 February 1612. On this last occasion they played William Rowley’s Hymen’s Holiday, or Cupid’s Vagaries. After Henry’s death, on 7 November 1612, they became entitled to the designation of the Prince’s players. In 1612–13 they were at Barnstaple and Ipswich. On 2 and 10 March 1613 they gave the two parts of The Knaves, perhaps by Rowley, before Charles, Elizabeth, and the Palsgrave. In 1613–14 they were at Barnstaple, Dover, Saffron Walden, and Coventry. They were not at Court for the winter of 1613–14. In November 1614 they were at Oxford, Leicester, and Nottingham. At the Christmas of 1614–15 they gave six plays before Charles, and on 11 February they were at Youghal in Ireland. Ten days later R. A.’s The Valiant Welshman was entered and in the course of the year published as theirs. Their leader seems to have been Rowley. He both wrote plays for them and acted as payee for all their court rewards from 1610 to 1614. In 1611 they lost Taylor and in 1614 Dawes to the Lady Elizabeth’s men; and these transferences seem to have led to a temporary amalgamation of the two companies, which Mr. Fleay and Dr. Greg place in 1614, but for which their distinct appearances at Court in the following winter suggest 1615 as the more likely date.[677] On 29 March 1615 William Rowley and John Newton were called with representatives of other companies before the Privy Council to answer for playing in Lent. No separate representation of the Lady Elizabeth’s is indicated by the list. In 1614–15 the Prince’s were at Norwich, Coventry, Winchester, and Barnstaple. In the winter of 1615–16 they gave four plays before Prince Charles, and the payee was not Rowley, but Alexander Foster, formerly of the Lady Elizabeth’s. Rosseter’s patent of 3 June 1615 for a second Blackfriars theatre contemplates its use by the Prince’s men and the Lady Elizabeth’s, as well as by the Queen’s Revels, and Field’s Amends for Ladies was actually played in the Blackfriars, probably in this house before it was suppressed, by the two first-named companies. After Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616, the combination, whatever its nature, was probably broken up, and separate companies of Prince’s men and Lady Elizabeth’s men were again formed. But both of the original companies continued to be represented in one which remained at the Hope. This is shown by an agreement entered into with Alleyn and Meade on 20 March 1616, and signed in the presence of Robert Daborne and others by William Rowley, Robert Pallant, Joseph Taylor, Robert Hamlen, John Newton, William Barksted, Thomas Hobbes, Antony Smith, William Penn, and Hugh Attwell.[678] This recites that the signatories and others had given bonds to Henslowe and Meade for the repayment of sums lent them by Henslowe, for a stock of apparel worth £400, and for the fulfilment of certain Articles of Agreement; and that at their entreaty Alleyn had agreed to accept £200 in discharge of their full liabilities. They covenant to pay the £200 by making over to Alleyn one-fourth of the daily takings of the whole galleries at the Hope or any house in which they may play, and to carry out the Articles with Alleyn and Meade by so playing. Alleyn and Meade agree to cancel the bonds when the £200 is paid, except any which may relate to private debts of any of the men to Henslowe, and also to make over to them any apparel which they had received from Henslowe, Alleyn, or Meade. The rights of Alleyn and Meade against any bondsmen not taking part in the new agreement are to remain unaffected. That the signatories to this document used the name of Prince Charles’s men seems pretty clear from the reappearance of several of their names in two later lists of the Prince’s men, one in Rowley and Middleton’s Mask of Heroes (1619), the other in the records of King James’s funeral on 20 May 1625.[679] This last contains also the name of Gilbert Reason, who is not one of the signatories of 1616, but was in that year travelling the provinces with an irregularly obtained exemplification of the 1610 patent.[680] An undated letter from Pallant, Rowley, Taylor, Newton, Hamlen, Attwell, and Smith to Alleyn, which may belong to some time in 1616 or 1617, shows that, in spite of the easy terms which the company seem to have received by the agreement, the subsequent relations were not altogether smooth. They write to excuse their removal from the Bankside, where they had stood the intemperate weather, until ‘more intemperate Mr. Meade thrust vs over, taking the day from vs wch by course was ours’. They ask Alleyn to find them a house and in the meantime to lend them £40, on the security that ‘we haue to receiue from the court (wch after Shrouetide wee meane to pursue wth best speede) a great summe of monie’, amounting to more than twice the loan desired.[681] It is to be presumed that the ‘course’ to which they refer was some distribution of days between playing and bear-baiting. In 1619 the company was joined by Christopher Beeston, formerly of the Queen’s, and his house of the Cockpit became available for their use.
xxiv. THE LADY ELIZABETH’S MEN
Elizabeth, e. d. of James I; nat. c. 19 Aug. 1596; m. Frederick V, Elector Palatine (Palsgrave), 14 Feb. 1613; Queen of Bohemia, 7 Nov. 1619; known as Queen of Hearts; ob. 13 Feb. 1662.
[Bibliographical Note.—Nearly all the material is to be found among the extracts from the Dulwich MSS. printed by W. W. Greg in Henslowe Papers (1907) and summarized in Henslowe, ii. 137.]
This company seems to have come into existence in 1611 under the following patent of 27 March:[682]