Hee hath taken all boundes of our hired men in his owne name, whose wages though wee have truly paid yet att his pleasure hee hath taken them a waye, and turned them over to others to the breaking of our Companie.
For lendinge of vjll to p[ay] them theire wages, hee made vs enter bond to give him the profitt of a warraunt of tenn poundes due to vs att Court.
Alsoe hee hath taken right gould and silver lace of divers garmentes to his owne vse without accompt to vs or abatement.
Vppon everie breach of the Companie hee takes newe bondes for his stocke and our securitie for playinge with him; Soe that hee hath in his handes bondes of ours to the value of 5000ll and his stocke to; which hee denies to deliuer and threatens to oppresse us with.
Alsoe havinge apointed a man to the seeinge of his accomptes in byinge of Clothes (hee beinge to have vis a weeke) hee takes the meanes away and turnes the man out.
The reason of his often breakinge with vs hee gave in these wordes ‘Should these fellowes Come out of my debt, I should have noe rule with them’.
Alsoe wee have paid him for plaie bookes 200ll or thereaboutes and yet hee denies to give vs the Coppies of any one of them.
Also within 3 yeares hee hath broken and dissmembred five Companies.
It is not quite possible to trace all the five breakings of companies referred to in the closing sentence; but the statement is sufficient to give a fairly clear outline of the history of the Lady Elizabeth’s men during the years which it covers, and, as it happens, there is a good deal of other evidence from which to supplement it. It appears that in March 1613 Henslowe joined companies with Rosseter; that is to say, that an amalgamation took place between the Lady Elizabeth’s men and the Children of the Queen’s Revels, who had been acting at the Whitefriars under the patent to Rosseter and others of 4 January 1610. One of these children was Robert Baxter, if he is the Baxter named in the Articles of Grievance as a fellow of the company with Taylor between March 1613 and March 1614.[686] During the same period it appears that William Ecclestone left the company. He afterwards joined the King’s men. But, before he went, he took a part in The Honest Man’s Fortune, which is stated in the Dyce MS. to have been played in 1613, while its ‘principal actors’ are named in the 1679 folio of Beaumont and Fletcher as ‘Nathan Field, Robert Benfield, Emanuel Read, Joseph Taylor, Will. Eglestone and Thomas Basse’. This particular combination seems to point clearly to the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the original producers of the play. A very similar cast is assigned in the same folio to The Coxcomb, namely, ‘Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor, Giles Gary, Emanuel Read, Richard Allen, Hugh Atawell, Robert Benfeild, and William Barcksted’; and I think that this also must belong to a performance by the Lady Elizabeth’s men about 1613. The Coxcomb had certainly been played at Court by the Queen’s Revels in 1612, but it seems impossible that Taylor can then have been a member of that company.[687] The new blood brought in from Rosseter’s company will, then, have included Field, Attwell, Richard Allen, Benfield, Reade, and perhaps Robert Baxter, of whom the first three had played in Jonson’s Epicoene for the Revels in 1609. When it is remembered that Cary and Barksted had been in the same cast, it will be realized that the Lady Elizabeth’s men, as constituted in 1613, were very much the Queen’s Revels over again.
I think there can be no doubt that the Lady Elizabeth’s men was the company principally referred to in the long series of letters from Robert Daborne to Henslowe, which runs from 17 April 1613 to 31 July 1614.[688] Daborne had been one of the patentees for the Queen’s Revels in 1609, and some letters apparently belonging to the same series show Field as interested, either as writer or actor, in some of the plays which Henslowe was purchasing from Daborne, with a view to reselling them to this company. Further confirmation is to be obtained for this view from the signature of Hugh Attwell as witness to one of Henslowe’s advances to Daborne,[689] and from the mention of Benfield,[690] of Pallant who, as will be seen, joined the company in 1614,[691] and of Eastward Ho! which their repertory had inherited from that of the Queen’s Revels.[692] That ‘Mr. Allin’ was hearing Daborne’s plays with Henslowe in May 1613 need cause no difficulty.[693] It is true that Edward Alleyn is not known to have had any relations with the Lady Elizabeth’s men, but John Alleyn, a nephew of Edward, is amongst Henslowe’s witnesses about this time,[694] and Richard Allen, who may not have belonged to the same family, was himself one of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, and perhaps served as their literary adviser. The correspondence makes it possible to recover the names of a series of plays on which Daborne was engaged, either alone or in collaboration with others, during the period over which it extends, and all of which seem to have been primarily meant for the Lady Elizabeth’s men, although he occasionally professes, as an aid to his chaffering, to have an alternative market with the King’s men.[695] From April to June 1613 he was writing a tragedy of Machiavel and the Devil, and this is probably the ‘new play’, of which he suggests the performance on Wednesday in August, to follow one of Eastward Ho! on the Monday.[696] For this Henslowe covenanted to pay him £20. In June he was also completing The Arraignment of London, of which he had given an act to Cyril Tourneur to write; and to this The Bellman of London, for which he and a colleague, perhaps again Tourneur, asked no more than £12 and ‘the overplus of the second day’ in August, was probably a sequel.[697] This may be the play which he had delivered to Henslowe about the beginning of December. About July he seems also to have been occupied upon a play in collaboration with Field, Fletcher, and Massinger. This is not named, and Mr. Fleay’s identification of it with The Honest Man’s Fortune is rather hazardous.[698] In December he began The Owl, for which his price fell to £10; and on 11 March 1614 he had finished this, and was beginning The She Saint and asking ‘but 12l a play till they be playd.’ The correspondence has a gap between the middle of August and the middle of October 1613. Probably the company were on tour; they are found at Coventry, Shrewsbury, and Marlborough in 1612–13, Canterbury on 4 July 1613, Dover between 12 July and 7 August, and Leicester on 13 October. In the spring they had been at Bristol and Norwich. On 12 December they repeated one of their plays of the preceding winter, Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, before Charles, and on 25 January 1614 gave Eastward Ho! which they had been playing in public during the summer, before James. Taylor was again their payee for this Christmas.