Then with swolne eyes, like druncken Flemminges,
Distressed stood old stuttering Heminges.
He is ‘old Master Hemings’ in Jonson’s Masque of Christmas (1616). He lent his ‘boy’ John Rice (q.v.) to the Merchant Taylors for their entertainment of James on 16 July 1607, and another ‘boy’ for Chapman’s mask of 1613. He is named as a legatee and overseer in the will of Augustine Phillips in 1605, and as executor in the event of the widow’s re-marriage; also as a trustee in the will of Alexander Cooke, who calls him his ‘master’, in 1614; as a witness in that of Richard Cowley in 1618; as a legatee in that of Shakespeare in 1616; and as a legatee and overseer in those of Underwood in 1624 and of Condell in 1627. He was appointed a trustee for Shakespeare’s Blackfriars property in 1613,[962] and acted with Condell as editor of the First Folio of the plays in 1623. This fact is probably the origin of the statement of Roberts that he was engaged with Condell in business as a printer. He filled various parochial posts from 1608 to 1619 in St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, and the registers contain records of the following children: Alice (bapt. 10 November 1590, married John Atkins 11 February 1612), Mary (bapt. 26 May 1592, bur. 9 August 1592), Judith (bapt. 29 August 1593), Thomasine (bapt. 15 January 1595), Joan (bapt. 2 May 1596), John (bapt. 12 August 1599), Beavis (bapt. 24 May 1601), William (bapt. 3 October 1602), George (bapt. 12 Feb. 1604), Rebecca (bapt. 4 February 1605), Elizabeth (bapt. 6 March 1608), Mary (bapt. 21 June 1611, bur. 23 July 1611).[963] In the same parish ‘John Heminge, player’ was himself buried on 12 October 1630, beside his wife Rebecca, who preceded him on 2 September 1619. He is registered as a ‘stranger’ and was therefore probably residing elsewhere. In his will, made on 9 October, he describes himself as ‘citizen and grocer of London’, appoints his son William executor and trustee for his unmarried and unadvanced children, and Cuthbert Burbadge and ‘Mr. Rice’, possibly the actor, overseers, and leaves legacies to his daughters Rebecca, wife of Captain William Smith, Margaret, wife of Mr. Thomas Sheppard, who is not mentioned in the register, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Merefield, and to his son-in-law Atkins ‘and his now wife’, and his grandchild Richard Atkins. He also leaves 10s. for a ring ‘unto every of my fellows and sharers, his majesties servants.[964] William Heminges went to Westminster and Christ Church, and became a playwright.[965] Unnamed in the will is Thomasine, who may have been dead, but certainly had quarrelled seriously with her father. She had married William Ostler of the King’s men in 1611 and her son Beaumont was baptized at St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, on 18 May 1612. Ostler died intestate on 16 December 1614 in possession of shares in the leases both of the Globe and the Blackfriars. These passed of right to Thomasine as his administratrix, and formed all the provision left for her maintenance and her husband’s debts. The leases, however, passed into the hands of Heminges, who retained them and asserted that Ostler had created a trust, of which Thomasine declared that she knew nothing. On 20 September 1615 she entered a bill in Chancery against her father, and subpœnaed him to appear during the coming Michaelmas term. On 26 September Heminges promised that if she would withdraw her suit, and would also ‘doe her dutie’ to him and to her mother Rebecca, he would satisfy her to the value of the shares. Thomasine states that on the same day kneeling and in tears she made her submission at her father’s house in Aldermanbury. She also stayed her suit, but Heminges, although called upon to fulfil his promise on 5 October, failed to do so, and on 9 October Thomasine brought a common law action against him for damages to the amount of £600, which she estimated to be the value of the shares.[966] The issue of the case is unknown, but it would seem probable from the Sharers Papers of 1635 that Heminges succeeded in retaining the shares, and that at his death they passed to his son William. Professor Wallace states that in 1616 Thomasine Ostler was involved in another lawsuit with Walter Raleigh, son of Sir Walter, and obtained a verdict of £250 against him for insult and slander. One way and another, Heminges seems to have acquired a considerable financial interest in the Globe and Blackfriars. He had an original seventh of a moiety of the Globe lease in 1599, and an original seventh of the Blackfriars lease in 1608. But as executor to Phillips (q.v.) and otherwise he had opportunities of adding to these holdings. The Sharers Papers show that at his death he had four sixteenths of the Globe and probably two eighths of the Blackfriars; and these, or some of them, he had enjoyed ‘thirty yeeres without any molestacion, beeing the most of the sayd yeeres both player and houskeeper, and after hee gave over playing diverse yeeres’. In Witter v. Heminges and Condell he is described as being in 1619 of ‘greate lyveinge wealth and power’.[967] The play-house shares seem to have been the chief part of the property left by his will. They passed to William Heminges as his executor. He seems to have gradually disposed of them, first selling one share in the Globe by arrangement with the company to Taylor and Lowin, and later, by transactions which some of his fellows resented, one share in each house to John Shank during 1633 for £156, and the remaining shares also to John Shank during 1634, for £350. He was then in difficulties, and Shank disbursed additional small sums to him in prison. It was these sales to Shank which brought about the petition to the Lord Chamberlain recorded in the Sharers Papers.
HENSLOWE, FRANCIS. Queen’s, 1594; Lennox’s, 1605. He was son of Richard and nephew of Philip Henslowe, and various entries in the diary and other Dulwich MSS. record his imprisonments, more than once on criminal charges, his employment during 1593–4 in his uncle’s pawnbroking, and his loans, one of which on 1 June 1595 was of £9 ‘to laye downe for his hallfe share with the company which he dothe playe with all’ (H. i. 6), conceivably, as Dr. Greg suggests, some company other than the Queen’s, in which he had already acquired a half share in 1594. He dwelt in the Clink in 1594, took a house called the Upper Ground on Bankside in 1597, and was of St. George’s, Southwark, in 1606, in which year, between 30 March and 6 October, both he and his wife died (H. ii. 277).
HENSLOWE, PHILIP. Owner of Rose, Fortune, Hope, and perhaps lessee of Whitefriars; cf. ch. xi.
HERIOT, HENRY. Interluders, 1547–52.
HEYWOOD, JOHN. For his possible connexion with Paul’s, cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.
HEYWOOD, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1598; Worcester’s Anne’s, 1602–19, and dramatist.
HINSTOCK, ROBERT. Interluders, 1538–51.
HOBBES, THOMAS. Charles’s, 1610, 1616–25. He lived at the upper end of Shoreditch in 1623 (J. 348).