Right honorable and my very good Lo. Vpon Whit Sondaye there was a very good Sermond preached at the New churche yard nere bethelem, wherat my Lo. Maiour was with his bretherne, and by reason no playes were the same daye all the citie was quiet....
Vpon Mondaye night I retorned to London and found all the wardes full of watchers. The cause thereof was for that very nere the Theatre or Curten at the tyme of the Playes there laye a prentice sleping vpon the Grasse, and one Challes al. Grostock dyd turne vpon the Too vpon the belly of the same prentice, whervpon the apprentice start vp and after wordes they fell to playne bloues; the companie encressed of bothe sides to the nosmber of vc at the least. This Challes exclaimed and said that he was a gentelman and that the apprentise was but a Rascall; and some there were litell better then rooges that tooke vpon theym the name of gentilmen and said the prentizes were but the skomme of the worlde. Vpon these trobles the prentizes began the next daye, being Twesdaye, to make mutines and assembles, and dyd conspire to have broken the presones & to have taken furthe the prentizes that were imprisoned; but my Lo. and I having intelligens thereof apprensed .iiij. or.v. of the chieff conspirators, who are in Newgate and stand Indicted of theire lewd demeanors.
Vpon Weddensdaye one Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe having a perrelous witt of his owne, entending a spoile if he cold have browght it to passe, did at Theatre doore querell with certen poore boyes, handicraft prentises, and strook some of theym, and lastlie he with his sword wondend and maymed one of the boyes vpon the left hand; where vpon there assembled nere a ml. people. This Browne dyd very cuninglie convey hym selff awaye, but by chaunse he was taken after and browght to mr. Humfrey Smithe, and because no man was able to charge hym he dismissed hym, and after this Browne was browght before mr. Yonge, where he vsed hym selff so connynglie and subtillie, no man being there to charge hym, that there also he was demised. And after I sent a warraunt for hym, and the Constables with the deputie at the Bell in Holbourne found hym in a parlor fast locked in, and he wold not obeye the warraunt, but by the meane of the hoost he was conveyed a waye, and then I sent for the hoost and caused hym to appere at Newgat at the Sessions of Oier and determiner, where he was committed vntill he browght furth his gest. The next daye after he browght hym forthe, and so we Indicted hym for his misdemeanour. This Browne is a commen Cossiner, a thieff, & a horse stealer, and colloreth all his doynges here abowt this towne with a sute that he haithe in the lawe agaynst a brother of his in Staffordshire. He resteth now in Newgate....
Vpon Weddensdaye, Thursdaye, Frydaye and Satterdaye we dyd nothing els but sitt in commission and examine these misdemeanors; we had good helpe of my lord Anderson and mr. Sackforthe.
Vpon Sonndaye my Lo. sent ij Aldermen to the Court for the suppressing and pulling downe of the Theatre and Curten. All the LL. agreed therevnto, saving my Lord Chamberlen and mr. Viz-chamberlen, but we obteyned a lettre to suppresse theym all. Vpon the same night I sent for the quenes players and my Lo. of Arundel his players, and they all willinglie obeyed the LL. lettres. The chiefestes of her highnes players advised me to send for the owner of the Theater, who was a stubburne fellow, and to bynd hym. I dyd so; he sent me word that he was my Lo. of Hunsdons man, and that he wold not come at me, but he wold in the mornyng ride to my lord; then I sent the vndershereff for hym and he browght hym to me; and at his commyng he stowtted me owt very hastie; and in the end I shewed hym my Lo. his mrs. hand and then he was more quiet; but to die for it he wold not be bound. And then I mynding to send hym to prison, he made sute that he might be bound to appere at the Oier & determiner, the which is to morrowe; where he said that he was suer the Court wold not bynd hym being a Counselers man. And so I have graunted his request, where he shalbe sure to be bound or els ys lyke to do worse.
lxxv.
[c. 1584, Nov. (1) Petition of the Queen’s Players to the Privy Council, and (2) Answer of the Corporation of London enclosing the Act of Common Council of 6 Dec. 1574 (No. xxxii), printed M. S. C. i. 168, from Lansd. MS. 20, f. 23; also in part by Strype in his edition of Stowe’s Survey (1720), i. 292; Collier, i. 208; Hazlitt, E. D. S. 27. The documents are bound up out of order in the Lansdowne volume, the Act of 1574 being Art. 10 and (1) being inserted as Art. 12 between the two parts of (2) which are the reply to it. Each article is officially endorsed in pencil with the date 1575, and the same date is assigned by the printed Catalogue of the Lansdowne Manuscripts (1819) to Arts. 10, 12, and 13. This has misled Collier and nearly all subsequent historians of the stage into a belief that players were expelled from the City more or less permanently in 1575, and that this expulsion led to the building of the Theatre and the Curtain in 1576. The difficulty due to the description of the petitioners as the Queen’s men is met by Collier with a suggestion that ‘perhaps the Earl of Leicester’s servants might so call themselves after the grant of the patent in May 1574’, and by Fleay, 46, with an assertion that ‘the whole body of then existing men actors who were going to perform at Court at Christmas (Warwick’s, Leicester’s, Howard’s)’ were meant. I called attention to the true bearing of the documents in a review of T. F. Ordish, Early London Theatres in the Academy for 24 Aug. 1895, but the misconception still exists; it is found, for instance, in Thompson, 41. The facts, however, are correctly given in Gildersleeve, 171. It is clear from that part of the Corporation’s Answer which Collier suppressed that the real date of the Lansdowne documents is later than the ‘ruine at Parise garden’, which was on 13 Jan. 1583 (cf. No. lxiv), and it must also be later than the establishment of the Queen’s men in March 1583, and their first performances at court in the winter of 1583–4. The petition was, on the face of it, written at the beginning of a winter, and the most natural interpretation would place it in the winter of 1584. It might conceivably be 1585. There is no reference to it in the Acts of the Privy Council, and it probably belongs to the period of the missing register between June 1582 and Feb. 1586. Unfortunately, the Remembrancia also have a gap between March 1584 and Jan. 1587. It will be observed that the Lansdowne papers are not, as they stand, complete, since they lack the Articles sent with the players’ Petition, and also the printed Act of Common Council sent by the Corporation (No. lxiii). Strype says that the proposed Remedies were adopted, but it is doubtful whether he had any evidence other than the Lansdowne MS. itself.]
(1)
To the Right Honorable the Lordes of her Maiesties Privie Counsell:
In most humble manner beseche your LLp. your dutifull and daylie Orators the Queenes Maiesties poore Players. Wheras the tyme of our service draweth verie neere, so that of necessitie wee must needes haue excercise to enable vs the better for the same, and also for our better helpe and relief in our poore lyvinge, the season of the yere beynge past to playe att anye of the houses without the Cittye of London, as in our articles annexed to this our Supplicacion maye more att large appeere vnto your LLp: Our most humble peticion ys thatt yt maye please your LLp. to vowchsaffe the readinge of these few Articles, and in tender Consideracion of the matters therin mentioned, contayninge the verie staye and good state of our Lyvinge, to graunt vnto vs the Confirmacion of the same, or of as manye or as much of them as shalbe to your Honors good Lykinge, And therwith all your LLp: favorable letters vnto the L. Mayor of London to permitt vs to excercise within the Cittye accordinge to the articles, and also thatt the said lettres maye contayne some order to the Justices of Middlesex as in the same ys mentioned, wherbie as wee shall cease the Continewall troublinge of your LLp. for your often lettres in the premisses. So shall wee daylie be bownden to praye for the prosperous preservation of your LLp. in honor helth and happines long to Continew.