[591] Wallace, Three London Theatres, p. 33.
[592] He had joined Prince Charles's Men.
[593] Wallace, Three London Theatres, p. 38.
[594] Ibid., p. 40. Fleay, Murray, and others have contended that the Princess Elizabeth's Men came to the Cockpit in 1619, and have denied the accuracy of the title-page of The Witch of Edmonton (1658), which declares that play to have been "acted by the Prince's Servants at the Cockpit often." (See Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage, p. 299.)
[595] Malone, Variorum, iii, 59.
[596] John Parton, Some Account of the Hospital and Parish of St. Giles in the Fields, p. 235. From a parish entry in 1660 we learn that the players had to contribute 2d. to the parish poor for each day that there was acting at the Cockpit. (See ibid., p. 236.)
[597] In the Middlesex County Records, iii, 6, we find that on December 6, 1625, because "the drawing of people together to places was a great means of spreading and continuing the infection ... this Court doth prohibit the players of the house at the Cockpit, being next to His Majesty's Court at Whitehall, commanding them to surcease all such their proceedings until His Majesty's pleasure be further signified." Apparently the playhouses in general had been allowed to resume performances; and since by December 24 there had been no deaths from the plague for a week, the special inhibition of the Cockpit Playhouse was soon lifted.
[598] "When Her Majesty's Servants were at the Cockpit, being all at liberty, they dispersed themselves to several companies." (Heton's Patent, 1639, The Shakespeare Society Papers, iv, 96.)
[599] Herbert Manuscript, Malone, Variorum, iii, 240.
[600] Stopes, "Shakespeare's Fellows and Followers," Shakespeare Jahrbuch, xlvi, 99. In 1639 Heton applied for a patent as "Governor" of the company at Salisbury Court.