5. Christenings and burials, which usually are in the afternoon, are many times disturbed, and persons endangered in that part, which is the greatest part of the parish.
6. Persons of honor and quality that dwell in the parish are restrained by the number of coaches from going out, or coming home in seasonable time, to the prejudice of their occasions. And some persons of honor have left, and others have refused houses for this very inconvenience, to the prejudice and loss of the parish.
7. The Lords of the Council in former times have by order directed that there shall be but two playhouses tolerated, and those without the city, the one at the Bankside, the other near Golding Lane (which these players still have and use all summer), which the Lords did signify by their letters to the Lord Mayor; and in performance thereof the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen did give order that they should forbear to play any longer there, which the players promised to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (while he was Recorder of London) to observe, entreating only a little time to provide themselves elsewhere.[371]
Bishop Laud endorsed the petition with his own hand "To the Coun. Table," and in all probability he submitted it to the consideration of the Privy Council. If so, the Council took no action.
But in 1633, as a result of further complaints about the crowding of coaches, the Privy Council appointed a committee to estimate the value of the Blackfriars Theatre and "the buildings thereunto belonging," with the idea of removing the playhouse and paying the owners therefor. The committee reported that "the players demanded £21,000. The commissioners [Sir Henry Spiller, Sir William Beecher, and Laurence Whitaker] valued it at near £3000. The Parishioners offered towards the removing of them £100."[372] Obviously the plan of removal was not feasible, if indeed the Privy Council seriously contemplated such action. The only result of this second agitation was the issuance on November 20 of special instructions to coachmen: "If any persons, men or women, of what condition soever, repair to the aforesaid playhouse in coach, as soon as they are gone out of their coaches, the coachmen shall depart thence and not return till the end of the play."[373] Garrard, in a letter to the Lord Deputy dated January 9, 1633, says: "Here hath been an order of the Lords of the Council hung up in a table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command all that resort to the playhouse there to send away their coaches, and to disperse abroad in Paul's Churchyard, Carter Lane, the Conduit in Fleet Street, and other places, and not to return to fetch their company, but they must trot afoot to find their coaches. 'Twas kept very strictly for two or three weeks, but now I think it is disordered again."[374] The truth is that certain distinguished patrons of the theatre did not care "to trot afoot to find their coaches," and so made complaint at Court. As a result it was ordered, at a sitting of the Council, December 29, 1633 (the King being present): "Upon information this day given to the Board of the discommodity that diverse persons of great quality, especially Ladies and Gentlewomen, did receive in going to the playhouse of Blackfriars by reason that no coaches may stand ... the Board ... think fit to explain the said order in such manner that as many coaches as may stand within the Blackfriars Gate may enter and stay there."[375]
All this agitation about coaches implies a fashionable and wealthy patronage of the Blackfriars. An interesting glimpse of high society at the theatre is given in a letter written by Garrard, January 25, 1636: "A little pique happened betwixt the Duke of Lenox and the Lord Chamberlain about a box at a new play in the Blackfriars, of which the Duke had got the key, which, if it had come to be debated betwixt them, as it was once intended, some heat or perhaps other inconvenience might have happened."[376] The Queen herself also sometimes went thither. Herbert records, without any comment, her presence there on the 13 of May, 1634.[377] It has been generally assumed that she attended a regular afternoon performance; but this, I am sure, was not the case. The Queen engaged the entire building for the private entertainment of herself and her specially invited guests, and the performance was at night. In a bill presented by the King's Men for plays acted before the members of the royal family during the year 1636 occurs the entry: "The 5th of May, at the Blackfryers, for the Queene and the Prince Elector ... Alfonso." Again, in a similar bill for the year 1638 (see the [bill] on page [404]) is the entry: "At the Blackfryers, the 23 of Aprill, for the Queene ... The Unfortunate Lovers." The fact that the actors did not record the loss of their "day" at their house, and made their charge accordingly, shows that the plays were given at night and did not interfere with the usual afternoon performances before the public.
The King's Men continued to occupy the Blackfriars as their winter home until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Thereafter the building must have stood empty for a number of years. In 1653 Sir Aston Cokaine, in a poem prefixed to Richard Brome's Plays, looked forward prophetically to the happy day when
Black, and White Friars too, shall flourish again.
But the prophecy was not to be fulfilled; for although Whitefriars (i.e., Salisbury Court) did flourish as a Restoration playhouse, the more famous Blackfriars had ceased to exist before acting was allowed again. The manuscript note in the Phillipps copy of Stow's Annals (1631) informs us that "the Blackfriars players' playhouse in Blackfriars, London, which had stood many years, was pulled down to the ground on Monday the 6 day of August, 1655, and tenements built in the room."[378]