Volume 2 / Book 4 — BOOK IV THE PLAY-HOUSES (continued 3)

P S

Sealed and deliuered by the saide Peter Streete in the presence of me William Harris Pub[lic] Scr[ivener] And me Frauncis Smyth appr[entice] to the said Scr[ivener]

[Endorsed:] Peater Streat ffor The Building of the Fortune.

The constant references in the terms of the contract to the model of the Globe, while bearing testimony to the stimulus which the building of the Globe had given to theatrical competition, leaves some uncertainty as to many details of planning, and it is matter for regret that the ‘plot’ of the stage and staircases furnished to the builder has not itself been preserved. We learn, however, that the house was a square one, 80 feet each way by outside and 55 feet by inside measurement; that the stage was 43 feet wide and projected into the middle of the yard; that the framework was of wood, on a foundation of brick and piles, and with an outer coating of plaster; that the framework and stage were boarded within and strengthened with iron pikes; that there were three galleries rising to a total height of 32 feet, and that sections of these were partitioned off and ceiled as ‘gentlemens rooms’, of which there were four, and ‘two-penny rooms’; that the tiring-house had glazed windows; that there was a ‘shadowe or cover’ over the stage, and that this, with the galleries and staircases, were tiled and supplied with lead gutters to carry off the rain-water. Two divergences from the Globe model are specified: the timber work is to be stouter, and the principal posts of the frame work and stage are to be square and carved with satyrs. An ingenious attempt has been made by Mr. William Archer and Mr. W. H. Godfrey to reconstruct the plan of the theatre from these and other indications, with a liberal allowance of conjecture.[1299] It will be observed that Henslowe, as well as Alleyn, was a party to the contract; but it is pretty clear from Alleyn’s note already referred to that he found the money, and although Henslowe did in fact become his partner in the enterprise, this was under a lease of 4 April 1601, whereby he took over a moiety of the play-house and its profits for a term of twenty-four years from the previous 25 March at an annual rent of £8.[1300] This lease did not include Alleyn’s private tenements, but it did include some enclosed ‘growndes’ on the north and west of the house, and a passage 30 feet long by 14 feet wide running east from the south-west angle of the building ‘from one doore of the said house to an other’. It is, I think, to be inferred from this that the main approach to the earlier Fortune theatre was from the Golden Lane side. The contract with Street is dated on 8 January 1600 and provides for the completion of the work by the following 25 July, and for the payment of the price in two instalments, one when the framework was up and the other upon completion. In fact, however, the acquittances by Street and others, endorsed upon the Dulwich indenture, show that Henslowe acted as a kind of banker for the transaction, and made advances from time to time to Street, or to pay workmen or purchase materials, all of which were debited against the amounts payable under the contract. Work seems to have begun before 17 January. By 20 March Henslowe had paid £180 and by 4 May £240. It is therefore a little puzzling to find a payment ‘at the eand of the fowndations’ on 8 May. About £53 more was paid before 10 June, making nearly £300 in all by that date. The last entry is one of 4s. to Street ‘to pasify him’, which suggests that some dispute had taken place. Here the acquittances stop, but Henslowe’s Diary indicates that he was frequently dining in company with Street from 13 June to August 8, and probably the work was completed about the latter date.[1301] Alleyn had had to face some opposition in carrying out his project. He began by arming himself with the authority of his ‘lord’, the Earl of Nottingham, who wrote in his favour to the Middlesex justices on 12 January 1600, explaining the reasons for leaving the Bankside and the general convenience of the new locality, and citing the Queen’s ‘special regarde of fauor’ towards the company as a reason why the justices should allow his servant to build ‘w^thout anie yo^r lett or molestation’. This action did not prove sufficient to avert a local protest. Lord Willoughby and others complained to the Council, who on 9 March wrote to the Middlesex justices informing them that the erection of a new play-house, ‘wherof ther are to manie allreadie not farr from that place’, would greatly displease the Queen, and commanding the project to be ‘staied’. Alleyn, however, was secure in the royal favour. He also, by offering a weekly contribution to the relief of the poor, succeeded in obtaining a certificate from the petty officials and other inhabitants of Finsbury of their consent to the toleration of the house; and on 8 April the Council wrote again to the justices, withdrawing their previous inhibition and laying special stress on Elizabeth’s desire that Alleyn personally should revive his services as a player, ‘wheareof, of late he hath made discontynuance’. The letter also referred to the fact that another house was pulled down instead of the Fortune, and a formal Privy Council order of 22 June, laying down that there shall in future be one house in Middlesex for the Admiral’s men, and one on the Bankside for the Chamberlain’s, makes it clear that the condemned theatre was the Curtain.[1302] Nevertheless, it is certain that neither the Curtain nor the Rose was in fact plucked down at this date.

The Fortune was opened in the autumn of 1600 by the Admiral’s men, probably with Dekker’s 1 Fortune’s Tennis, and its theatrical history is closely bound up with that of the same company, who occupied it continuously, as the Admiral’s to 1603, then as Prince Henry’s men to his death in 1612, and finally as the Palsgrave’s men. It is only necessary to deal here with matters that directly concern the building. That it became something of a centre of disturbance in the peaceful suburbs of the north-west is shown by various entries in the records of the Middlesex Bench. On 26 February 1611, two butchers, Ralph Brewyn and John Lynsey, were charged with abusing gentlemen there. On 1 October 1612, the justices regarded it as the resort of cutpurses, and were thereby led to suppress the jigs at the end of plays, which especially attracted such persons. In 1613 a true bill was found against Richard Bradley for stabbing Nicholas Bedney there on 5 June.[1303] The upkeep of the structure was expensive. A note in Alleyn’s hand of sums laid out upon the play-house during the seven years 1602–8 shows an average amount of about £120. Only £4 2s. was spent during 1603, for the greater part of which year the theatres were closed, but £232 1s. 8d. in 1604.[1304] No doubt wooden buildings, open to the weather, perished rapidly. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the relations between the company and their landlords were much what they had been at the Rose; that is to say that the latter took half the gallery receipts and bore repairs, while the former took the rest of the receipts and met all other outgoings. An unexecuted draft lease to Thomas Downton of 1608 indicates that Alleyn and Henslowe then had it in mind to bind the company more closely to the theatre, by dividing a quarter of their interest amongst the eight members of the company.[1305] Possibly the plan was carried out. In asking a loan from Alleyn on a date apparently earlier than August 1613, Charles Massye, who was one of the eight, not only offers repayment out of his ‘gallery mony’ and ‘house mony’, but also the assignment of ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play housses’ as a security.[1306] Certainly the company took over the house after Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616. His share in the building passed to his widow, who contemplated a sale of it to Gregory Franklyn, Drew Stapley, and John Hamond.[1307] But the deed remained unexecuted at her death in 1617, and the whole property was now once more in Alleyn’s hands. On 31 October 1618 he leased it to the company for £200 a year, to be reduced to £120 at his death. With it went a taphouse occupied by Mark Brigham, the rent of a two-room tenement held by John Russell, and a strip of impaled ground 123 feet by 17 feet, lying next the passage on the south.[1308] This is perhaps the garden in which, according to John Chamberlain, the players, ‘not to be overcome with courtesy’, banqueted the Spanish ambassador when he visited the theatre on 16 July 1621.[1309] John Russell is presumably the same whose appointment by Alleyn as a ‘gatherer’ lead to a protest from William Bird on behalf of the company.[1310] A few months after the ambassador’s visit, John Chamberlain records the destruction of the Fortune on 9 December 1621:[1311]

‘On Sonday night here was a great fire at the Fortune in Golden-Lane, the fayrest play-house in this towne. It was quite burnt downe in two howres, & all their apparell & play-bookes lost, wherby those poore companions are quite undone.’

Alleyn also notes the event in his diary.[1312] On 20 May 1622 he formed a syndicate, and leased to it the site at a rent of £128 6s., under an obligation to build a new theatre at a cost of £1,000.[1313] This, ‘a large round brick building’, was erected in the following year.[1314] The site conveyed covered a space of almost exactly 130 feet square, and on it had stood, besides the buildings named in the lease of 1618, other tenements, in one of which William Bird himself lived. Mr. Lawrence has suggested that the new Fortune may have been a roofed-in house, but his evidence is hardly sufficient to outweigh the explicit statement of Wright that it ‘lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1315] This can hardly refer only to the earlier building. The Fortune was dismantled in 1649 and ‘totally demolished’ by 1662, and the façade still extant in 1819 cannot therefore have belonged to it, although it may have belonged to a Restoration ‘nursery’ for young actors, possibly upon the same site.[1316] No acting seems to have taken place at the Fortune after 1649.[1317]

xiii. THE BOAR’S HEAD

There appear to have been at least six city inns under this sign.[1318] The most famous was that on the south side of Great Eastcheap, in St. Michael’s, which seems to have been regarded in the middle of the sixteenth century as the traditional locality of the tavern scenes in Henry IV.[1319] This inn was in the occupation of Joan Broke, widow, in 1537, and in that of Thomas Wright, vintner, about 1588.[1320] Another Boar’s Head stood ‘without’ Aldgate, in the extra-mural Portsoken ward, which lay between that gate and the bars with which the liberties of the City terminated at Hog Lane. Here, according to Stowe, there were ‘certaine faire Innes for receipt of trauellers repayring to the Citie’.[1321] At the Aldgate inn had been produced in 1557 a ‘lewd’ play called The Sackful of Newes, which provoked the interference of Mary’s Privy Council.[1322] But it seems to me exceedingly improbable that either this or the Eastcheap inn was converted into the play-house, of which we have brief and tantalizing records in the seventeenth century. Both were within the City jurisdiction, where the licensing of play-houses seems to have definitely terminated in 1596. It is true that a Privy Council letter of 31 March 1602, which directs that the combined company of Oxford’s and Worcester’s men shall be allowed to play at the Boar’s Head, is addressed to the Lord Mayor.[1323] But so are other letters of the same type, the object of which is to limit plays to a small number of houses outside the liberties, and to restrain them elsewhere over the whole area of the City and the suburbs.[1324] And when, a year or two later, Worcester’s men became Queen Anne’s, and a draft patent was drawn up to confirm their right to play in the Curtain and the Boar’s Head, both houses are described, not as in the City, but as ‘within our County of Middlesex’.[1325] Presumably Anne’s men left the Boar’s Head when the Red Bull became available for their use in 1606, and Mr. Adams has explained a mention, which had long puzzled me, of the Duke of York’s men as ‘the Prince’s Players of Whitechapel’ in 1608 by the suggestion that they succeeded to the vacant theatre.[1326] If this is so, I think it affords further evidence for the theory that the Boar’s Head, although it may have taken its name from the Aldgate inn, was not itself that inn, and probably not a converted inn at all, but lay just outside and not just inside the City bars. For, although part of the street between Aldgate and Whitechapel is sometimes called, as in Ogilby’s map of 1677 and Rocque’s of 1746, ‘Whitechapel Street’, yet Whitechapel proper lay outside the liberties, farther to the east along the Mile End Road.[1327] The only other contemporary record of the Boar’s Head is a letter to Edward Alleyn from his wife Joan on 21 October 1603, in which she says, ‘All the companyes be come hoame & well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’.[1328] This Browne cannot be identified, and it is perhaps idle to conjecture that he may have been related to Robert Browne, and that it may have been at the Boar’s Head that the latter played with Derby’s men in 1599–1601. The Boar’s Head seems to have been generally forgotten by the Restoration, but is recalled by the Marquis of Newcastle c. 1660.[1329]

xiv. THE RED BULL

[Bibliographical Note.—The records of the suit of Woodford v. Holland (1613) were printed by J. Greenstreet in the Athenaeum for 28 Nov. 1885 from Court of Requests Books, xxvi, ff. 780, 890, and cxxviii, and therefrom by Fleay, 194; and more fully with those of the later suit of 1619 (misdated 1620) by C. W. Wallace in Nebraska University Studies, ix. 291 (cited as W. v. H.). Collier, i. 374, mentions evidence on the same transactions as ‘in the Audit Office’, and misnames the complainant John Woodward.]

Our chief knowledge of the early history of the Red Bull is derived from disputes before the Court of Requests in 1613 and 1619 between Thomas Woodford and Aaron Holland. It appears that Holland held a lease of the site, which was at the upper end of St. John Street in the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, from Anne, widow and executrix of Christopher Bedingfield, and had there built a play-house. The indication of a Red Bull Yard in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 to the west of St. John Street, and just north of the angle which it forms with Clerkenwell Green, no doubt defines the locality with some precision.[1330] In 3 Jac. I, that is, at some date between 24 March 1605 and 23 March 1606, he assigned one-seventh of the house to Thomas Swynnerton, ‘with a gatherers place thereto belonging’. This Swynnerton transferred for £50 to Philip Stone.[1331] It was subject to a rent of £2 10s., and Holland gave Stone an indenture in February 1609, which was alleged not to constitute a proper lease. In 1612–13 Stone sold his seventh for £50 to Woodford, who took profits for a quarter, and then entrusted his interest to Holland, instructing his servant Anthony Payne to pay the rent. He alleged that Holland persuaded Payne to be behindhand with the rent, and withheld the profits, estimated at £30 a year. He therefore brought his action a little before May 1613. The Court called upon Holland to show cause why he should not account for the arrears of profits, and for 1s. 6d. a week due to the gatherer’s place.[1332] Holland replied, and the issues were referred to the arbitration of counsel, including Woodford’s ‘demaund of the eighteenth penny and the eighteenth part of such moneys & other comodities as should be collected or receaued ... for the profittes of the galleries or other places in or belonging to the play howse’.[1333] Counsel made an arrangement, but did not agree in their reports of its terms, and the Court ordered Holland to give Woodford an indenture similar to that given to Stone.[1334] Holland got a writ of prohibition from the King’s Bench, always jealous of the jurisdiction of the Court of Requests, on 6 November 1613, and Woodford began a suit against Holland in Stone’s name for not making a proper indenture in 1609. This, he says, Stone conspired with Holland to withdraw. In 1619 he brought another action for his profits before the Court of Requests, in which Holland describes him as ‘Woodford, alias Simball’, but the result is unknown.

The Red Bull, then, was built not later and probably not much earlier than 1606, a little before the first recorded mention of it in the following passage from The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was almost certainly produced in the winter of 1607:

‘Citizen. Why so sir, go and fetch me him then, and let the Sophy of Persia come and christen him a childe.

‘Boy. Beleeue me sir, that will not doe so well, ’tis stale, it has beene had before at the red Bull.’[1335]

The allusion is to an incident in the last scene of Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’ Travels of the Three Brothers.[1336] This, according to the entry in the Stationers’ Register on 29 June 1607, was played at the Curtain, and according to its title-page of 1607 by the Queen’s men. But there is no reason why it should not also have been played at the Red Bull, since both houses are specified as occupied by the Queen’s men in their patent of 15 April 1609. In their earlier draft patent of about 1603–4, the Boar’s Head and Curtain are named, and in a Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 the Curtain only. Presumably, therefore, the Red Bull was taken into use by the Queen’s men, of whom Swynnerton was one, as soon as it was built at some date between 1604 and 1606. The Red Bull is one of the three houses whose contention is predicted in Dekker’s Raven’s Almanack of 1608, and Dekker refers to it again in his Work for Armourers, written during the plague of 1609, when the bear garden was open and the theatres closed. He says, ‘The pide Bul heere keepes a tossing and a roaring, when the Red Bull dares not stir’.[1337] Its existence caused trouble from time to time to the Middlesex justices. At the end of May 1610, William Tedcastle, yeoman, and John Fryne, Edward Brian, Edward Purfett, and Thomas Williams, felt-makers, were called upon to give recognisances to answer for a ‘notable outrage at the play-house called the Red Bull’; and on 3 March 1614 Alexander Fulsis was bailed out on a charge of picking Robert Sweet’s pocket of a purse and £3 at this theatre.[1338] Further references to it are to be found in Wither’s Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), in Tomkis’s Albumazar (1615), and in Gayton’s Pleasant Notes on Don Quixot (1654).[1339]

An entry in Alleyn’s Diary for 1617 has been supposed to indicate that he had an interest in the Red Bull. To me it only suggests that he sold the actors there a play.[1340]

The Queen’s men most likely occupied the Red Bull at least until 1617 when, as shown by the lawsuit of 1623, they were on the point of moving to the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Plays of theirs were printed as acted there in 1608, 1611, 1612, and 1615. Swetnam the Woman Hater Arraigned by Women, printed in 1620, was also played there, before Anne’s death in 1619. In 1637 Thomas Heywood, formerly one of the Queen’s men, included in his Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, a Prologue and Epilogue, to which he prefixed the note ‘A young witty lad playing the part of Richard the third: at the Red Bull: the Author because hee was interessed in the play to incourage him, wrot him this Prologue and Epilogue’.[1341] This was probably, and certainly if the play was Shakespeare’s, some quite exceptional performance. Similarly the ‘companie of young men of this citie’, who are stated on the title-page of Wentworth Smith’s Hector of Germany (1615) to have acted it at the Red Bull and Curtain, must be supposed to have used these theatres by some arrangement with the Queen’s men.

The Red Bull afterwards passed to other companies, continued in use up to, and even occasionally during, the Commonwealth, and had a revived life after the Restoration to 1663.[1342] Before 1633, and probably before 1625, it had been re-edified and enlarged.[1343] Mr. Lawrence suggests that at this time it became a roofed house, which it seems certainly to have been after the Restoration.[1344] But it is difficult to get away from Wright’s explicit statement that it ‘lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1345] Nor need the quite modern identification of it with the roofed interior depicted in The Wits rest upon anything but an incidental reference to the house in the text of the pamphlet.[1346] Nothing is known as to the shape or galleries of the Red Bull.

xv. THE HOPE

[Bibliographical Note.—The Dulwich papers relating to the connexion of Henslowe and Alleyn with the bear-baiting and the Hope are to be found with a commentary in Greg, Henslowe’s Diary and Henslowe Papers. Valuable material on the Bankside localities is in W. Rendle, The Bankside, Southwark, and the Globe, 1877 (Appendix I to Furnivall, Harrison’s Description of England, Part II, with a reconstructed map of the Bankside and a 1627 plan of Paris Garden), Old Southwark and its People (1878), The Play-houses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (1885, Walford’s Antiquarian, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55), Paris Garden and Blackfriars (1887, 7 N. Q. iii. 241, 343, 442). Some notes of Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] in 1813 and A. J. K[empe] in 1833 are reprinted in The Gentleman’s Magazine Library, xv (1904), 74, 117. Other writings on Paris Garden are by W. H. Overall (1869) in Proc. Soc. Antiq. 2nd series, iv. 195, J. Meymott, The Manor of Old Paris Garden (1881), P. Norman, The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of Paris Garden, Southwark, 1608–1671 (1901) in Surrey Arch. Colls. xvi. 55. Since I wrote this chapter, C. L. Kingsford (1920, Arch. lxx. 155) has added valuable material.]

It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with the whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside Bear Gardens. The ursarius or bearward was a recognized type of mediaeval mimus, and the rewards in which his welcome found expression are a recurring item in many a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take one example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained between 1483 and 1542 the ursinarii, ursuarii, or ursiatores of the King, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the Earl of Derby, and the town of Norwich.[1347] On more than one occasion the payment is said to be pro agitacione bestiarum suarum. The phrase is perhaps not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have seen one even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill. And illuminations dating back as far as the tenth century bear evidence to the antiquity of his somewhat grotesque tripudium.[1348] But in the robust days of our forefathers there was an even more attractive way of agitating bears. The traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a ‘Bolrynge’ in the middle of the High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore the name in 1561.[1349] The maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show another ring, marked ‘The bolle bayting’ and with a very palpable bull inside it, upon the Bankside, not far from where the Hope must afterwards have stood.[1350] But the bear was also baited in London, at least from the twelfth century.[1351] Erasmus is often cited as declaring that in the reign of Henry VIII ‘herds’ of the animal were kept for the purpose. This is an error. Erasmus wrote of dancing bears; but I am afraid it must be assumed that the chief function of the bearward attached to the Tudor Royal Household was to provide exhibitions of the more brutal, noisy, and occasionally dangerous sport.[1352] A regular office is traceable back to 1484, when Richard III in the first year of his reign appointed his bearward John Browne to be ‘Maister, Guyder and Ruler of all our Beres and Apes’.[1353] It was still a part of the establishment of the Royal Household under Elizabeth. A patent of 2 June 1573 to Ralph Bowes describes it as ‘the room or office of Cheif Master Overseer and Ruler of all and singular our game pastymes and sportes, that is to saie of all and everie our beares bulles and mastyve dogges’, and names as Bowes’s predecessors Cuthbert Vaughan and Sir Richard Long.[1354] The grant was of the nature of a commission, authorizing the holder, personally or by deputy, to ‘take up’ or press animals for the royal service, and giving him the sole right of baiting the Queen’s bears, to the exclusion of any other officer or under officer appertaining to the bears, not specially licensed or appointed by him. The Master was presumably expected to make his profit out of the privileges granted, for the patent did not assign him any fee, such as the under officers, known as the Keepers of Bears and Mastiffs, enjoyed at the hands of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[1355] But he received a reward, similar to those given to players, of £5 through the Treasurer on the Council’s warrant, when the baiting was shown before the Queen. These rewards are generally expressed as ‘for the Game of Paris Garden’ or ‘to the Master of her Majesty’s Game at Paris Garden’; and Bowes must have joined sons or other relatives with him as deputies, since Edward Bowes and Thomas Bowes were often payees instead of Ralph Bowes during his term of office.[1356] Towards the end of Bowes’s life it would seem that Henslowe and Alleyn, who had been baiting bears on the Bankside as licensees since 1594, were in negotiation to obtain the Mastership.[1357] Probably the first idea was to buy a surrender of the office from Bowes, since the Dulwich manuscripts contain an unexecuted draft of a patent to Henslowe, following the terms of that to Bowes himself and reciting such a surrender.[1358] I should suppose this negotiation to be that in connexion with which Henslowe spent £2 15s. 6d. during 1597 upon visits to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests, and other Court officials, and in a fee to the Clerk of the Signet. The expenditure is entered in the diary as incurred ‘a bowt the changinge of ower comysion’.[1359] But before a surrender was effected it would seem that Henslowe had had to turn his thoughts to a succession. In this he was disappointed. On 4 June 1598 he wrote to Alleyn that Bowes was very sick and expected to die, and that he much feared he should lose all. Neither Caesar nor the Lord Admiral had done anything for him, and although he had received help from Lady Edmondes and Mr. Langworth, he now learnt that the reversion of the Mastership was already promised by the Queen to one Mr. Dorrington, a pensioner.[1360] Bowes did in effect die very shortly after, and on 11 August 1598 John Dorrington received his patent for the Mastership.[1361] To this was joined the office of Keeper of the Bandogs and Mastiffs, with a fee of 10d. a day for exercising this office and keeping twenty mastiff bitches, and a further fee of 4d. for a deputy.[1362] It is not unlikely that John Dorrington was related to the Richard Darrington who had held this keepership with the same fees, amounting to £21 5s. 10d. a year, in 1571. Another keepership, that of the Bears, was held in 1599 by Jacob Meade, who was closely associated with Henslowe and Alleyn in the management of the Bear garden.[1363] Dorrington’s grant was confirmed by James I on 14 July 1603, and on 23 July he was knighted.[1364] About this time Henslowe and Alleyn, who were paying Dorrington £40 a year for licence to bait,[1365] must have contemplated fresh negotiations for a transfer of the patent, for the draft in the Dulwich manuscripts, originally drawn up about 1597, has been altered by Henslowe so as to adapt it to the new reign and to a surrender by Dorrington.[1366] But once again they were unsuccessful, for Dorrington died, and on 20 July 1604 the Mastership was granted to one of the invading Scots, Sir William Stuart.[1367] From him, however, Henslowe and Alleyn did succeed in obtaining an assignment, and a draft patent as joint Masters and Keepers, with the fees of 10d. and 4d., is dated 24 November 1604. They had, indeed, been rather in Stuart’s hands, for he had refused either to give them a licence or to take over their house and bears, and they had to pay for the surrender at what they considered the high rate of £450.[1368] This we learn from a petition of about 1607, in which they appealed to the King for an increase in the daily fee by 2s. 8d., in view of their losses through restraints and the deaths of bears, and of their heavy expenses, amounting to £200 a month, whereby their privilege, which was once worth £100 a year, could now not be let at all.[1369] It is doubtful whether they got any relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608;[1370] but about 1612 they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42 10s. and 12d. a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters until Henslowe’s death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn in survivorship.[1371]

When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the ‘game’ was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to be.[1372] The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25 May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, ‘and after dener to bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght’.[1373] Later French embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586 were similarly honoured.[1374] The custom continued during the next reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the ball ‘all then took their places at the windows of the room which looked out upon a square, where a platform was raised, and a vast crowd had assembled to see the King’s bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs.’[1375] James had introduced a new and dangerous element into the sport by using the lions which were kept in the Tower, and this also became the scene of baitings. On 5 March 1607 the Treasurer of the Chamber paid Henslowe and Alleyn no less than £30, partly for attendances with the game at Greenwich during the visit of the King of Denmark and at Whitehall during that of the Prince de Joinville, and partly for baiting of the lions in the Tower on three several occasions.[1376] Stowe gives detailed descriptions of lion-baitings in 1604, 1605, 1609, and 1610, of which the first is interesting, because it was under the personal superintendence of Edward Alleyn, ‘now sworne the Princes man and Maister of the Beare Garden’.[1377]

But the profit of the thing, from the point of view of the Master of the Game, was not so much in the attendances at Court, as in the public baitings, which he and those holding licences from him were privileged to give with the bears and dogs, ‘taken up’ by virtue of the commission or bought at their own expense, during such times as these were not required for the royal service. These public spectacles were held at what was known as the Bear Garden, under conditions much resembling those of a theatre. They played a considerable part in the life of London; literature is full of allusions to them; and they are described with more or less detail in the narratives of many travellers from abroad. An early account is that from the Spanish of a secretary to the Duke of Najera, who visited Henry VIII in 1544.[1378] He describes the bears as baited daily, with three or four dogs to each bear, in an enclosure where they were tied with ropes, and adds:

‘Into the same place they brought a pony with an ape fastened on its back, and to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable.’

In 1559 the same French ambassadors, who saw the baiting at Whitehall, were taken on the following day to Paris Garden, and ‘ther was boyth bare and bull baytyng, and the capten with a c. of the gard to kepe rowme for them to see the baytyng’.[1379] The next notice of any value is that of Lupold von Wedel, who was at Southwark on 23 August 1584.[1380]

‘There is a round building three stories high, in which are kept about a hundred large English dogs, with separate wooden kennels for each of them. These dogs were made to fight singly with three bears, the second bear being larger than the first and the third larger than the second. After this a horse was brought in and chased by the dogs, and at last a bull, who defended himself bravely. The next was that a number of men and women came forward from a separate compartment, dancing, conversing and fighting with each other: also a man who threw some white bread among the crowd, that scrambled for it. Right over the middle of the place a rose was fixed, this rose being set on fire by a rocket: suddenly lots of apples and pears fell out of it down upon the people standing below. Whilst the people were scrambling for the apples, some rockets were made to fall down upon them out of the rose, which caused a great fright but amused the spectators. After this, rockets and other fireworks came flying out of all corners, and that was the end of the play.’

It is interesting to observe that the baiting proper was supplemented with fireworks and an entertainment, which must have been of the nature of a jig.[1381] The visit of Frederick, Duke of Württemberg, on 1 September 1592, is also recorded by his secretary, who says:[1382]

‘His Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each in a separate kennel. In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire, two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you can perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the horns of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, so that one is obliged to pull them back by their tails, and force open their jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they, however, could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived to ward off their attacks that they could not well get at him; on the contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by striking and butting at them.’

De Witt briefly notices the ‘amphitheatrum’ of the Bear Garden in 1596. He says:[1383]

‘Est etiam quintum sed dispari [vsu?] et structura, bestiarum concertationi destinatum, in quo multi vrsi, tauri, et stupendae magnitudinis canes discretis caueis et septis aluntur, qui ad pugnam adseruantur, iocundissimum hominibus spectaculum praebentes.’

Hentzner, who visited London in the autumn of 1598, says:[1384]

‘Est et alius postea locus Theatri quoque formam habens, Ursorum & Taurorum venationibus destinatus, qui à postica parte alligati à magnis illis canibus & molossis Anglicis, quos lingua vernacula Docken appellant, mire exagitantur, ita tamen, ut saepe canes isti ab Ursis vel Tauris, dentibus arrepti, vel cornibus impetiti, de vita periclitari, aliquando etiam animam exhalare soleant, quibus sic vel sauciis vel lassis statim substituuntur alii recentes & magis alacres. Accedit aliquando in fine hujus spectaculi Ursi plane excaecati flagellatio, ubi quinque, vel sex, in circulo constituti, Ursum flagellis misere excipiunt, qui licet alligatus auffugere nequeat, alacriter tamen se defendit, circumstantes, & nimium appropinquantes, nisi recte & provide sibi caveant, prosternit, ac flagella e manibus cadentium eripit atque confringit.’

To 1599 belongs the account of Thomas Platter of Basle:[1385]

‘The London bearbaitings usually take place every Sunday and Wednesday, across the water. The play house is built in circular form; above are a number of seated galleries; the ground space under the open sky is unoccupied. In the midst of this a great bear is fastened to a stake by a long rope. When we came down the stairs, we went behind the play house, and saw the English dogs, of which there were about 120 chained up, each in his separate kennel, in a yard.’

Platter also describes the actual baiting of the bull and bear and of the blind bear, much as did his predecessors. On 7 September 1601 the Duc de Biron was taken to the Bear Garden, as one of the sights of London, by no less a cicerone than Sir Walter Raleigh.[1386] A visit of 16 September 1602 is described in the diary of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin in Pomerania.[1387] The vogue of the Bear Garden amongst foreigners evidently lasted into James’s reign, but the notices are briefer. Lewis Frederick of Württemberg, saw on 26 April 1610 the baiting both of bears and bulls ‘and monkeys that ride on horseback’;[1388] and Justus Zingerling of Thuringia, who was in London about the same year, mentions the ‘theatra comoedorum, in which bears and bulls fight with dogs’.[1389] Even more summary is the reference in an itinerary of Prince Otto von Hesse-Cassel in 1611.[1390] But the extracts given sufficiently describe the nature of the sport, and show that bulls continued to be baited up to a late date, as well as bears, and that the serious business of the spectacle was diversified by regular humorous episodes, such as the monkey on horseback and the whipping of the blind bear. He, by the way, was called Harry Hunks, and is named by Sir John Davies in his Epigrams[1391] of c. 1594, in company with the Sackerson who gave rise to a boast on the part of Master Slender,[1392] and at a later date by Dekker[1393] and Henry Peacham.[1394] Two other famous bears were Ned Whiting and George Stone. Both are alluded to in Ben Jonson’s Epicoene (1609),[1395] and the latter also in The Puritan (1607).[1396] The death of the ‘goodlye beare’ George Stone at a baiting before the King of Denmark in 1606 is lamented in the petition of Henslowe and Alleyn to the King for increased fees already described. One other interesting notice of the sport may be added from the Dulwich collection, and that is an advertisement or ‘bill’ of the entertainment, which runs as follows:

‘Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the Beargardin on the banckside a greate mach plaid by the gamstirs of Essex who hath chalenged all comers what soeuer to plaie v dogges at the single beare for v pounds and also to wearie a bull dead at the stake and for your better content shall haue plasant sport with the horse and ape and whiping of the blind beare. Viuat Rex.’[1397]

Where then was the Bear Garden? This is a point upon which the foreign visitors are not very explicit. From them we could infer little more than that it was transpontine. It has already been pointed out that in official documents, at any rate those of a less formal character than a patent under the great seal, the Mastership is described as the Mastership of the Game of, or at, Paris Garden. With this common parlance agrees.[1398] In the allusions of the pamphleteers and poets, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, Paris or Parish Garden is regularly the place of baiting.[1399] ‘The Beare-garden, commonly called Paris Garden’, says Stowe, speaking of 1583.[1400] At Paris Garden, or as it is sometimes corruptly spelt, ‘Pallas Garden’, Henslowe and Alleyn have their office as Masters[1401] in 1607, and near it Alleyn is living in 1609. Now the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden is a quite well defined part of the Bankside. It lay at the extreme west end, bordering upon Lambeth Marsh, with the Clink upon its east. In it stood from about 1595 the most westerly of the theatres, the Swan.[1402] Historians of Southwark are fond of suggesting that it had been the abode of the bears from an almost immemorial antiquity, and follow a late edition of Blount’s seventeenth-century Glossographia in connecting it with the domus of a certain Robert de Parys, near which the butchers of London were ordered to throw their garbage in 1393.[1403] I think the idea is that the garbage was found useful for feeding the bears. This theory I believe to be as much a myth as Taylor the water-poet’s derivation of the name from Paris, son of Priam. Parish, rather than Paris Garden, seems, in fact, to be the earlier form, although there is nothing in the history of the place that very particularly explains it.[1404] Many residents in London were of course ‘de Parys’ in the fourteenth century, and the domus of the Robert in question, who lived some time after the first mention of ‘Parish’ Garden, was pretty clearly on the City and not the Surrey side of the river.[1405] It is, however, the case that before the Civil War the Butchers’ Company had been accustomed to send their offal by a beadle to ‘two barrow houses, conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding of the King’s Game of Bears’, and were directed to resume the practice after the Restoration; and possibly this is what misled Blount.[1406] Obviously, however, what the butchers did in the seventeenth century is no proof of what they did in the fourteenth. And, in fact, the ordinance of 1393 is explicit in its direction that the offal is ultimately to be, not devoured by bears, but cast into mid-stream.

There is in fact nothing, so far as I know, to locate the royal Game on the Bankside at all until the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was already hard by the stews in the Liberty of the Clink, and still less, except the persistence of the name, to locate it definitely in the Liberty of Paris Garden.[1407] The notice which brings Paris Garden nearest is in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which contains an account of an adventure of one Ralph Morice, secretary to Cranmer, who was foolish enough to take a book of his master’s, containing criticisms of the Six Articles, in a wherry from Westminster Bridge to Paul’s Wharf. It chanced that Henry VIII ‘was then in his barge with a great number of barges and boats about him, then baiting of bears in the water, over against the Bank’. The waterman stopped to see the fun, and the bear broke loose, and climbed into the wherry, which upset. The dangerous book fell into the Thames and was picked up by the bearward, who was the Lady Elizabeth’s bearward and ‘an arrant Papist’. It was only through the good offices of Cromwell that Morice escaped serious trouble. This was about July 1539.[1408] Certainly it was the custom from an early date to moor the King’s barge off Paris Garden.[1409] The spot was marked later by the Old Barge Stairs, which stood at the west end of that part of the Bank lying in front of the Garden, just as Paris Garden Stairs stood at its east end. But the barge was not necessarily at its moorings when Henry was baiting from it. Mr. Ordish suggests that it was the common use of Paris Garden Stairs by visitors to the baiting, which led to the name being transferred to the Bear Garden itself, without any one troubling to inquire very minutely whether it stood a little to the east or a little to the west of the landing.[1410] On the whole, however, I regard it as reasonably probable that there was at one time a Bear Garden in the Liberty, which fixed the traditional name for the sport, even after it had been transferred farther along the Bank.[1411] It may, perhaps, be a slight confirmation of this view that the 1627 survey of Paris Garden shows a space, apparently laid out as a garden and arranged as a circle within a square, which may represent the site. It stands nearly opposite Paris Garden Stairs in a triangular bit of ground between Holland Street and the lane leading to Copt Hall. This seems to have been rather a desolate region in Elizabeth’s reign, at any rate when you got beyond the row of houses which lined the bank.[1412] If there was a Bear Garden there, it had clearly been abandoned some little time before 1546, as the Stews were then ‘the accustomed place’. Somewhat later, the maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show, in addition to the Bull ring already mentioned, another ring marked ‘The Beare bayting’, standing immediately west of it, and like it in the Clink.[1413] The animals at the stake are discernible in the rings, and to the south of each stretches a yard with a pond in the middle and kennelled dogs along the sides. It is in the Clink, too, that Norden in 1593 shows ‘The Beare howse’, a little west and north of ‘The play howse’, which is the Rose. This evidence is consistent with what little is upon written record about the locality of the Bear Gardens. The most important document is a deposition of John Taylor, not the water-poet, in a suit of 1620:[1414]

‘He saith that he remembreth that the game of bear-bayting hath been kept in fower severall places (vizt.) at Mason Steares on the bankside; neere Maid-lane by the corner of the Pyke Garden; at the beare garden which was parcell of the possession of William Payne; and the place where they are now kept.’

Taylor was then an old man of seventy-seven and his memory would easily go back to the time of the early maps. To his testimony may be added that of Stowe, who says in his Survey of London (1598):[1415]

‘Now to returne to the West banke, there be two Beare gardens, the olde and new places, wherein be kept Beares, Buls and other beastes to be bayted. As also Mastiues in severall kenels, nourished to baite them. These Beares and other Beasts are there bayted in plottes of ground, scaffolded about for the Beholders to stand safe. Next on this banke was sometime the Bordello or stewes.’

In his Annales Stowe records the fall of ‘the old and under propped scaffolds round about the Beare-garden, commonly called Paris garden’, and the consequent death of eight persons, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, 13 January 1583. It was, he says, ‘a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves in the cruelty of beasts, than in the works of mercy, the fruits of a true professed faith, which ought to be the Sabbath day’s exercise’.[1416] Dr. Dee also noted the accident in his diary, and it was reported to Burghley on the next day by the Lord Mayor and on 19 January by Recorder Fleetwood.[1417] Both of these adopt the view expressed by Stowe that it must be regarded as divine punishment for the violation of the Sabbath, and Fleetwood refers to ‘a booke sett downe vpon the same matter’, which may be John Field’s Godly Exhortation by Occasion of the late Judgment of God showed at Paris Garden. The shrewd irony of Sir Thomas More, upon a similar event, when it was the church that fell, many years before at Beverley, found little echo in the mind of the Elizabethan Puritan.[1418] A further letter from the Lord Mayor to the Privy Council on 3 July 1583 states that by then the Paris Garden scaffolds were ‘new builded’.[1419]

I find it very difficult to say which of the numerous bear gardens mentioned by Taylor and Stowe was in use at any given time. Mr. Rendle thought that Taylor’s first two, that at Mason Stairs and that at the corner of the Pike Garden, were the two shown as ‘The bolle bayting’ and ‘The Bearebayting’ by Agas.[1420] If so, they are quite out of scale. This is likely, since they are drawn large enough to show the animals. They are shown east and west of each other. Rendle puts the Pike Garden due south of Mason Stairs, but it clearly extended more to the east in 1587. In any case both these earlier sites were farther to the west of the Clink than the Hope. Where then was the place on William Payne’s ground? Mr. Rendle, after a careful comparison of Rocque’s map of 1746 and other later maps, puts it at ‘the north courtelage in the lane known as the Bear Garden’ and the Hope at the south courtelage in the same lane.[1421] I take him to mean that the Bear Garden on Payne’s ground was that in use until 1613, and that the Hope was built a little to the south of it. The terms of the contract with Katherens, however, suggest that the same or practically the same site was used. Mr. Rendle adds that ‘William Payne’s place next the Thames can be traced back into the possession of John Allen, until it came down to Edward Alleyn, and was sold by him at a large profit to Henslowe; the same for which Morgan Pope in 1586 paid to the Vestry of St. Saviour’s “6s. 8d. by the year for tithes”.’[1422] This I cannot quite follow. There seem to have been two properties standing respectively next and next but one on the west to the ‘little Rose’. Next the Rose stood messuages called The Barge, Bell and Cock. They were leased by the Bishop of Winchester to William Payne in 1540. His widow Joan Payne assigned them to John White and John Malthouse on 1 August 1582, and White’s moiety was assigned to Malthouse on 5 February 1589.[1423] From him Henslowe bought the lease in 1593–4.[1424] The tenements upon it were in his hands as ‘Mr. Malthowes rentes’ in 1603 and Alleyn was living in one of them.[1425] And the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock passed to Alleyn and was assigned by his will towards the settlement of his second or third wife, Constance, daughter of Dean Donne.’[1426] To the west of this property in 1540 was a tenement once held by the prioress of Stratford. This passed to the Crown, and then to Thomas and Isabella Keyes under a Crown lease which was in Henslowe’s hands by 1597. Some notes of deeds—leases, deputations, bonds—concerning the Bear Garden were left by Alleyn. Four of the deeds have since been found by Mr. Kingsford in the Record Office. It appears that, before Henslowe, both Pope and Burnaby had some of the Keyes land on a sub-lease, and that Burnaby probably had the Keyes lease itself. Payne carried on baiting in a ring just south of the Barge. The site was called Orchard Court in 1620, and stood north of the Hope. This agrees with the relation suggested by Mr. Rendle between the two courtelages’. The object of the suit of 1620 was to determine whether the Hope also stood upon episcopal, or upon Crown land. Taylor’s testimony was ambiguous. But it follows that the transfer southwards must have been due to a tenant who held under both leases. It was suggested in 1620 that Pope rebuilt the scaffold standings round the ring as galleries with a larger circuit. This was doubtless after the ruin of 1583. Nothing is said of a change of site at this time. Moreover, both Pope and Burnaby seem to have used the site of the Hope and its bull-house as a dog-yard. Probably, therefore, the change was made by Henslowe and Alleyn. Alleyn left a record of ‘what the Bear garden cost me for my owne part in December 1594’. He paid £200 to Burnaby, perhaps only for a joint interest with Henslowe or Jacob Meade, and £250 for the ‘patten’, that is, I suppose, the Mastership bought from Sir William Stuart in 1604. He held his interest for sixteen years and received £60 a year, and then sold it to ‘my father Hinchloe’ for £580 in February 1611.[1427] There must have been considerable outgoings on the structure during this period. Another memorandum in Alleyn’s hand shows an expenditure of £486 4s. 10d. during 1602–5, and a further expenditure during 1606–8 of £360 ‘p^d. for ye building of the howses’.[1428] This last doubtless refers in part, not to the baiting ring itself, but to a tavern and office built on ‘the foreside of the messuage or tenemente called the Beare garden, next the river of Thames in the parish of St. Saviors’, for which there exists a contract of 2 June 1606 between Henslowe and Alleyn and Peter Street the carpenter.[1429] But this only cost £65, and it seems to me most likely that the Bear Garden was rebuilt on the southern site at the same time. Further light is thrown on the profits of the Bear Garden by a note in Henslowe’s diary that the receipts at it for the three days next after Christmas 1608 were £4, £6, and £3 14s., which may be compared with the average of £1 18s. 3d. received from the Fortune during the same three days.[1430] It may be added that Crowley notes the ‘bearwardes vaile’ somewhat ambiguously as ½d., 1d., or 2d.,[1431] and that Lambarde in 1596 includes Paris Garden with the Theatre and Bel Savage as a place where you must pay ‘one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde, and the thirde for a quiet standinge’.[1432]

Yet another building enterprise was undertaken in 1613, by which time an interest in the property had certainly been leased to Jacob Meade. On 29 August a contract was entered into between Henslowe and Meade and Gilbert Katherens, carpenter, for the pulling down of the Bear Garden and the erection before the following 30 November on or near the same site of a play-house on the model of the Swan, but with a movable stage, so as to enable the building to be used also for baitings. I reproduce the document here from Dr. Greg’s text:[1433]

Articles, Covenauntes, grauntes, and agreementes, Concluded and agreed vppon this Nyne and Twenteithe daie of Auguste, Anno Domini 1613, Betwene Phillipe Henslowe of the parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke within the countye of Surrey, Esquire, and Jacobe Maide of the parishe of S^t Olaves in Sowthworke aforesaide, waterman, of thone partie, And Gilbert Katherens of the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, Carpenter, on thother partie, As followeth, That is to saie—

Inprimis the saide Gilbert Katherens for him, his executours, administratours, and assignes, dothe convenaunt, promise, and graunt to and with the saide Phillipe Henslowe and Jacobe Maide and either of them, thexecutors, administratours, & assigns of them and either of them, by theise presentes in manner and forme following: That he the saied Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, or assignes shall and will, at his or theire owne proper costes and charges, vppon or before the last daie of November next ensuinge the daie of the date of theise presentes above written, not onlie take downe or pull downe all that same place or house wherin Beares and Bulls haue been heretofore vsuallie bayted, and also one other house or staple wherin Bulls and horsses did vsuallie stande, sett, lyinge, and beinge vppon or neere the Banksyde in the saide parishe of S^t Saviour in Sowthworke, comonlie called or knowne by the name of the Beare garden, but shall also at his or theire owne proper costes and charges vppon or before the saide laste daie of November newly erect, builde, and sett vpp one other same place or Plaiehouse fitt & convenient in all thinges, bothe for players to playe in, and for the game of Beares and Bulls to be bayted in the same, and also a fitt and convenient Tyre house and a stage to be carryed or taken awaie, and to stande vppon tressells good, substanciall, and sufficient for the carryinge and bearinge of suche a stage; And shall new builde, erect, and sett vp againe the saide plaie house or game place neere or vppon the saide place, where the saide game place did heretofore stande; And to builde the same of suche large compasse, fforme, widenes, and height as the Plaie house called the Swan in the libertie of Parris garden in the saide parishe of S^t Saviour now is; And shall also builde two stearecasses without and adioyninge to the saide Playe house in suche convenient places, as shalbe moste fitt and convenient for the same to stande vppon, and of such largnes and height as the stearecasses of the saide playehouse called the Swan nowe are or bee; And shall also builde the Heavens all over the saide stage, to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett vppon the saide stage, and all gutters of leade needfull for the carryage of all suche raine water as shall fall vppon the same; And shall also make two Boxes in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in; And shall make the particions betwne the Rommes as they are at the saide Plaie house called the Swan; And to make turned cullumes vppon and over the stage; And shall make the principalls and fore fronte of the saide Plaie house of good and sufficient oken tymber, and no furr tymber to be putt or vsed in the lower most, or midell stories, except the vpright postes on the backparte of the saide stories (all the byndinge joystes to be of oken tymber); The inner principall postes of the first storie to be twelve footes in height and tenn ynches square, the inner principall postes in the midell storie to be eight ynches square, the inner most postes in the vpper storie to be seaven ynches square; The prick postes in the first storie to be eight ynches square, in the seconde storie seaven ynches square, and in the vpper most storie six ynches square; Also the brest sommers in the lower moste storie to be nyne ynches depe, and seaven ynches in thicknes, and in the midell storie to be eight ynches depe and six ynches in thicknes; The byndinge jostes of the firste storie to be nyne and eight ynches in depthe and thicknes, and in the midell storie to be viij and vij ynches in depthe and thicknes. Item to make a good, sure, and sufficient foundacion of brickes for the saide Play house or game place, and to make it xiij^teene ynches at the leaste above the grounde. Item to new builde, erect, and sett vpp the saide Bull house and stable with good and sufficient scantlinge tymber, plankes, and bordes, and particions of that largnes and fittnes as shalbe sufficient to kepe and holde six bulls and three horsses or geldinges, with rackes and mangers to the same, and also a lofte or storie over the saide house as nowe it is. And shall also at his & theire owne proper costes and charges new tyle with Englishe tyles all the vpper rooffe of the saide Plaie house, game place, and Bull house or stable, and shall fynde and paie for at his like proper costes and charges for all the lyme, heare, sande, brickes, tyles, lathes, nayles, workemanshipe and all other thinges needfull and necessarie for the full finishinge of the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable; And the saide Plaiehouse or game place to be made in althinges and in suche forme and fashion, as the saide plaie house called the Swan (the scantling of the tymbers, tyles, and foundacion as ys aforesaide without fraude or coven). And the saide Phillipe Henslow and Jacobe Maide and either of them for them, thexecutors, administratours, and assignes of them and either of them, doe covenant and graunt to and with the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, and assignes in manner and forme followinge (That is to saie) That he the saide Gilbert or his assignes shall or maie haue, and take to his or theire vse and behoofe, not onlie all the tymber, benches, seates, slates, tyles, brickes, and all other thinges belonginge to the saide Game place & Bull house or stable, and also all suche olde tymber whiche the saide Phillipe Henslow hathe latelie bought, beinge of an old house in Thames street, London, whereof moste parte is now lyinge in the yarde or backsyde of the saide Beare-garden; And also to satisfie and paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executors, administratours, or assignes for the doinge and finishinges of the workes and buildinges aforesaid the somme of Three Hundered and three score poundes of good and lawffull monie of England, in manner and forme followinge (That is to saie) In hande at thensealinge and delivery hereof, Three score pounds which the saide Gilbert acknowlegeth him selfe by theise presentes to haue receaued; And more over to paie every weeke weeklie, duringe the firste six weekes, vnto the saide Gilbert or his assignes, when he shall sett workemen to worke vppon or about the buildinge of the premisses the somme of Tenne poundes of lawffull monie of Englande to paie them there wages (yf theire wages dothe amount vnto somuche monie); And when the saide plaie house, Bull house, and stable are reared, then to make vpp the saide wages one hundered poundes of lawffull monie of England, and to be paide to the saide Gilbert or his assignes; And when the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable are Reared, tyled, walled, then to paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens or his assignes one other hundered poundes of lawffull monie of England; And when the saide Plaie house, Bull house, and stable are fullie finished, builded, and done in manner and forme aforesaide, then to paie vnto the saide Gilbert Katherens or his assignes one other hundred Poundes of lawffull monie of England in full satisfacion and payment of the saide somme of CCClx^li. And to all and singuler the covenantes, grauntes, articles, and agreementes above in theise presentes contayned, whiche on the parte and behalfe of the saide Gilbert Katherens, his executours, administratours, or assignes are ought to be observed, performed, fulfilled, and done, the saide Gilbert Katherens byndeth himselfe, his executours, administratours, and assignes vnto the saide Phillipe Henslowe and Jacob Maide and to either of them, thexecutours, administratours, and assignes of them or either of them, by theise presentes. In witnes whereof the saide Gilbert Katherens hath herevnto sett his hande and seale, the daie and yere firste above written

The mark G K of Gilbert Katherens

Sealed and Delivered in the presence of

witnes Moyses Bowler Edwarde Griffin

The execution of the contract must have been delayed, for the rebuilt Bear Garden is fairly to be identified with the Hope, of which no mention is made in the petition of the spring of 1614 described by Taylor in The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit, although it had certainly come into use by the following autumn.[1434] Here was arranged for 7 October a trial of wit between this same Taylor and the shifty rhymer William Fennor.[1435] The latter failed to turn up, and Taylor, who, according to his own account, had advertised ‘this Bear Garden banquet of dainty conceits’ and collected a great audience, was left ‘in a greater puzzell then the blinde beare in the midst of all her whip-broth’. After acting part of what he had intended, he resigned the stage to the regular company:

This company was no doubt the Lady Elizabeth’s, as reconstituted in the previous March under an agreement with Nathaniel Field on their behalf, of which a mutilated copy exists. To it Meade was a party, and there is nothing to establish a connexion between Meade and any other theatre than the Hope.[1436] Jonson names the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the actors of Bartholomew Fair, and in the Induction thereto, after a dialogue between the Stage-keeper, who is taunted with ‘gathering up the broken apples for the beares within’, and the Book-holder, a Scrivener reads ‘Articles of Agreement, indented, between the Spectators or Hearers, at the Hope on the Bankeside, in the County of Surrey on the one party; and the Author of Bartholmew Fayre in the said place, and County on the other party: the one and thirtieth day of Octob. 1614’. According to Jonson the locality was suitable for a play on Bartholomew Fair, for it was ‘as durty as Smithfield, and as stinking euery whit’.[1437] There were disputes between Henslowe and the company, partly arising out of an arrangement that they should ‘lie still’ one day a fortnight for the baiting, and the combination broke up. Some of its members, apparently then Prince Charles’s men, are found after Henslowe’s death signing an agreement with Alleyn and Meade to play at the Hope, and to set aside a fourth of the gallery takings towards a sum of £200 to be accepted in discharge of their debt to Henslowe. Alleyn had of course resumed his part proprietorship of the house as executor and ultimate heir to Henslowe. Meade probably took actual charge of the theatre, and there is an undated letter from Prince Charles’s men to Alleyn, written possibly in 1617, in which they explain their removal from the Bankside as due to the intemperate action of his partner in taking from them the day which by course was theirs. I suppose that this dispute also was due to the competition of baiting with the plays. In 1619 some disputes between Alleyn and Meade had to be settled by arbitration, and from Alleyn’s memoranda in connexion with these it appears that Meade was his deputy under his patent as Master of the Game, and had also a lease from him of the house at £100 a year.[1438] The Hope is mentioned from time to time, chiefly as a place of baiting, up to the civil wars.[1439] It is one of the three Bankside theatres alluded to in Holland’s Leaguer (1632), where it is described as ‘a building of excellent hope’ for players, wild beasts, and gladiators. Bear-baiting was suppressed by the House of Commons in 1642,[1440] and the house was dismantled in 1656. The manuscript continuation of Stowe’s Annales describes its end and the slaughter of the bears, but gives the date of its erection erroneously as 1610 instead of 1613.[1441]

After the Restoration the Bear Garden was restored, and a lane called Bear Gardens, running from Bankside to New Park Street, and a sign therein of The White Bear still mark its name.[1442] Its site is pretty well defined in the seventeenth-century maps as to the west of the Globe and, where that is shown, the Rose, and generally as a little nearer Maid Lane than the latter. This is consistent with a notice in the Sewers records for 5 December 1595 of a sewer which ran to the Bear Garden from a garden known to have lain a little farther east along Maid Lane than the Globe.[1443]

The traditional day for baiting was Sunday. Crowley in 1550 describes it as taking place on ‘euerye Sondaye’.[1444] Naturally this did not pass without Puritan comment, to which point was given by the fall of Paris Garden on a Sunday in 1583.[1445] A general prohibition of shows on Sunday seems to have followed, from which it is not likely that bear-baiting was excepted. It may be inferred that Thursday was substituted, for a Privy Council order of 25 July 1591 called attention, not only to a neglect of the rule as to Sunday, but also to the fact that every day ‘the players do use to recite their plays to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty’s pleasure if occasion require’, and forbade plays both on Sunday and on Thursday, on which day ‘those other games usually have been always accustomed and practised’.[1446] Henslowe’s diary seems to show that up to 1597 he kept the Sunday prohibition and disregarded the Thursday one, which is a little odd, as he was interested in the Bear Garden. But a proclamation of 7 May 1603 on the accession of James repeats the warning that there was neglect of the Sabbath, and renews the prohibition both for baiting and for plays.[1447] Henslowe and Alleyn in their petition of about 1607 for increased fees lay stress on this restraint as a main factor in their alleged loss.[1448] It seems from the notes of Stowe’s manuscript continuator that during the first half of the seventeenth century Tuesday and Thursday became the regular baiting days.[1449] But the agreements made by Henslowe and Meade with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614 profess only to reserve one day in fourteen for this purpose, of which apparently notice was to be given on the previous Monday.[1450]

xvi. PORTER’S HALL

Authority was given for the erection of a new theatre by the following patent of 3 June 1615:[1451]

De concessione regard Phillippo Rosseter et aliis.

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes, and to all other our Officers, Ministers, and loving Subiectes, to whome these presentes shall come, greeting. Whereas wee by our letteres Patentes sealed with our great seale of England bearing date the ffourth day of Ianuary in the seaventh yeare of our Raigne of England Fraunce and Ireland and of Scotland the three and ffortieth for the consideracions in the same letteres patentes expressed did appoint and authorise Phillipp Rosseter and certaine others from tyme to tyme to provide, keepe, and bring vppe a convenient nomber of children, and them to practise and exercise in the quallitie of playing by the name of the children of the Revelles to the Queene, within the white ffryers in the Suburbs of our Cittie of London, or in any other convenient place where they the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his partners should thinke fitting for that purpose, As in and by the said letteres patentes more at large appeareth, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter and the rest of his said partners have ever since trayned vppe and practised a convenient nomber of children of the Revelles for the purpose aforesaid in a Messuage or mansion house being parcell of the late dissolved Monastery called the white ffryers neere Fleetestreete in London, which the said Phillipp Rosseter did lately hold for terme of certaine yeres expired, And whereas the said Phillipp Rosseter, together with Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, to continue the said service for the keeping and bringing vppe of the children for the solace and pleasure of our said most deere wife, and the better to practise and exercise them in the quallitie of playing by the name of children of the Revelles to the Queene, have latelie taken in lease and farme divers buildinges, Cellers, sollars, chambers, and yardes for the building of a Play-house therevpon for the better practising and exercise of the said children of the Revelles, All which premisses are scituate and being within the Precinct of the Blacke ffryers neere Puddlewharfe in the Suburbs of London, called by the name of the lady Saunders house, or otherwise Porters hall, and now in the occupation of the said Robert Iones. Nowe knowe yee that wee of our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere mocion have given and graunted, And by theise presentes for vs, our heires, and successors, doe give and graunte lycense and authoritie vnto the said Phillipp Rosseter, Phillipp Kingman, Robert Iones, and Raphe Reeve, at their proper costes and charges to erect, build, and sett vppe in and vppon the said premisses before mencioned one convenient Play-house for the said children of the Revelles, the same Play-house to be vsed by the Children of the Revelles for the tyme being of the Queenes Maiestie, and for the Princes Players, and for the ladie Elizabeths Players, soe tollerated or lawfully lycensed to play exercise and practise them therein, Any lawe, Statute, Act of Parliament, restraint, or other matter or thing whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding. Willing and commaunding you and every of you our said Maiors, Sheriffes, Iustices of peace, Bayliffes, Constables, headboroughes and all other our officers and ministers for the tyme being, as yee tender our pleasure, to permitt and suffer them therein, without any your lettes, hinderance, molestacion, or disturbance whatsoever. In witnes whereof, &c. Witnes our selfe at Westminster the third day of Iune.

per breve de priuato sigillo &c.

The statements made in the patent as to the objects of the promoters can be confirmed from other sources. We know that the lease of the Whitefriars expired at the end of 1614, that there had been an amalgamation of the Queen’s Revels and the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613, and that in all probability this arrangement was extended to bring in Prince Charles’s men during 1615. Unfortunately for Rosseter and his associates, the patent had hardly been granted before it was called in question. Presumably the inhabitants of the Blackfriars, who had already one theatre in their midst, thought that that one was enough. At any rate the Corporation approached the Privy Council, and alleged divers inconveniences, in particular the fact that the theatre, which was described as ‘in Puddle Wharfe’, would ‘adjoine so neere vnto’ the church of St. Anne’s as to disturb the congregation.[1452] The Council referred the patent to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke, no friend of players, or of the royal prerogative which expressed itself in patents; and when he found a technical flaw, in that the Blackfriars, having been brought within the City jurisdiction by the charter of 1608, was not strictly within ‘the suburbs’, ordered on 26 September 1615 that the building, which had already been begun, should be discontinued. Nevertheless, the work must have gone so far as to permit of the production of plays, for the title-page of Field’s Amends for Ladies (1618) testifies that it was acted ‘at the Blacke-Fryers both by the Princes Servants and the Lady Elizabeths’. Moreover, on 27 January 1617 the Privy Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, enjoining him to see to the suppression of a play-house in the Blackfriars ‘neere vnto his Majestyes Wardrobe’, which is said to be ‘allmost if not fully finished’.[1453]

It does not appear possible to say exactly where in the Blackfriars’ precinct the Porter’s Hall once occupied by Lady Saunders stood. It was certainly not the porter’s lodge at the north-west corner of the great cloister, for this was still in 1615, as it had been since 1554, part of the Cobham house. One Ninian Sawnders, a vintner, took a lease of the chancel of the old conventual church from Sir Thomas Cawarden in 1553, and this would have been close to St. Anne’s, which stood at the north-east corner of the great cloister. But Ninian died in 1553 and never got knighted. On the other hand, the rooms on the south side of the great cloister, generally described as Lygon’s lodgings, had been in the tenure of one Nicholas Saunders shortly before their sale by Sir George More to John Freeman and others in 1609. Nicholas Saunders is said to have been knighted in 1603.[1454] These lodgings adjoined More’s own mansion house, and might at some time have served as a lodge for his porter.[1455] But I do not feel that they would very naturally be described either as ‘near’ or ‘in’ Puddle Wharf, or as ‘near’ the Wardrobe. These indications suggest some building approached either from Puddle Wharf proper or from the hill, afterwards known as St. Andrew’s Hill, which ran up from it to the Wardrobe, outside the eastern wall of the Priory precinct. The Cawarden estate did not extend to this wall, and the Saunders family may quite well, in addition to Lygon’s lodgings, have had a house, either on the site of the old convent gardens, or higher up the hill on the Blackwell estate, near where Shakespeare’s house stood, and near also to St. Anne’s. Perhaps there had been a porter’s lodge on the east of the old prior’s house.

XVII THE PRIVATE THEATRES

i. THE BLACKFRIARS

[Bibliographical Note.—Many documents bearing upon the history of the theatre are preserved at Loseley, and the most important are collected by Professor A. Feuillerat in vol. ii of the Malone Society’s Collections (1913). A few had been already printed or described by A. J. Kempe in The Loseley Manuscripts (1835), by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in Outlines, i. 299, by J. C. Jeaffreson in the 7th Report of the Hist. MSS. Commission (1879), by Professor Feuillerat himself in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xlviii (1912), 81, and by C. W. Wallace, with extracts from others, in The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare (1912, cited as Wallace, i). In the same book and in The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars (1908, cited as Wallace, ii), Professor Wallace prints or extracts documents from other sources, chiefly lawsuits in the Court of Requests and elsewhere, which supplement those discovered by J. Greenstreet and printed in F. G. Fleay, Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890). The references to the theatre in J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry (1837 and 1879), are seriously contaminated by forgeries. Some material for the general history of the precinct is furnished in the various editions of John Stowe, Survey of London (1598, 1603, ed. Munday, 1618, ed. Strype, 1720, ed. Kingsford, 1908), in W. Dugdale, Monasticon (1817–30), by M. Reddan in the Victoria History of London, i. 498, and in the Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91. A. W. Clapham, On the Topography of the Dominican Priory of London (Archaeologia, lxiii. 57), gives a valuable account of the history and church of the convent, but had not the advantage of knowing the Loseley documents, and completely distorts the plan of the domestic buildings and the theatre. An account by J. Q. Adams is in S. P. xiv (1917), 64. The status of the liberty is discussed by V. C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama, 143.]

The Dominicans, also called the ‘preaching’ or ‘black’ friars, came to England in 1221. Their first house was in Holborn.[1456] In 1275 they acquired a site on the sloping ground between St. Paul’s and the river, just to the east of Fleet ditch, and obtained leave to divert the walls of the City so as to furnish a north and north-west boundary to their precinct. Here grew up a very famous convent, the motherhouse of all the Dominican settlements in the country. It received favours from several sovereigns, notably from Edward I and his Queen Eleanor, who were regarded as its founders; and in return held its great buildings available for national purposes. In 1322–3 it furnished a depository for state records. It housed divers parliaments, at first in its church and later in a great chamber which will be of singular interest to us, and from as early as 1311 was often found a convenient meeting-place for the Privy Council. In 1522 it was the lodging of the Emperor Charles V, and a wooden bridge and gallery were carried over the Fleet, to facilitate communications with his train in Bridewell palace. In 1529 its parliament chamber was the scene of the legatine sittings which tried the case of divorce between the same Emperor’s niece Katharine and the conscience-stricken Henry VIII.[1457]

By this time the friars had ceased to be a power in the land. Those of the convent had numbered seventy in 1315; there were no more than sixteen or seventeen in 1538.[1458] Parts of the buildings, now all too spacious, were let out as residences. It was, perhaps, the neighbourhood of the Wardrobe, whose Master had an official residence contiguous to the east wall of the precinct, which made the Blackfriars a favourite locality for those about the Court. A list of ‘them that hath lodgings within the Blak Freers’, which was drawn up in 1522, probably in connexion with the imperial visit, contains the names of Lord Zouch of Harringworth, Lord Cobham, Sir William Kingston, then carver and afterwards comptroller of the household, Sir Henry Wyatt, afterwards treasurer of the chamber, Sir William Parr, Sir Thomas Cheyne, afterwards warden of the Cinque ports and treasurer of the household, Jane, widow of Sir Richard Guildford, formerly master of the horse, and Christopher More, a clerk of the exchequer.[1459] It is to be feared that some of these tenants cast a covetous eye upon the fee-simple of their dwellings, and that it was not all zeal for church reform which made Lord Cobham, for example, write to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and son of Sir Henry, on 7 October 1538, ‘No news, but I trust there shall not be a friar left in England before you return’.[1460] Cobham and his friends had not long to wait. The deed by which the friars surrendered their property into the hands of the King is dated 12 November 1538. The annual income, derived from the rented premises, was reckoned as £104 15s. 5d., but of course this in no way represents the capital value of the site and buildings.[1461] The partition of spoils, under the supervision of the Court of Augmentations, followed in due course. Cobham got his house, although not immediately, at nine years’ purchase; and between 1540 and 1550 some sixteen other parcels of the estate, many of them very substantial, were similarly alienated.[1462] Finally, on 12 March 1550, during the liberal distribution of crown lands for which the authority of Henry VIII was alleged by his executors in the Privy Council, a comprehensive grant was made of all that still remained unalienated in the precinct to Sir Thomas Cawarden, the Master of the Revels, whose office had for some years past been established within its walls. Apparently Cawarden paid nothing for it, but on the other hand the King owed him a good deal for moneys spent in the service of the Revels.[1463]

The Blackfriars long remained an anomaly in the local government of London. Like all monastic establishments, the friars had maintained extensive privileges within their own precinct. Nightly their porter had shut their four gates upon the city. They had done their own paving. The Lord Mayor had claimed a jurisdiction, but if this was admitted, it was only in cases of felony. The ordinary functions of civil magistracy had been exercised, when called for, by Sir William Kingston and other important tenants.[1464] Naturally there had been friction from time to time with the Corporation, and on the surrender the latter, like the tenants, hoped that their opportunity was come. They addressed a petition to Henry, in which they expressed their gratification that he had ‘extirped and extinct the orders of Freers to the great exaltacion of Crystes doctryne and the abolucion of Antecriste theyr first founder and begynner’, and asked for a grant of the church and the whole precinct of the Blackfriars, together with those of the three other London friaries, to be used for the special benefit of non-parishioners and of those infected by pestilence.[1465] Henry, however, had not gone to the trouble of obtaining a surrender merely to inflate the powers and the revenues of a municipality. He is reported to have replied that ‘he was as well hable to keep the liberties as the Friers were’, and to have handed the keys to Sir John Portinari, one of his gentlemen pensioners, who dwelt in the precinct.[1466] The Blackfriars, therefore, continued to be an exempt place or ‘liberty’, an enclave within the walls of the City, but not part of it, and with a somewhat loose and ill-defined organization of its own. The inhabitants agreed together and appointed a porter and a scavenger. A constable was appointed for them by the justices of the verge.[1467] The precinct was constituted an ecclesiastical parish, known as St. Anne’s after a chapel which had once served its inhabitants; and was provided with a church.[1468] Petty offences were tried, and any exceptional affairs managed, as might have been done in a rural parish, by the justices, and it was to these that any administrative orders thought necessary by the Privy Council were ordinarily addressed.[1469] It perhaps goes without saying that the City were not content with a single rebuff. They attempted to interfere at the time of a riot in 1551, and were snubbed by the Privy Council.[1470] Under Mary they promoted legislation with a view to annexing the liberties, but without success.[1471] In 1562 a sheriff, who entered the liberty to enforce a proclamation, was shut in by the prompt action of the constable, and faced with an inhibition which one of the justices hurried to obtain from a privy councillor.[1472] The city remained persistent. In 1574 the Council had again to intervene.[1473] In 1578 a controversy arose as to the right of the City to dispose of the goods of felons and other escheats. It was referred to two chief justices, who made a report to the effect that, while the inhabitants of both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars enjoyed certain immunities from civic levies and liabilities, nevertheless the soil of the precincts lay within the City, and the City was entitled to exercise jurisdiction therein. It may be doubted whether effect was given to this opinion.[1474]

In 1587 the Council ordered another inquiry, in order to ascertain the precise nature of the Queen’s title in the Blackfriars.[1475] There had been a petition for redress of inconveniences from the inhabitants.[1476] About the same time the chief landowner, Sir William More, appears to have suggested that the liberty should be converted into a manor, and manorial rights conferred upon him.[1477] These are signs that residence in a liberty hard by a thronging population had disclosed a seamy side. Undesirable persons were bound to throng to a district where the Lord Mayor’s writ did not run. An open space, for example, filled with immemorial trees planted by the friars, had been ruined to house alleys for bowling and other unlawful games.[1478] Doubtless there were those who resented the fact that the attempt of the City to discourage interludes had been met by the establishment of a Blackfriars theatre in 1576, which lasted until 1584. It appears to have been a protest from the inhabitants which led the Privy Council to forbid the public theatre contemplated by James Burbage in 1596, although some years later they winked at the opening of the building as a private house. In 1596 the church fell down, and in appointing a commission to apportion the responsibility for repairs, the council also instructed them to consider the government of the liberty, ‘which being grown more populus than heretofore and without any certaine and knowen officer to keepe good orders there, needeth to be reformed in that behalfe’.[1479] The nature of the commission’s findings is not upon record, but that the ultimate solution lay in the incorporation of the liberty in the City could hardly be doubtful. As far back as 1589 the Council had found it convenient to use the Lord Mayor as an agent for securing a proper contribution from the Blackfriars towards a levy. From 1597 onwards they showed an increased tendency to make similar use of an administrative machinery far more completely organized than that of the justices of the peace. In that year the Lord Mayor was instructed to make a collection in aid of the Blackfriars church repairs. In 1600 it again fell to him to assess the share of the liberty in a levy of men and money. In 1601 it is he who is called upon to suppress plays in Blackfriars during Lent.[1480] The final step was, however, deferred until 20 September 1608, when the new Jacobean charter formally extended the jurisdiction of the city to various liberties, including both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, with certain exemptions as regards assessments and the tenure of offices, but with none as regards responsibility for petty offences and the keeping of the peace.[1481]

I have anticipated, in order to get the question of jurisdiction out of the way. I must now return to the topography. Sir Thomas Cawarden died on 29 August 1559. He had no son, and his executors, Lady Cawarden and Sir William More, personally took over the Blackfriars estate in survivorship, as part of the settlement of his affairs.[1482] Lady Cawarden’s death on 20 February 1560 left More sole owner. He retained the property until his own death in 1601, and the muniment room of his house at Loseley near Guildford contains innumerable documents relating to the business transactions in which it involved him, together with some of earlier date which he inherited from Cawarden. The researches of Professor Feuillerat in these archives render it possible to reconstruct with some minuteness the arrangement of the Blackfriars and its buildings at the time of the surrender, to trace many of the changes of the next half-century, and, as part of the process, to indicate pretty definitely the locality and nature of the structures which were turned to theatrical uses.

The precinct covered a space of about five acres.[1483] In shape it was a rough parallelogram, wider at the north than at the south. The great gate was towards the east end of the north boundary. It was reached by a short entry on the south of Bowier Row, now Ludgate Hill, just east of Ludgate. This seems to have been called Gate Street. It is now the north end of Pilgrim Street.[1484] From here the boundary was the city wall, westwards for about 450 ft. to the Fleet ditch, and then southwards for about 800 ft. along the east side of the ditch. There were towers at intervals. One of these stood about 200 ft. down from the angle, and immediately south of this was the bridge over the Fleet towards Bridewell. The south and east boundaries were also walled. Between the south wall and the river ran Castle Lane, which was not within the precinct.[1485] A gate in the south wall gave access across the lane to the Blackfriars ‘bridge’ or ‘stairs’, a common landing place, originally built by the Prior of St. John’s, from whom, in some way not clear to me, the Friars held their estate.[1486] The south-east angle of the precinct was near Puddle Wharf, and from here the boundary ran up the west side of St. Andrew’s Hill to Carter Lane, bending out eastwards near the top, where the buildings of the Wardrobe joined it by an arch over the roadway, was then driven in sharply westwards by the end of Carter Lane, which was butt up against a turngate in the friars’ wall, and finally ran in an irregularly diagonal line from the junction of Creed and Carter Lanes north-west to the great gate again. Internally the precinct was unequally divided by an irregular highway which ran north and south, from the great gate to the Blackfriars stairs. This started out of Gate Street as High Street, and lower down became Water Lane.[1487] All the conventual buildings lay on the east of the highway. Here was the larger division of the precinct, measuring about 450 ft. from east to west. The western division, measuring about 150 ft., contained only a few houses and gardens. Across it ran from Bridewell Bridge to Water Lane a strip of unoccupied land, containing nothing but a ruined gallery, probably part of the provision made for the accommodation of Charles V in 1522. One of Cawarden’s first acts, when he got his property, was to make a new road, with tenements and gardens to the south of it, along this strip. It became known as Bridewell Lane, and is represented by the present Union Street.[1488] It must have joined Water Lane just south of a little place or parvis which lay in front of the west porch of the church and the adjoining entrance to the cloister. The parvis contained one or two houses and shops, and formed part of the continuous thoroughfare from north to south, communicating by gateways with High Street and Water Lane.[1489] The conventual church itself divided the eastern portion of the precinct from west to east, extending not quite so far east as the present Friar Street. It was 220 ft. long and 66 ft. wide, and had two aisles and a chancel, which, as usual in conventual churches, was as long as the nave. There was a square porch tower over the west end. Over the junction of nave and chancel stood a belfry, visible in Wyngaerde’s drawing of c. 1543–50, and to the north of the chancel a chapel, probably the quasi-parochial chapel of St. Anne, and a vestry.[1490] Beyond these was the churchyard.[1491] This was 300 ft. long by 90 ft. deep, and occupied about two-thirds of the space between the High Street on the west, the church on the south, and the north-eastern boundary of the precinct. A group of houses stood between it and the great gate towards Ludgate, and three others separated it from the High Street at the south west corner.[1492] One of these, built up against the church and the High Street gateway, was a recluse’s cell or Ankerhouse.[1493] Cawarden cut a new road across the churchyard, 20 ft. north of the site of the chancel and just north of the Ankerhouse and the High Street gate. This continued Carter Lane, the turngate at the end of which was converted into a gate practicable for carts, and with Bridewell Lane provided a thoroughfare across the Blackfriars from east to west in addition to that from north to south. That part of the existing Carter Lane, west of Creed Lane, which was formerly known as Shoemakers’ Row, doubtless represents Cawarden’s new way.[1494]