Chapter IV: Introduction: The Boy Companies (2)

Towards the end of Henry VII’s reign begins a short series of plays given at the rate of one or two a year by the Gentlemen, which lasted through 1506–12.[75] Thereafter there is no other play by the Gentlemen as such upon record until the Christmas of 1553, when they performed a morality of which the principal character was Genus Humanum.[76] This had been originally planned for the coronation on the previous 1 October, and as a warrant then issued states that a coronation play had customarily been given ‘by the gentlemen of the chappell of our progenitoures’, it may perhaps be inferred that Edward VI’s coronation play of ‘the story of Orpheus’ on 22 February 1547 was also by the Gentlemen.[77] In the meantime the regular series of Chapel plays at Court had been broken after 1512, and when it was taken up again in 1517 it was not by the Gentlemen, but by the Children.[78] This is, of course, characteristic of the Renaissance.[79] But an immediate cause is probably to be found in the personality of William Cornish, a talented and energetic Master of the Children, who succeeded William Newark in the autumn of 1509, and held office until his death in 1523.[80] Cornish appears to have come of a musical family.[81] He took part in a play given by the Gentlemen of the Chapel shortly before his appointment as Master. And although it was some years before he organized the Children into a definite company, he was the ruling spirit and chief organizer of the elaborate disguisings which glorified the youthful court of Henry VIII from the Shrovetide of 1511 to the visit of the Emperor Charles V in 1522, and hold an important place in the story, elsewhere dealt with, of the Court mask.[82] In these revels both the Gentlemen and the Children of the Chapel, as well as the King and his lords and ladies took a part, and they were often designed so as to frame an interlude, which would call for the services of skilled performers.[83]

In view of Cornish’s importance in the history of the stage at Court, it is matter for regret that none of his dramatic writing has been preserved, for it is impossible to attach any value to the fantastic attributions of Professor Wallace, who credits him not only with the anonymous _Calisto and Meliboea_, _Of Gentleness and Nobility_, _The Pardoner and the Frere_, and _Johan Johan_, but also with _The Four Elements_ and _The Four P. P._, for the authorship of which by John Rastell and John Heywood respectively there is good contemporary evidence.[84] Cornish was succeeded as Master of the Children by William Crane (1523–45) and Crane by Richard Bower, whose patent was successively renewed by Edward VI, presumably by Mary, and finally by Elizabeth on 30 April 1559.[85] His service was almost certainly continuous, and it is therefore rather puzzling to be told that a commission to take up singing children for the Chapel, similar to that of John Melyonek in 1484, was issued in February 1550 to Philip van Wilder, a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.[86] Neither the full text nor a reference to the source for the warrant is given, and I suspect the explanation to be that it was not for the Chapel at all. Philip van Wilder was a lutenist, one of a family of musicians of whom others were in the royal service, and he may not improbably have had a commission to recruit a body of young minstrels with whom other notices suggest that he may have been connected.[87] Bower himself had a commission for the Chapel on 6 June 1552.[88] Although the Children continued to give performances at Court both under Crane and under Bower, it may be doubted whether they were quite so prominent as they had been in Cornish’s time. Certainly they had to contend with the competition of the Paul’s boys. Crane himself is not known to have been a dramatist. It has been suggested that Bower’s authorship is indicated by the initials R. B. on the title-page of _Apius and Virginia_ (1575), but, in view of the date of the publication, this must be regarded as very doubtful. The chief Marian producer of plays was Nicholas Udall, but it remains uncertain whether he wrote for the Chapel Children. Professor Wallace has no justification whatever for his confident assertions that John Heywood ‘not only could but did’ write plays for the Chapel, that he ‘had grown up in the Chapel under Cornish’, and that ‘as dramatist and Court-entertainer’ he ‘was naturally associated with the performances of the Chapel’.[89] There is no proof whatever that Heywood began as a Chapel boy, and although he certainly wrote plays for boys, they are nowhere said or implied to have been of the Chapel company. There are scraps of evidence which indicate that they may have been the Paul’s boys.[90] It is also conceivable that they may have been Philip van Wilder’s young minstrels.

When Elizabeth came to the throne, then, the Chapel had already a considerable dramatic tradition behind it. But for a decade its share in the Court revels remains somewhat obscure. The Treasurer of the Chamber records no payments for performances to its Masters before 1568.[91] A note in a Revels inventory of 1560 of the employment of some white sarcenet ‘in ffurnishinge of a pley by the children of the Chapple’ may apparently refer to any year from 1555 to 1560, and it is therefore hazardous to identify the Chapel with the anonymous players of the interlude of 31 December 1559 which contained ‘suche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off’.[92] Bower may of course have retained Catholic sympathies, but he died on 26 July 1561, and it is difficult to suppose that the high dramatic reputation of his successor Richard Edwardes was not based upon a greater number of Court productions than actually stand to his name.[93] Edwardes had been a Gentleman of the Chapel from 1556 or earlier. His patent as Master is dated on 27 October 1561, and on the following 10 December he received a commission the terms of which served as a model for those of the next two Masterships:[94]

Memorandum quod x^o die Januarii anno infra scripto istud
breve deliberatum fuit domino custodi magni Sigilli apud
Westmonasterium exequendum.

Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of England Fraunce & Ireland defender of the faythe &c. To our right welbeloved & faythfull counsaylour Sir Nicholas Bacon knight Keper of our great Seale of Englande, commaundinge you that vnder our great Seale aforsayd ye cause to be made our lettres patentes in forme followinge. To all mayours sherifs bayliefes constables & all other our officers gretinge. For that it is mete that our chappell royall should be furnysshed with well singing children from tyme to tyme we have & by these presentes do authorise our welbeloved servaunt Richard Edwardes master of our children of our sayd chappell or his deputie beinge by his bill subscribed & sealed so authorised, & havinge this our presente comyssion with hym, to take as manye well singinge children as he or his sufficient deputie shall thinke mete in all chathedrall & collegiate churches as well within libertie[s] as without within this our realme of England whatsoever they be, And also at tymes necessarie, horses, boates, barges, cartes, & carres, as he for the conveyaunce of the sayd children from any place to our sayd chappell royall [shall thinke mete] with all maner of necessaries apperteynyng to the sayd children as well by lande as water at our prices ordynarye to be redely payed when they for our service shall remove to any place or places, Provided also that if our sayd servaunt or his deputie or deputies bearers hereof in his name cannot forthwith remove the chyld or children when he by vertue of this our commyssyon hathe taken hym or them that then the sayd child or children shall remayne there vntill suche tyme as our sayd servaunt Rychard Edwardes shall send for him or them. Wherfore we will & commaunde you & everie of you to whom this our comyssion shall come to be helpinge aydinge & assistinge to the vttermost of your powers as ye will answer at your vttermoste perylles. In wytnes wherof &c. Geven vnder our privie seale at our Manor of St James the fourth daye of Decembre in the fourth yere of our Raigne.

R. Jones.

At Christmas 1564–5 the boys appeared at Court in a tragedy by Edwardes, which may have been his extant _Damon and Pythias_.[95] On 2 February 1565 and 2 February 1566 they gave performances before the lawyers at the Candlemas feasts of Lincoln’s Inn.[96] There is nothing to show that the Chapel had any concern with the successful play of _Palamon and Arcite_, written and produced by Edwardes for Elizabeth’s visit to Oxford in September 1566. Edwardes died on the following 31 October, and on 15 November William Hunnis was appointed Master of the Children.[97] His formal patent of appointment is dated 22 April 1567, and the bill for his commission, which only differs from that of Edwardes in minor points of detail, on 18 April.[98] Hunnis had been a Gentleman at least since about 1553, with an interval of disgrace under Mary, owing to his participation in Protestant plots. He was certainly himself a dramatist, but none of his plays are known to be extant, and a contemporary eulogy speaks of his ‘enterludes’ as if they dated from an earlier period than that of his Mastership. It is, however, natural to suppose that he may have had a hand in some at least of the pieces which his Children produced at Court. The first of these was a tragedy at Shrovetide 1568. In the following year is said to have been published a pamphlet entitled _The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt_, which apparently originated in some gross offence given by the dramatic activities of the Chapel to the growing Puritan sentiment. ‘Plaies’, said the writer, ‘will never be supprest, while her maiesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and sattens. They had as well be at their Popish service, in the deuils garments.’ And again, ‘Even in her maiesties chappel do these pretty upstart youthes profane the Lordes Day by the lascivious writhing of their tender limbs, and gorgeous decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous heathen poets’. I should feel more easy in drawing inferences from this, were the book extant.[99] But it seems to indicate either that the controversialist of 1569 was less careful than his successors to avoid attacks upon Elizabeth’s private ‘solace’, or that the idea had already occurred to the Master of turning his rehearsals of Court plays to profit by giving open performances in the Chapel. That the Court performances themselves took place in the Chapel is possible, but not very likely; the usual places for them seem to have been the Hall or the Great Chamber.[100] But no doubt they sometimes fell on a Sunday.

The boys played at Court on 6 January 1570 and during Shrovetide 1571. On 6 January 1572 they gave _Narcissus_, and on 13 February 1575 a play with a hunt in it.[101] On all these occasions Hunnis was payee. An obvious error of the clerk of the Privy Council in entering him as ‘John’ Hunnis in connexion with the issue of a warrant for the payment of 1572 led Chalmers to infer the existence of two Masters of the name of Hunnis.[102] During the progress of 1575 Hunnis contributed shows to the ‘Princely Pleasures’ of Kenilworth, and very likely utilized the services of the boys in these.[103] And herewith his active conduct of the Chapel performances appears to have been suspended for some years. A play of _Mutius Scaevola_, given jointly at Court by the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Windsor on 6 January 1577, is the first of a series for which the place of Hunnis as payee is taken by Richard Farrant. To this series belong unnamed plays on 27 December 1577 and 27 December 1578, _Loyalty and Beauty_ on 2 March 1579, and _Alucius_ on 27 December 1579.[104] Farrant, who is known as a musician, had been a Gentleman of the Chapel in 1553, and had left on 24 April 1564, doubtless to take up the post of Master of the Children of Windsor, in which capacity he annually presented a play at Court from 1566–7 to 1575–6.[105] But evidently the two offices were not regarded as incompatible, for on 5 November 1570, while still holding his Mastership, he was again sworn in as Gentleman of the Chapel ‘from Winsore’.[106] A recent discovery by M. Feuillerat enables us to see that his taking over of the Chapel Children from Hunnis in 1576 was part of a somewhat considerable theatrical enterprise. Stimulated perhaps by the example of Burbadge’s new-built Theatre, he took a lease of some of the old Priory buildings in the Blackfriars; and here, either for the first time, or in continuation of a similar use of the Chapel itself, which had provoked criticism, the Children appeared under his direction in performances open to the public.[107] The ambiguous relation of the Blackfriars precinct to the jurisdiction of the City Corporation probably explains the inclusion of the Chapel in the list of companies whose exercises the Privy Council instructed the City to tolerate on 24 December 1578. It is, I think, pretty clear that, although Farrant is described as Master of the Chapel Children by the Treasurer of the Chamber from 1577 to 1580, and by Hunnis himself in his petition of 1583,[108] he was never technically Master, but merely acted as deputy to Hunnis, probably even to the extent of taking all the financial risks off his hands. Farrant was paid for a comedy at Lincoln’s Inn at Candlemas 1580 and is described in the entry as ‘one of the Queen’s chaplains’.[109] On 30 November 1580 he died and Hunnis then resumed his normal functions.[110] The Chapel played at Court on 5 February 1581, 31 December 1581, 27 February 1582, and 26 December 1582. One of these plays may have been Peele’s _Arraignment of Paris_; that of 26 December 1582 was _A Game of Cards_, possibly the piece which, according to Sir John Harington, was thought ‘somewhat too plaine’, and was championed at rehearsal by ‘a notable wise counseller’.[111] On the first three of these occasions the Treasurer merely entered a payment to the Master of the Children, without giving a name, but in the entry for the last play Hunnis is specified. It is known, moreover, that Hunnis, together with one John Newman, took a sub-lease of the Blackfriars from Farrant’s widow on 20 December 1581. They do not seem to have been very successful financially, for they were irregular in their rent, and neglected their repairs. It was perhaps trepidation at the competition likely to arise from the establishment of the Queen’s men in 1583, which led them to transfer their interest to one Henry Evans, a scrivener of London, from whom, when Sir William More took steps to protect himself against the breach of covenant involved in an alienation without his consent, it was handed on to the Earl of Oxford and ultimately to John Lyly.[112] In November 1583, therefore, Hunnis found himself much dissatisfied with his financial position, and drew up the following memorial, probably for submission to the Board of Green Cloth of the royal household:[113]

‘Maye it please your honores, William Hunnys, M^r of the
Children of hir highnes Chappell, most humble beseecheth to
consider of these fewe lynes. First, hir Maiestie alloweth for
the dyett of xij children of hir sayd Chappell daylie vi^d a
peece by the daye, and xl^{li} by the yeare for theyre aparrell
and all other furneture.

‘Agayne there is no ffee allowed neyther for the m^r of the
sayd children nor for his ussher, and yet neuertheless is he
constrayned, over and besydes the ussher still to kepe bothe a
man servant to attend upon them and lykewyse a woman seruant to
wash and kepe them cleane.

‘Also there is no allowance for the lodginge of the sayd
chilldren, such tyme as they attend vppon the Courte, but the
m^r to his greate charge is dryuen to hyer chambers both for
himself, his usher chilldren and servantes.

‘Also theare is no allowaunce for ryding jornies when occasion
serueth the m^r to trauell or send into sundrie partes within
this realme, to take vpp and bring such children as be thought
meete to be trayned for the service of hir Maiestie.

‘Also there is no allowance ne other consideracion for those
children whose voyces be chaunged, whoe onelye do depend vpon
the charge of the sayd m^r vntill such tyme as he may preferr
the same with cloathing and other furniture, vnto his no smalle
charge.

‘And although it may be obiected that hir Maiesties allowaunce
is no whitt less then hir Maiesties ffather of famous memorie
therefore allowed: yet considering the pryces of thinges present
to the tyme past and what annuities the m^r then hadd out of
sundrie abbies within this realme, besydes sondrie giftes from
the Kinge, and dyuers perticuler ffees besydes, for the better
mayntenaunce of the sayd children and office: and besides also
there hath ben withdrawne from the sayd chilldren synce hir
Maiesties comming to the crowne xij^d by the daye which was
allowed for theyr breakefastes as may apeare by the Treasorer
of the Chamber his acompt for the tyme beinge, with other
allowaunces incident to the office as appeareth by the auntyent
acomptes in the sayd office which I heere omytt.

‘The burden heerof hath from tyme to tyme so hindred the M^{rs}
of the Children viz. M^r Bower, M^r Edwardes, my sellf and M^r
Farrant: that notwithstanding some good helpes otherwyse some of
them dyed in so poore case, and so deepelie indebted that they
haue not left scarcelye wherewith to burye them.

‘In tender consideracion whereof, might it please your honores
that the sayde allowaunce of vj^d a daye apeece for the
childrens dyet might be reserued in hir Maiesties coffers during
the tyme of theyre attendaunce. And in liew thereof they to be
allowed meate and drinke within this honorable householde for
that I am not able vppon so small allowaunce eny longer to beare
so heauie a burden. Or otherwyse to be consydred as shall seeme
best vnto your honorable wysdomes.

‘[_Endorsed_] 1583 November. The humble peticion of the M^r of
the Children of hir highnes Chappell [_and in another hand_]
To have further allowances for the finding of the children for
causes within mentioned.’

The actual request made by Hunnis seems a modest one. He seems to have thought that for his boys to have the run of their teeth at the tables of Whitehall would be a better bargain than the board-wages of 6_d._ a day. Doubtless he knew their appetites. I do not think that the Green Cloth met his views, for in the next reign the 6_d._ was still being paid and was raised to 10_d._ for the benefit of Nathaniel Giles.[114] Possibly Hunnis did get back the £16 a year for breakfasts, which seems to be the fee described by him as 1_s._ a day, although that in fact works out to £18 5_s._ a year, and the £9 13_s._ 4_d._ for largess, if that also had been withdrawn, since these are included in fee lists for 1593 and 1598.[115] The ‘perticuler ffees’ to which he refers are presumably the allowances occasionally paid by Henry for the maintenance of boys whose voices had changed. In any case Hunnis’s personal grievance must have been fully met by liberal grants of Crown lands which were made him in 1585.[116] It will be observed that he says nothing of any profits derived by him from the dramatic activities of the Children; whether in the form of rewards at Court or in that of admission fees to public performances. Plays were no part of the official functions of the Chapel, although it is consistent with the general policy of the reign towards the London stage to suppose that Elizabeth and her economical ministers were well enough content that the deficiencies of her Chapel maintenance should be eked out, and her Christmas ‘solace’ rendered possible, out of the profits of public exercise. So far, however, as the Chapel was concerned, this convenient arrangement was, for the time, nearly at an end. The facts with regard to the boy companies during 1584 are somewhat complicated. The Treasurer of the Chamber paid the Master of the Chapel Children, without specifying his name, for plays on 6 January and 2 February 1584. He also paid John Lyly for plays by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘servants’ on 1 January and 3 March 1584, and Henry Evans for a play by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘children’ on 27 December 1584. Were this all, one would naturally assume that Oxford had brought to Court the ‘lads’ who appeared under his name at Norwich in 1580, and that these formed a company, quite distinct from the Chapel, of which the Earl entrusted the management either jointly or successively to Lyly and Evans. Lyly, of course, is known to have been at one time in the Earl’s service.[117] One would then be left to speculate as to which company played at the Blackfriars during 1584 and where the other played. But the real puzzle begins when it is realized that in the same year 1584 two of Lyly’s plays, _Campaspe_ and _Sapho and Phao_, were for the first time printed, that these have prologues ‘at the Blackfriars’, that their title-pages indicate their performance at Court, not by Oxford’s company, but by the Chapel and the Paul’s boys, of which latter the Treasurer of the Chamber makes no mention, and that the title-pages of the two issues of _Campaspe_ further specify, in the one case Twelfth Night, and in the other, which is apparently corrected, New Year’s Day, as the precise date of performance, while that of _Sapho and Phao_ similarly specifies Shrove Tuesday. But New Year’s Day and Shrove Tuesday of 1584 are the days which the Treasurer of the Chamber assigns not to the Chapel, but to Oxford’s company; and even if you accept Professor Feuillerat’s rather far-fetched assumption that the days referred to in the title-pages were not necessarily those falling in the year of issue, you will not find a New Year’s Day, or for the matter of that a Twelfth Night, since the opening of the Blackfriars, which, if a play-day at all, is not occupied either by some Chapel or Paul’s play of which the name is known, or by some other company altogether.[118] The conjecture seems inevitable that, when he found himself in financial straits and with the rivalry of the Queen’s men to face in 1583, Hunnis came to an arrangement with the Paul’s boys, who had recently lost Sebastian Westcott, on the one hand, and with the Earl of Oxford and his agents Lyly and Evans on the other, and put the Blackfriars at the disposal of a combination of boys from all three companies, who appeared indifferently at Court under the name of the Master or that of the Earl. In the course of 1584 Sir William More resumed possession of the Blackfriars. Henry Evans must have made some temporary arrangement to enable the company to appear at Court during the winter of 1584–5.[119] But for a year or two thereafter there were no boys acting in London until in 1586 an arrangement with Thomas Giles, Westcott’s successor at St. Paul’s, afforded a new opportunity for Lyly’s pen.[120]

The Chapel had contributed pretty continuously to Court drama for nearly a century. They now drop out of its story for about seventeen years.[121] In addition to the two plays of Lyly, one other of their recent pieces, Peele’s _Arraignment of Paris_, was printed in 1584. Two former Children, Henry Eveseed and John Bull, afterwards well known as a musician, became Gentlemen on 30 November 1585 and in January 1586 respectively.[122] Absence from Court did not entail an absolute cessation of dramatic activities. Performances by the Children are recorded at Ipswich and Norwich in 1586–7 and at Leicester before Michaelmas in 1591. There is, however, little to bear out the suggestion that the Chapel furnished the boys who played at Croydon, probably in the archbishop’s palace, during the summers of 1592 and 1593, other than the fact that the author of the play produced in 1593, _Summer’s Last Will and Testament_, was Thomas Nashe, who was also part author with Marlowe of _Dido_, one of two plays printed as Chapel plays in 1594. The extant text of the other play, _The Wars of Cyrus_, seems to be datable between 1587 and 1594. Hunnis died on 6 June 1597, and on 9 June 1597 Nathaniel Giles, ‘being before extraordinary’, was sworn as a regular Gentleman of the Chapel and Master of the Children. Giles, like Farrant, came ‘from Winsore’. Born about 1559, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was appointed Clerk in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and Master of the Children on 1 October 1595. He earned a considerable reputation as a musician, and died in possession of both Masterships at the age of seventy-five on 24 January 1634.[123] His patent of appointment to the Chapel Royal is dated 14 July and his commission 15 July 1597.[124] They closely follow in terms those granted to Hunnis.[125]

Three years later the theatrical enterprise which had been dropped in 1584 was renewed by Giles, in co-operation with Henry Evans, who had been associated with its final stages. The locality chosen was again the Blackfriars, in the building reconstructed by James Burbadge in 1596, and then inhibited, on a petition of the inhabitants, from use as a public play-house. Of this, being ‘then or late in the tenure or occupacion of’ Henry Evans, Richard Burbadge gave him on 2 September 1600 a lease for twenty-one years from the following Michaelmas at a rent of £40.[126] According to Burbadge’s own account of the matter, Evans ‘intended then presentlye to erect or sett vp a companye of boyes ... in the same’, and knowing that the payment of the rent depended upon the possibility of maintaining a company ‘to playe playes and interludes in the said Playhowse in such sort as before tyme had bene there vsed’, he thought it desirable to take collateral security in the form of a bond for £400 from Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins.[127] Long after, the Blackfriars _Sharers Papers_ of 1635 describe the lease as being to ‘one Evans that first sett vp the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chapell’.[128] I find nothing in this language to bear out the contention of Professor Wallace that Evans’s occupation of the Blackfriars extended back long before the date of his lease, and that, as already suggested by Mr. Fleay, the Chapel plays began again, not in 1600, but in 1597.[129] Burbadge speaks clearly of the setting up of the company as still an intention when the lease was drawn, and the reference to earlier plays in the house may either be to some use of it unknown to us between 1596 and 1600, or perhaps more probably to the performances by Evans and others before the time of James Burbadge’s reconstruction. Mr. Fleay’s suggestion rested, so far as I can judge, upon the evidence for the existence of Jonson’s _Case is Altered_ as early as January 1599 and its publication as ‘acted by the children of the Blacke-friers’. But this publication was not until 1609 and represents a revision made not long before that date; and as will be seen the company did not use the name Children of the Blackfriars until about 1606. There is no reason to suppose that they were the original producers of the play. A confirmatory indication for 1600 as the date of the revival may be found in the appearance of the Chapel at Court, for the first time since 1584, on 6 January and 22 February 1601. On both occasions Nathaniel Giles was payee. The performance of 6 January, described by the Treasurer of the Chamber as ‘a showe with musycke and speciall songes’ was probably Jonson’s _Cynthia’s Revels_, which that description well fits; that of 22 February may have been the anonymous _Contention between Liberality and Prodigality_. Both of these were published in 1601. Jonson has preserved for us in his Folio of 1616 the list of the principal actors of _Cynthia’s Revels_, who were ‘Nat. Field, Sal. Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Rob. Baxter and Ioh. Frost’. The induction of the play is spoken by ‘Iacke’ and two other of the Children, of whom one, impersonating a spectator, complains that ‘the vmbrae, or ghosts of some three or foure playes, departed a dozen yeeres since, haue bin seene walking on your stage heere’. _Liberality and Prodigality_ may be one of the old-fashioned plays here scoffed at, but it is probable that Jonson also had in mind Lyly’s _Love’s Metamorphosis_, which was published in 1601 as ‘first playd by the Children of Paules, and now by the Children of the Chappell’, and there may have been other revivals of the same kind. The company was included in the Lenten prohibition of 11 March 1601. Later in the year they produced Jonson’s _Poetaster_, containing raillery of the common stages, which stimulated a reply in Dekker’s _Satiromastix_, and which, together with their growing popularity, sufficiently explains the reference to the ‘aerie of children, little eyases’ in _Hamlet_.[130] The _Poetaster_ was published in 1602 and the actor-list of the Folio of 1616 contains the names of ‘Nat. Field, Sal Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Wil. Ostler and Tho. Marton’. The full name of Pavy, who died after acting for three years, is given as Salathiel in the epigram written to his memory by Jonson; it appears as Salmon in a document which adds considerably to our knowledge both of the original constitution of the company and of the lines on which it was managed. This is a complaint to the Star Chamber by one Henry Clifton, Esq., of Toftrees, Norfolk, against a serious abuse of the powers of impressment entrusted under the royal commission to Nathaniel Giles.[131] Clifton alleged that Giles, in confederacy with Evans, one James Robinson and others, had set up a play-house for their own profit in the Blackfriars, and under colour of the commission had taken boys, not for the royal service in the Chapel Royal, but employment in acting interludes. He specified as so taken, ‘John Chappell, a gramer schole scholler of one Mr. Spykes schole neere Criplegate, London; John Motteram, a gramer scholler in the free schole at Westmi[n]ster; Nathan ffield, a scholler of a gramer schole in London, kepte by one Mr. Monkaster; Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and Thomas Grymes, apprentices to Richard and Georg Chambers; Salmon Pavey, apprentice to one Peerce’. These were all children ‘noe way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie the sayd confederates endevoured to be taught to singe’. Finally they had made an attempt upon Clifton’s own son Thomas, a boy of thirteen, who had been seized by Robinson in Christ Church cloister on or about 13 December 1600, as he went from Clifton’s house in Great St. Bartholomew’s to the grammar school at Christ Church, and carried off to the play-house ‘to exercyse the base trade of a mercynary enterlude player, to his vtter losse of tyme, ruyne and disparagment’. Clifton went to the Blackfriars, where his son was ‘amongste a companie of lewde and dissolute mercenary players’, and made a protest; but Giles, Robinson, and Evans replied that ‘yf the Queene would not beare them furth in that accion, she should gett another to execute her comission for them’, that ‘they had aucthoritie sufficient soe to take any noble mans sonne in this land’, and that ‘were yt not for the benefitt they made by the sayd play howse, whoe would, should serve the Chappell with children for them’. Then they committed Thomas Clifton to the charge of Evans in his father’s presence, with a threat of a whipping if he was not obedient, and ‘did then and there deliuer vnto his sayd sonne, in moste scornefull disdaynfull and dispightfull manner, a scrolle of paper, conteyning parte of one of theire sayd playes or enterludes, and him, the sayd Thomas Clifton, comaunded to learne the same by harte’. Clifton appealed to Sir John Fortescue and got a warrant from him for the boy’s release after a day and a night’s durance. It was not, however, until a year later, on 15 December 1601, that he made his complaint.[132] During the following Christmas Giles brought the boys to Court on 6 and 10 January and 14 February 1602, and then with the hearing of the case in the Star Chamber during Hilary Term troubles began for the syndicate. Evans was censured ‘for his vnorderlie carriage and behauiour in takinge vp of gentlemens childeren against theire wills and to ymploy them for players and for other misdemeanors’, and it was decreed that all assurances made to him concerning the play-house or plays should be void and should be delivered up to be cancelled.[133] Evans, however, had apparently prepared himself against this contingency by assigning his lease to his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins on 21 October 1601. This at least is one explanation of a somewhat obscure transaction. According to Evans himself, the assignment was to protect Hawkins from any risk upon the bond given to Burbadge. On the other hand, there had already been negotiations for the sale of a half interest in the undertaking to three new partners, Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas Kendall, and it was claimed later by Kirkham that the assignment to Hawkins had been in trust to reassign a moiety to these three, in return for a contribution of capital variously stated at from £300 to £600. No such reassignment was, however, carried out.[134] But although the lease from Burbadge was certainly not cancelled as a result of the Star Chamber decree, it probably did seem prudent that the original managers of the theatre should remain in the background for a time. Nothing more is heard of James Robinson, while the partnership between Evans and Hawkins on the one side and Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall on the other was brought into operation under articles dated on 20 April 1602. For the observance of these Evans and Hawkins gave a bond of £200.[135] Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall in turn gave Evans a bond of £50 as security for a weekly payment of 8s., ‘because after the said agreements made, the complainant [Kirkham] and his said parteners would at their directions haue the dieting and ordering of the boyes vsed about the plaies there, which before the said complainant had, and for the which he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed great sommes of monie’.[136]

Of the new managers, Rastall was a merchant and Kendall a haberdasher, both of London.[137] Kirkham has generally been assumed to be the Yeoman of the Revels, but of this there is not, so far as I know, any definite proof. The association did not prove an harmonious one. According to Evans, Kirkham and his fellows made false information against him to the Lord Chamberlain, as a result of which he was ‘comaunded by his Lordship to avoyd and leave the same’, had to quit the country, and lost nearly £300 by the charge he was put to and the negligence of Hawkins in looking after his profits.[138] This seems to have been in May 1602. Meanwhile the performances continued. The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1602–3, but _Sir Giles Goosecap_ and possibly Chapman’s _Gentleman Usher_ were produced by them before the end of Elizabeth’s reign; and on 18 September 1602 a visit was paid to the theatre by Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, of which the following account is preserved in the journal of Frederic Gerschow, a member of his suite:[139]

‘Von dannen sind wir auf die Kinder-comoediam gangen, welche
im Argument iudiciret eine castam viduam, war eine historia
einer königlichen Wittwe aus Engellandt. Es hat aber mit dieser
Kinder-comoedia die Gelegenheit: die Königin hält viel junger
Knaben, die sich der Singekunst mit Ernst befleissigen müssen
und auf allen Instrumenten lernen, auch dabenebenst studieren.
Diese Knaben haben ihre besondere praeceptores in allen
Künsten, insonderheit sehr gute musicos.’

‘Damit sie nun höfliche Sitten anwenden, ist ihnen aufgelegt,
wöchentlich eine comoedia zu agiren, wozu ihnen denn die Königin
ein sonderlich theatrum erbauet und mit köstlichen Kleidern zum
Ueberfluss versorget hat. Wer solcher Action zusehen will, muss
so gut als unserer Münze acht sundische Schillinge geben, und
findet sich doch stets viel Volks auch viele ehrbare Frauens,
weil nutze argumenta und viele schöne Lehren, als von andern
berichtet, sollen tractiret werden; alle bey Lichte agiret,
welches ein gross Ansehen macht. Eine ganze Stunde vorher höret
man eine köstliche musicam instrumentalem von Orgeln, Lauten,
Pandoren, Mandoren, Geigen und Pfeiffen, wie denn damahlen ein
Knabe cum voce tremula in einer Basgeigen so lieblich gesungen,
dass wo es die Nonnen zu Mailand ihnen nicht vorgethan, wir
seines Gleichen auf der Reise nicht gehöret hatten.’

This report of a foreigner must not be pressed as if it were precise evidence upon the business organization of the Blackfriars. Yet it forms the main basis of the theory propounded by Professor Wallace that Elizabeth personally financed the Chapel plays and personally directed the limitation of the number of adult companies allowed to perform in London, as part of a deliberate scheme of reform, which her ‘definite notion of what the theatre should be’ had led her to plan--a theory which, I fear, makes his _Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_ misleading, in spite of its value as a review of the available evidence, old and new, about the company.[140] Professor Wallace supposes that Edward Kirkham, acting officially as Yeoman of the Revels, was Elizabeth’s agent, and that, even before he became a partner in the syndicate, he dieted the boys and supplied them with the ‘köstlichen Kleidern zum Ueberfluss’ mentioned by Gerschow, accounting for the expenditure either through the Revels Accounts or through some other unspecified accounts ‘yet to be discovered’.[141] Certainly no such expenditure appeared in the Revels Accounts, and no other official account with which Kirkham was concerned is known. It may be pointed out that, if we took Gerschow’s account as authoritative, we should have to suppose that Elizabeth provided the theatre building, which we know she did not, and I think it may be taken for granted that her payments for the Chapel were no more than those with which we are already quite familiar, namely the Master’s fee of £40 ‘pro exhibicione puerorum’, the board-wages of 6_d._ a day for each of twelve children, possibly the breakfast allowance of £16 a year and the largess of £9 13_s._ 4_d._ for high feasts, and the occasional rewards for actual performances. None of these, of course, passed through the Revels Office, and although this office may, as in the past, have helped to furnish the actual plays at Court, the cost of exercising in public remained a speculation of the Master and his backers, who had to look for recoupment and any possible profits to the sums received from spectators. If it is true, as Gerschow seems to say, that performances were only given on Saturdays, the high entrance charge of 1_s._ is fully explained. The lawsuits, of course, bear full evidence to the expenditure by the members of the syndicate upon the ‘setting forward’ of plays.[142] Nor is there any ground for asserting, as Professor Wallace does, that there were two distinct sets of children, one lodged in or near the palace for chapel purposes proper, and the other kept at the Blackfriars for plays.[143] It is true that Clifton charged Giles with impressing boys who could not sing, but Gerschow’s account proves that there were others at the Blackfriars who could sing well enough, and it would be absurd to suppose that there was one trained choir for the stage and another for divine service. Doubtless, however, the needs of the theatre made it necessary to employ, by agreement or impressment, a larger number of boys than the twelve borne on the official establishment.[144] And that boys whose voices had broken were retained in the theatrical company may be inferred from the report about 1602 that the Dowager Countess of Leicester had married ‘one of the playing boyes of the chappell’.[145] I cannot, finally, agree with Professor Wallace in assuming that the play attended by Elizabeth at the Blackfriars on 29 December 1601 was necessarily a public one at the theatre; much less that it was ‘only one in a series of such attendances’. She had dined with Lord Hunsdon at his house in the Blackfriars. The play may have been in his great chamber, or he may have borrowed the theatre next door for private use on an off-day. And the actors may even more probably have been his own company than the Chapel boys.[146]

The appointment of a new Lord Chamberlain by James I seems to have enabled Evans to return to England. He found theatrical affairs in a bad way, owing to the plague of 1603, and ‘speach and treatie’ arose between him and Burbadge about a possible surrender of his lease.[147] By December, however, things looked brighter. Evans did some repairs to the Blackfriars, and the enterprise continued.[148] Like the adult companies, the partners secured direct royal protection under the following patent of 4 February 1604:[149]

[Sidenote: De licencia speciali pro Eduardo Kirkham et aliis pro le Revell domine Regine.]

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Mayors Shiriffes Justices
of Peace Baliffes Constables and to all other our officers
mynisters and lovinge Subiectes to whome theis presentes shall
come, greeting. Whereas the Queene our deerest wief hath for her
pleasure and recrea[~c]on when she shall thinke it fit to have
any playes or shewes appoynted her servauntes Edward Kirkham
Alexander Hawkyns Thomas Kendall and Robert Payne to provyde and
bring vppe a convenient nomber of Children, whoe shalbe called
children of her Revelles, knowe ye that we have appointed and
authorized and by theis presentes doe authorize and appoynte
the said Edward Kirkham Alexander Hawkins Thomas Kendall and
Robert Payne from tyme to tyme to provide keepe and bring vppe a
convenient nomber of Children, and them to practize and exercise
in the quality of playinge by the name of Children of the
Revells to the Queene within the Black-fryers in our Cytie of
London, or in any other convenient place where they shall thinke
fit for that purpose. Wherefore we will and commaunde [you] and
everie of you to whome it shall appertayne to permytt her said
Servauntes to keepe a convenient nomber of Children by the name
of Children of her Revells and them to exercise in the quality
of playing according to her pleasure. Provided allwaies that noe
such Playes or Shewes shalbee presented before the said Queene
our wief by the said Children or by them any where publiquelie
acted but by the approbacion and allowaunce of Samuell Danyell,
whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that purpose. And theis
our lettres Patentes shalbe your sufficient warraunte in this
behalfe. In witnes whereof &c., witnes our self at Westminster
the fourth day of February.
per breve de priuato sigillo &c.

Apparently it was still thought better to keep the name of Evans out of the patent, and he was represented by Hawkins; of the nature of Payne’s connexion with the company I know nothing. The adoption of the name of Children of the Queen’s Revels should perhaps be taken as indicating that, as the boy-actors grew older, the original connexion with the Chapel became looser. The use of Giles’s commission as a method of obtaining recruits was probably abandoned, and there is no evidence that he had any further personal association with the theatre.[150] The commission itself was, however, renewed on 13 September 1604, with a new provision for the further education of boys whose voices had changed;[151] and in December Giles was successful in getting the board-wages allowed for his charges raised from 6_d._ to 10_d._ a day.[152]

The Revels children started gaily on the new phase of their career, and the _Hamlet_ allusion is echoed in Middleton’s advice to a gallant, ‘if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man’.[153] They were at Court on 21 February 1604 and on 1 and 3 January 1605. Their payees were Kirkham for the first year and Evans and Daniel for the second. Evidently Daniel was taking a more active part in the management than that of a mere licenser. Their play of 1 January 1605 was Chapman’s _All Fools_ (1605), and to 1603–5 may also be assigned his _Monsieur d’Olive_ (1606), and possibly his _Bussy d’Ambois_ (1607), and _Day’s Law Tricks_ (1608). I venture to conjecture that the boys’ companies were much more under the influence of their poets than were their adult rivals; it is noteworthy that plays written for them got published much more rapidly than the King’s or Prince’s men ever permitted.[154] And it is known that one poet, who now began for the first time to work for the Blackfriars, acquired a financial interest in the undertaking. This was John Marston, to whom Evans parted, at an unspecified date, with a third of the moiety which the arrangement of 1602 had left on his hands.[155] Marston’s earliest contributions were probably _The Malcontent_ (1604) and _The Dutch Courtesan_ (1605). From the induction to the _Malcontent_ we learn that it was appropriated by the King’s men, in return for the performance by the boys of a play on Jeronimo, perhaps the extant _I Jeronimo_, in which the King’s claimed rights. Marston’s satirical temper did not, however, prove altogether an asset to the company; and I fear that the deference of its directors to literary suggestions was not compatible with that practical political sense, which as a rule enabled the professional players to escape conflicts with authority. The history of the next few years is one of a series of indiscretions, which render it rather surprising that the company should throughout have succeeded in maintaining its vitality, even with the help of constant reconstructions of management and changes of name. The first trouble, the nature of which is unknown, appears to have been caused by Marston’s _Dutch Courtesan_. Then came, ironically enough, the _Philotas_ of the company’s official censor, Samuel Daniel. Then, in 1605, the serious affair of _Eastward Ho!_ for which Marston appears to have been mainly responsible, although he saved himself by flight, whereas his fellow authors, Jonson and Chapman, found themselves in prison and in imminent danger of losing their ears.[156] I do not think that the scandal arose on the performance of the play, but on its publication in the late autumn.[157] The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1605–6, but the ingenious Kirkham seems to have succeeded in transferring one of its new plays, Marston’s _Fawn_, and possibly also _Bussy D’Ambois_, to Paul’s, and appeared triumphantly before the Treasurer of the Chamber’s paymaster the following spring as ‘one of the Masters of the Children of Pawles’. Meanwhile the Blackfriars company went on acting, but it is to be inferred from the title-pages of its next group of plays, Marston’s _Sophonisba_ (1606), Sharpham’s _The Fleir_ (1607), and Day’s _Isle of Gulls_ (1606), that its misdemeanour had cost it the direct patronage of the Queen, and that it was now only entitled to call itself, not Children of the Queen’s Revels, but Children of the Revels.[158] Possibly the change of name also indicates that thereafter, not Daniel, but the Master of the Revels, acted as its censor. Anne herself, by the way, must have felt the snub, for it was probably at the Blackfriars that, if the French ambassador may be trusted, she had attended representations ‘to enjoy the laugh against her husband’.[159] The alias, whatever it connoted, proved but an ephemeral one. By February 1606 one of the plays just named, the _Isle of Gulls_, had given a new offence. Some of those responsible for it were thrown into Bridewell, and a fresh reconstruction became imperative.[160] It was probably at this date that one Robert Keysar, a London goldsmith, came into the business. Kirkham, like Evans before him, discreetly retired from active management, and the Children, with Keysar as ‘interest with them’, became ‘Masters themselves’, taking the risks and paying the syndicate for the use of the hall.[161] Kirkham claims that under this arrangement the moiety of profits in which he had rights amounted to £150 a year, as against £100 a year previously earned.[162] Shortly afterwards the dissociation of the Chapel from the Blackfriars was completed by a new commission issued to Giles on 7 November 1606, to which was added the following clause:

‘Prouided alwayes and wee doe straightlie charge and commaunde
that none of the saide Choristers or Children of the Chappell
so to be taken by force of this commission shalbe vsed or
imployed as Comedians or Stage players, or to exercise or acte
any Stage playes Interludes Comedies or tragedies, for that it
is not fitt or decent that such as shoulde singe the praises
of God Allmightie shoulde be trayned vpp or imployed in suche
lascivious and prophane exercises.’[163]

It is presumably to this pronouncement that Flecknoe refers in 1664, when he speaks of the Chapel theatre being converted to the use of the Children of the Revels, on account of the growing precision of the people and the growing licentiousness of plays.[164] It is, however, curious to observe that the abandoned titles of the company tended to linger on in actual use. Evans in 1612 speaks of the syndicate as ‘the coparteners sharers, and Masters of the Queenes Maiesties Children of the Revells (for so yt was often called)’ in 1608;[165] while the name Children of the Chapel is used in the Stationers’ Register entry of _Your Five Gallants_ in 1608, at Maidstone in 1610, and even in such official documents as the Revels Accounts for 1604–5 and the Chamber Accounts for 1612–13.

Under Keysar the name was Children of the Blackfriars. For a couple of years the company succeeded in keeping clear of further disaster. But on 29 March 1608 the French ambassador, M. de la Boderie, reported that all the London theatres had been closed, and were now threatened by the King with a permanent inhibition on account of two plays which had given the greatest offence.[166] Against one of these, which dealt with the domestic affairs of the French king, he had himself lodged a protest, and his description leaves no doubt that this was one of the parts of Chapman’s _Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron_, which was published, without the offending scene, later in the year, as ‘acted at the Black-Friars’. The other play was a personal attack upon James himself. ‘Un jour ou deux devant’, says La Boderie, ‘ilz avoient dépêché leur Roi, sa mine d’Escosse, et tous ses favorits d’une estrange sorte; car aprés luy avoir fait dépiter le ciel sur le vol d’un oyseau, et faict battre un gentilhomme pour avoir rompu ses chiens, ils le dépeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le jour.’ This piece is not extant, but I have recently come across another allusion to it in a letter of 11 March 1608 to Lord Salisbury from Sir Thomas Lake, a clerk of the signet in attendance upon the King at Thetford.[167]

‘His ma^{tie} was well pleased with that which your lo.
advertiseth concerning the committing of the players y^{t}
have offended in y^{e} matters of France, and commanded me to
signifye to your lo. that for y^{e} others who have offended in
y^{e} matter of y^{e} Mynes and other lewd words, which is y^{e}
children of y^{e} blackfriars, That though he had signified
his mynde to your lo. by my lo. of Mountgommery yet I should
repeate it again, That his G. had vowed they should never play
more, but should first begg their bred and he wold have his vow
performed, And therefore my lo. chamberlain by himselfe or your
ll. at the table should take order to dissolve them, and to
punish the maker besides.’