and bishop of Oxford, then resident at Oxford, and later joined the household of Sir Antony Cope of Hanwell, near Banbury. He was now frequently employed in carrying despatches between the king and the royalists in England. In May 1659 he brought a command from Charles in Brussels, directing the bishop of Salisbury to summon all those bishops, who were then alive, to consecrate clergymen to various sees “to secure a continuation of the order in the Church of England,” then in danger of becoming extinct.[1] While returning from one of these missions, in the winter before the Restoration, he was arrested at Dover and committed a prisoner to Lambeth Palace, then used as a gaol for apprehended royalists, but was liberated after confinement of a few weeks at the instance, among others, of Lord Shaftesbury. At the Restoration he became canon of Christ Church, D.D. and city lecturer at Oxford. In 1663 he was made chaplain to the king and regius professor of divinity. In 1665 he was appointed provost of Eton College, and proved himself a capable administrator. He introduced order into the disorganized finances of the college and procured the confirmation of Laud’s decree, which reserved five of the Eton fellowships for members of King’s College. His additions to the college buildings were less successful; for the “Upper School,” constructed by him at his own expense, was falling into ruin almost in his lifetime, and was replaced by the present structure in 1689. Allestree died on the 28th of January 1681, and was buried in the chapel at Eton College, where there is a Latin inscription to his memory. His writings are:—The Privileges of the University of Oxford in point of Visitation (1647)—a tract answered by Prynne in the University of Oxford’s Plea Rejected ; 18 sermons whereof 15 preached before the king . . . (1669); 40 sermons whereof 21 are now first published . . . (2 vols., 1684); sermons published separately including A Sermon on Acts xiii. 2, (1660); A Paraphrase and Annotations upon all the Epistles of St Paul (joint author with Abraham Woodhead and Obadiah Walker, 1675, see edition of 1853 and preface by W. Jacobson). In the Cases of Conscience by J. Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln (1692), Allestree’s judgment on Mr Cottington’s Case of Divorce is included. A share in the composition, if not the sole authorship, of the books published under the name of the author of the Whole Duty of Man has been attributed to Allestree (Nichols’s Anecdotes, ii. 603), and the tendency of modern criticism is to regard him as the author. His lectures, with which he was dissatisfied, were not published. Allestree was a man of extensive learning, of moderate views and a fine preacher. He was generous and charitable, of “a solid and masculine kindness,” and of a temper hot, but completely under control.
Authorities. Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses (edited by Bliss), iii. 1269; Wood’s Fasti, i. 480, 514, ii. 57, 241, 370; Richard Allestree, 40 sermons, with biographical preface by Dr John Fell (2 vols., 1684); Sufferings of the Clergy, by John Walker; Architectural History of Eton and Cambridge, by R. Willis, i. 420; Hist. of Eton College, by Sir H. C. Maxwell-Lyte; Hist. of Eton College, by Lionel Cust (1899); Egerton MSS., Brit. Mus. 2807 f. 197 b. For Allestree’s authorship of the Whole Duty of Man, see Rev. F. Barham, Journal of Sacred Literature, July 1864, and C. E. Doble’s articles in the Academy, November 1884. (P. C. Y.)
ALLEY (from the Fr. allée, a walk), a narrow passageway
between two buildings available only for foot passengers
or hand-carts, sometimes entered only at one end and known
as a “blind-alley,” or cul-de-sac. The name is also given to
the long narrow enclosures where bowls or skittles are played.
ALLEYN, EDWARD (1566–1626), English actor and founder of Dulwich College, was born in London on the 1st of September 1566, the son of an innkeeper. It is not known at what date he began to act, but he certainly gained distinction in his calling while a young man, for in 1586 his name was on the list of the earl of Worcester’s players, and he was eventually rated by common consent as the foremost actor of his time. Ben Jonson, a critic little prone to exalt the merits of men of mark among his contemporaries, bestowed unstinted praise on Alleyn’s acting (Epigrams, No. 89). Nash expresses in prose, in Pierce Penniless, his admiration of him, while Heywood calls him “inimitable,” “the best of actors,” “Proteus for shapes and Roscius for a tongue.” Alleyn inherited house property in Bishopsgate from his father. His marriage on the 22nd of October 1592 with Joan Woodward, stepdaughter of Philip Henslowe, brought him eventually more wealth. He became part owner in Henslowe’s ventures, and in the end sole proprietor of several play-houses and other profitable pleasure resorts. Among these were the Rose Theatre at Bankside, the Paris Garden and the Fortune Theatre in St Luke’s—the latter occupied by the earl of Nottingham’s company, of which Alleyn was the head. He filled, too, in conjunction with Henslowe, the post of “master of the king’s games of bears, bulls and dogs.” On some occasions he directed the sport in person, and Stow in his Chronicles gives an account of how Alleyn baited a lion before James I. at the Tower.
Alleyn’s connexion with Dulwich began in 1605, when he bought the manor of Dulwich from Sir Francis Calton. The landed property, of which the entire estate had not passed into Alleyn’s hands earlier than 1614, stretched from the crest of that range of Surrey hills on whose summit now stands the Crystal Palace, to the crest of the parallel ridge, three miles nearer London, known in its several portions as Herne Hill, Denmark Hill and Champion Hill. Alleyn acquired this large property for little more than £10,000. He had barely got full possession, however, before the question how to dispose of it began to occupy him. He was still childless, after twenty years of wedded life. Then it was that the prosperous player—the man “so acting to the life that he made any part to become him” (Fuller, Worthies)—began the task of building and endowing in his own lifetime the College of God’s Gift at Dulwich. All was completed in 1617 except the charter or deed of incorporation for setting his lands in mortmain. Tedious delays occurred in the Star Chamber, where Lord Chancellor Bacon was scheming to bring the pressure of kingly authority to bear on Alleyn with the aim of securing a large portion of the proposed endowment for the maintenance of lectureships at Oxford and Cambridge. Alleyn finally carried his point and the College of God’s Gift at Dulwich was founded, and endowed under letters patent of James I., dated the 21st of June 1619. The building had been already begun in 1613 (see Dulwich). Alleyn was never a member of his own foundation, but he continued to the close of his life to guide and control its affairs under powers reserved to himself in the letters patent. His diary shows that he mixed much and intimately in the life of the college. Many of the jottings in that curious record of daily doings and incidents favour the inference that he was a genial, kind, amiable and religious man. His fondness for his old profession is indicated by the fact that he engaged the boys in occasional theatrical performances. At a festive gathering on the 6th of January 1622 “the boyes play’d a playe.”
Alleyn’s first wife died in 1623. The same year he married Constance, daughter of John Donne, the poet and dean of St Paul’s. Alleyn died in November 1626 and was buried in the chapel of the college which he had founded. His gravestone fixes the day of his death as the 21st, but there are grounds for the belief that it was the 25th. A portrait of the actor is preserved at Dulwich. Alleyn was a member of the corporation of wardens of St Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1610, and there is a memorial window to him in the cathedral.
ALL FOURS, a card game (known also in America as Seven Up, Old Sledge or High-Low-Jack) usually played by two players, though four may play. A full pack is used and each player receives seven counters. Four points can be scored, one each for high, the highest trump out, for low, the lowest trump dealt, for Jack, the knave of trumps, and for game, the majority of pips in the cards of the tricks that a player has won. Ace counts 4, King 3, Queen 2, Knave 1, and ten 10 points. Low is scored by the person to whom it is dealt; High of course wins a trick; Jack is scored by the player who finally has it among his tricks. If Jack is turned up the dealer scores the point. A player who plays a high or low trump is entitled to ask if they are High or Low. The game is 10 or 11 points. Six
- ↑ Egerton MSS., Brit. Mus. 2807 f. 197 b; Life of Dr John Barfwick, ed. by G. F. Barwick (1903), pp. 107, 129, 134.
