until Dodmer had applied in vain to the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Treasurer, and Mr. Secretary Walsingham, and was finally 'after long attendaunce (and that none of the afore-named coulde get the Queenes Maiestie to resolve therin) dryven to trouble her Maiestie himselfe and by special peticion obtayned as well the grawnt for ccli in prest as the dettes to be paid'. At the end of each year there were formalities and delays to be gone through before the bills could be paid. The accounts had to be made up, to be passed by the auditors, and to be declared before the Lord Treasurer and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then a royal warrant had to be obtained for a privy seal, then the privy seal itself, and finally actual payment at the Exchequer. All these processes necessitated constant fees and gratuities. In 1579 the estimated charges for audit and payment amounted to £8. For his considerable financial services in 1574-5 Bryan Dodmer demanded £13 6s. 8d., but this was ruthlessly cut down by the officers to £6 13s. 4d. They in their turn found the auditor disallowing a small payment because it had been entered in the books after the sum had been cast, and was not properly certified. Dodmer had advanced the money, but he could not be repaid until the following year.[1]
A letter of 8 April 1577 from Leicester to Burghley reminds him that a certain suit of Sir Jerome Bowes and others 'touching plays' had been referred to them, together with the Lord Chamberlain, by the Queen for consideration. They had 'myslyked of the perpetuytie they sutors desierd', but a report still had to be made.[2] There is nothing to show the nature of this 'suit', but it is not unnatural to conjecture that it arose in some way out of the vacancy in the Mastership. No more, however, is heard of Sir Jerome Bowes in this connexion. It was not until seven years after Benger's death that Blagrave met with the rebuff of finding himself passed over in favour of an outsider, and reduced to his former position of Clerk, with its subordinate duties and its miserable allowances for the 'ordynary grene cloth, paper, incke, counters, deskes, standishes', and so forth. The new Master was Edmund Tilney, who had dedicated to Elizabeth, in 1568, a dialogue on matrimony under the title of The Flower of Friendship. Tilney was a connexion of Lord Howard of Effingham, to whose influence at Court he probably owed his appointment. His patent is dated on 24 July 1579, but the fee was to run from the previous Christmas, and
