of 1573 to be eminently desirable in the interests of the office.[1] The Master is authorized to take and retain such workmen 'at competent wages', and take such 'stuff, ware, or merchandise', 'at price reasonable', together with such 'carriages', by land and by water, as he may consider to be necessary or expedient for the service of the Revels. He or his deputy may commit recalcitrant persons to ward. He may protect his workmen from arrest, and they are not to be liable to forfeit if their service in the Revels obliges them to break outside contracts for piece-work. The licensing powers also conferred upon the Master by this patent are considered elsewhere.[2]
Tilney's accession to office coincided with the beginning of the period of heightened splendour in Court entertainments, due to the negotiations for Elizabeth's marriage with the Duke of Anjou.[3] A magnificent banqueting-house was built at Whitehall, and Sidney, Fulke Greville, and others, equipped as the Foster Children of Desire, besieged the Fortress of Perfect Beauty in the tilt-yard. One might have expected to find a considerably larger expenditure accounted for by the officers of the Revels. But this was not so, except for the one winter of Anjou's visit. The cost of the Office, which in 1571-3 had grown to about £1,500 a year, rapidly fell again. In 1573-4 it was about £670; in 1574-5 about £580; and thereafter it generally stood at not more than from £250 to £350. In 1581-2, however, it reached £630.[4] It is probable that the figures do not point to any real reduction of expenditure, but only mean that, after the experience of John Fortescue, the Master of the Wardrobe, as Acting Master of the Revels in 1572-3, it was found economical to supply the needs of the Office, to a greater extent even than in the past, through the organization of the Wardrobe and the Office of Works, instead of by the direct purchase of goods or employment of labour in the open market. Stowe records, for example, that the banqueting-house of 1581 cost £1,744 19s., but no part of this appears in the Revels Account, although the banqueting-house of 1572 had cost the Office £224 6s. 10d.[5] Probably it was all met by the Office of Works. About 1596 a further reform in the interests of economy was attempted, by the establishment of a fixed annual allowance for expenses, including the 'wages' or 'diet' hitherto allowed to the officers for each day or night of actual attendance at 'airings' or at the rehearsals or performances of plays. The last pay-
