appointed Comptroller in place of Edward Buggin.[1] On 25 June 1596, Honing having resigned, Edmund Pakenham was appointed as from 29 September 1595.[2] The last Yeoman of the reign was Edward Kirkham. His patent, in succession to Walter Fish, then dead, is dated on 28 April 1586.[3] But it refers to his 'service done in the Revels', and it is clear from the account for 1582-3 that he was already employed during that year, probably as deputy to Fish, in whose place he signed the book.[4] Fish signed that for 1580-1, and that for 1581-2 is missing. Kirkham's activities as a member of the syndicate formed to finance the Chapel plays in 1601 are a matter for discussion elsewhere.[5]
Tilney remained Master of the Revels until his death on 20 August 1610. But with the new reign he appears to have exercised most of his functions through his nephew, Sir George Buck, as his deputy and prospective successor. Buck had been in the Cadiz expedition of 1596, and was not improbably the Mr. Buck who carried dispatches for Cecil to Middelburgh in the Low Countries and afterwards in England during the autumn of 1601.[6] At the funeral of Elizabeth he received livery as an Esquire of the Body, probably extraordinary.[7] Hopes of the Mastership seem to have been held out to him as early as 1597, to the despair of another Esquire of the Body, John Lyly, the dramatist, who considered that he had claims upon the reversion to the Mastership, and pretty clearly regarded the bestowal of it upon another as a distinct breach of faith on the part of the Queen. Several letters of his referring to the matter are preserved at Hatfield and elsewhere. The earliest and most important of these is dated 22 December 1597 and addressed to Sir Robert Cecil. Herein Lyly says:
'I haue not byn importunat, that thes 12 yeres with vnwearied pacienc have entertayned the proroguing of her maiesties promises, which if in the 13 may conclud with the Parlement, I will think the greves of tymes past but pastymes . . . Offices in Reuersion are forestalld, in possession ingrost, & that of the Reuells countenanced upon Buck, wherein the Justic of an oyre shewes his affection to the keper & partialty to the sheppard, a french fauor.'
- ↑ Patent in Feuillerat, 60.
- ↑ Patent in Feuillerat, 63.
- ↑ Ibid. 74.
- ↑ Ibid. 360.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xii.
- ↑ Hatfield MSS. xi. 359, 379, 380. The 'Mr. Buck' implicated in the Essex rebellion of 1601 (Hist. MSS. xi. 4. 10) was Francis Buck (Hatfield MSS. xi. 214).
- ↑ Lord Chamberlain's Records, 554. Can he also have been a Gentleman of the Chapel? A Gentleman was sworn in 'in Mr. Buckes roome' on 2 July 1603, just after he became acting Master (Rimbault, 6).
