seal to the Exchequer, in which the names of the supervising officers were set out, and the Treasurer was authorized to make payments upon certificates by them.[1] A letter of 1608 suggests that up to that date it had been usual to name a maximum cost in the warrant, but thenceforward the supervising officers seem normally to have had a free hand.[2] Their own methods varied. Sometimes they asked the Exchequer, as occasion arose, to pay small sums direct to Inigo Jones and others; sometimes they wrote acknowledgements on the bills of furnishers, and sent these forward for Exchequer payment; sometimes they authorized a subordinate officer to draw one or two large sums and meet the expenditure out of these. For 'rewards' no doubt the last was the more convenient way. We find one Bethell, a gentleman usher of the chamber, thus designated as payee in 1608, Henry Reynolds in 1609, Meredith Morgan in 1612, 1613, 1614, and 1616, Walter James in 1615, and Edmund Sadler in 1616.[3] The balance-sheet for Love Freed, although it contains items for the dresses of the presenters, antimaskers, and musicians, contains none which can be assigned to those of the main maskers, and there is other evidence for thinking that, even in a royal mask, the lords or ladies who danced were expected to dress themselves. Thus John Chamberlain tells us of the Mask of Squires that the King was to bear the charge, 'all saving the apparel'. The practice, however, was probably not invariable, for the Exchequer documents relating to Tethys' Festival contain a silkman's bill for lace used for the dresses of fourteen ladies. For the Twelve Goddesses warrants were issued to Lady Suffolk and Lady Walsingham to take Queen Elizabeth's robes from the wardrobe in the Tower. The list of 'rewards' for Love Freed can be supplemented from similar lists for Oberon and the Lords' Mask and a few scattered records. The largest amounts went to the poets and the architect. Jones had £50 for the Lords' Mask and £40 each for Love Freed and Oberon, Jonson £40 for Love Freed, Daniel £20 for Tethys' Festival, Campion, being both poet and musician, £66 13s. 4d. for the Lords' Mask. Dancers and composers got from £10 to £40; lutenists and violinists £1 or £2; players £1 each. For the total cost we are mainly reduced to guess-work, although contemporary gossip, some-
- ↑ The privy seal of 1 Dec. 1608 for Queens is in S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxviii. 1, and that of 7 Jan. 1613 for the Lords' Mask in Collier, i. 364; a certificate of 25 May 1610 for Tethys' Festival is printed by Sullivan, 219, from S. P. D. Jac. I, liv. 74.
- ↑ Sullivan, 201, misdated 27 Nov. 1607 for 1608, from S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxvii. 96. The mask was Queens.
- ↑ Reyher, 508, 520; cf. ch. xxiii.
