times a little disturbed at the extravagance, may help us, if it was not itself based on guess-work.[1] We hear of £2,000 to £3,000 for the Twelve Goddesses and the two other masks of the first winter, £3,000 and 25,000 scudi for Blackness, 6,000 or 7,000 and later 30,000 scudi for Beauty, £1,500 for Mercury Vindicated, £2,000 for Queens, which, however, M. Reyher estimates from Exchequer documents which he does not print, at more than £4,000.[2] These figures probably include the contributions of the Wardrobe, as these were to be repaid out of the special allowances in 1611. There is yet one other source of information. A return of extraordinary disbursements of the Exchequer for 1603-9, during which period there were six or seven royal masks, gives £4,215 under this head, and a similar return for 1603-17, during which there were from fourteen to sixteen, including the Vision of Delight in 1617, gives £7,500.[3] But this last figure is specifically stated not to include 'the provisions had out of the Warderobe and materials and workmen from the Office of the Works'. At a venture, I should say that a royal mask cost about £2,000 on the average. Something may also be gleaned about the finance of those masks that were not wholly charged on the Exchequer. Oberon, to which both James and Henry contributed, was supervised by the chamberlain of Henry's household, Sir Thomas Chaloner. The Inns of Court masks brought to the Princess Elizabeth's wedding were paid for out of admission fees to chambers and levies raised upon the members of the Inns, according to their status. Chamberlain estimated the cost of the two masks as 'better than £4,000', and the accounts that have been preserved show that in fact Chapman's mask cost Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple £1,086 8s. 11d. each, and Beaumont's cost Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple over £1,200 each. On the other hand, the whole cost of the Mask of Flowers, given by Gray's Inn at the Earl of Somerset's wedding, being over £2,000, was met by Sir Francis Bacon, who refused an offered contribution of £500 from Sir Henry Yelverton. The masks at the weddings of Sir Philip Herbert, Lord Essex, Lord Hay, and Lord Haddington were all, certainly or probably, complimentary offerings of friends of the hymeneal couples. Lady Rutland, who danced in Hymenaei, paid £80 to Bethell, and £26 11s.
- ↑ W. ffarington writes on 7 Feb. 1609 (Chetham Soc. xxxix. 151), 'The Comonalty do somewhat murmur at such vaine expenses and thinke that that money worth bestowed other waies might have been conferred upon better use, but quod supra nos, nihil ad nos'.
- ↑ Reyher, 72.
- ↑ Collier, i. 349; Abstract, 13. The Lords' Mask is separately reckoned at £400. This was just about the amount of the 'rewards'.
