in a special section of the Treasurer's accounts, devoted to expenditure which the Chamberlain had power to authorize, and most of which had been at one time charged to the Privy Purse.[1] An example from a later date of a Lord Chamberlain's warrant for payment is preserved, together with a schedule of the plays covered by the amount paid. The warrant refers to the 'acquittance for the receipt' of the money, which the Treasurer would take from the players, and is in fact endorsed with receipts by one of them for the successive instalments paid, and with a final one for the whole sum due.[2] References in the Chamber Accounts for 1605-6 and 1609-10 to similar schedules in or annexed to the warrants show that, at an earlier date, the Privy Council had evidence before them, perhaps from the Lord Chamberlain, perhaps from the Master of the Revels, as to the number of plays which a company had given.[3] It is a pity that the Treasurer of the Chamber only on rare occasions thought it worth while to record the name of the play for which he was paying. A chance memorandum of Henslowe's tells us that, as perhaps we might have guessed, some of the money stuck to the hands of officials in the form of fees. To get the £10 due to Worcester's men for a play in 1601-2, Henslowe had had to give the Clerk of the Council 7s. for 'geatynge the cownselles handes to' the warrant, and 10s. 6d. 'for fese' to one Mr. Moysse 'at the receuinge of the mony owt of the payhowsse'.[4] On the other hand, the players got their money pretty quickly; the warrants were generally signed within a month or so, sometimes within a day or so, of the performances to which they relate. Considerable delays during the years 1596-9 possibly reflect the disorganization of the Revels Office by the disputes of the officers; just as similar delays about 1615-17 probably reflect the general disorganization of Jacobean finance.
Plays were given in private houses, as well as at court, and
- ↑ Cf. ch. ii, p. 66.
- ↑ The documents are printed by Cunningham, xxiv, and by Law, More, 39, 71, who gives the warrant more fully. They were removed by Cunningham from the Audit Office, and when returned to the Record Office were classed in error as papers subsidiary to the Revels Accounts, instead of to those of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But Law, More, 61, successfully vindicates their authenticity, and I may add that the dockets of Chamberlain's warrants for other years (Jahrbuch, xlvi. 94) refer to schedules now lost, and that a schedule of the plays of the King's men for 1638-9 was facsimiled from a private manuscript by G. R. Wright in Brit. Arch. Ass. Journal, xvi. 275, 344 (1860), and in his Archaeologic and Historic Fragments (1887). In this the claims for 'our day lost' are clearly specified.
- ↑ The schedule attached to a warrant of 1633 (Jahrbuch, xlvi. 97) appears to have been a bill signed by the Master of the Revels.
- ↑ Greg, Henslowe Papers, 109; but his note is a slip.
