the liberties. In this direction the City never met with more than very partial success. The county government was naturally not as closely organized as their own, and it was in the hands of officials and local gentlemen to whom the business considerations and the growing Puritan instincts of the City tradesmen did not appeal. Richard Young, in particular, who was a prominent member of the Middlesex bench for many years, earned an evil reputation as a persecutor of Puritans.[1] On the other hand, the Corporation might look for the co-operation of his colleague William Fleetwood, who was their own Recorder,[2] and machinery had been established between the two areas in the form of a joint committee or court of assistants for dealing with the control of plays and other matters of 'good order'.[3]
And if the players needed a refuge from the regulations of 1574, these must have been far from satisfactory to the Puritans. They fell very far short of the wholesome Genevan model. There was still toleration for the infamous histriones. Plays were not even wholly forbidden on Sundays and holy days, and the crowd flocked to the inn-yard gates, already open in spite of the regulation, while the bells were still ringing for divine service in the empty churches. And although the Corporation certainly did not mean to commit the licensing of plays to the Master of the Revels or to any court nominee, there is nothing to show that they had any intention of leaving it to the ministers. The rise of the 'sumptuous' theatres, monuments of triumphant wickedness, in the fields, could only add fuel to the wrath of the moralists. With Thomas White's Paul's Cross sermon and John Northbrooke's Treatise of 1577 begins a period of active diatribe in pulpit and pamphlet, the deliberate intention of which was to stir the 'magistrate' to a stronger sense of the moral responsibilities of govern
- ↑ For documents addressed to Richard Young or mentions of him, cf. App. D, Nos. lxviii, lxxiv, xc. He is often referred to in the Hatfield MSS., in connexion with a monopoly of starch which he held, and otherwise. In 1593 (iv. 393) he writes 'from my house, Stratford the Bowe'. On 30 Nov. 1594 (v. 25) he wrote to the Queen, 'in these my aged and extreme or last days' with notes of many examinations, chiefly of papists, taken by him. On the other hand, Carter, Shakespeare Puritan and Recusant, 145, quotes an inscription on the coffin of Roger Rippon, who died in Newgate in 1592, 'his blood crieth for speedy vengeance against . . . Mr. Richard Young, a justice of the peace in London, who in this and many like points hath abused his power for the upholding of the Romish Antichrist, Prelacy and Priesthood'.
- ↑ Cf. p. 265. Collier, i. 254, quotes an epigram calling Fleetwood 'the enemy of all poor players'. John Field dedicates his Godly Exhortation (1583) to him as a Middlesex and Surrey Justice.
- ↑ Cf. App. D, Nos. xxxvii, lxviii.
