no evidence of this. Probably the City policy was to show that the Council's attempt at regulation had broken down, and that complete prohibition had become the only remedy. On 31 March 1602 the Council wrote again to the Lord Mayor, who had reported some amendment of the abuses, and announced that, 'upon noteice of her Maiesties pleasure at the suit of the Earle of Oxford', a third company, made up of the Earl's servants and of those of the Earl of Worcester, were to be tolerated, and were to have the Boar's Head as their sole playing-place.
Plays were suspended by the Council on 19 March 1603 during the illness of the Queen, which terminated fatally on 24 March. Their resumption was anticipated on the coming of James, one of whose first acts was to issue on 7 May a proclamation against plays or bear-baiting on Sundays. But plague intervened, a plague more deadly even than that of 1592-4; and it was not until after the Lent of 1604 that on 9 April the Council authorized the three companies of players to the King, Queen, and Prince to perform at the Globe, Curtain, and Fortune, so long as the weekly plague-deaths should not exceed thirty. These were the former companies of the Chamberlain's, Worcester's, and the Admiral's men, now taken directly into the royal service. By a piece of generosity not paralleled during the late reign, the King's men had received a payment of £30 from the Treasurer of the Chamber in February for their 'maintenance and relief', in view of the prohibition of performances during the plague. The attachment of the three companies to the royal households is to be regarded as something a little more than a mere honour bestowed upon them. It signified a further advance on the lines already laid down in 1597 and 1600 of direct royal control in affairs theatrical. In favour of the King's men, the precedent set for Leicester's men in 1574 was revived, and their privileges, formerly dependent upon orders of the Privy Council, were conferred upon them by a licence under letters patent. A similar patent was drafted for Queen Anne's men, but was not at the time executed. In 1606 a provincial detachment of these men was using a letter of recommendation from the Queen herself as a warrant; they did not receive a licence under letters patent until 1609. Gradually, however, the issue of a patent became the normal Jacobean method of licensing the privileged London players. The Children of the Queen's Revels received theirs in 1604 and a new one in 1610, the Prince's men in 1606, the Duke of York's in 1610, the Lady Elizabeth's in 1611, and the Elector Palatine's in 1613. In 1615 a patent of an exceptional type
