been travelling under a 'warrant,' by which is apparently meant a licence under the royal sign manual or signet, used instead of an elaborate and doubtless expensive patent.[1] The signet licences were, however, such an obvious convenience that it was not long before they came to be regularly issued to players under the administration of the Lord Chamberlain himself.[2] This is a topic which lies rather beyond my purview. Nor can I dwell at any length on the evidence which shows that the licences given to players, like other assumptions of the royal prerogative, did not pass altogether without criticism from contemporary constitutionalists. I do not know whether it was a weak point that the statutory sanction taken for the patents in 1572 was not re-enacted in 1597. Their wording purported clearly enough to give the holders an authority to play both within and without the liberties and freedoms of any cities, towns, and boroughs. But Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, charging a Norwich jury on 4 August 1606, appears to have told the justices that the remedy of the abuses due to players was entirely in their hands—'they hauing no commission to play in any place without leaue: and therefore, if by your willingnesse they be not entertained, you may soone be rid of them'.[3] Too much stress must not be laid upon this, for Coke vigorously repudiated the accuracy of the printed edition of his charge from which the passage is taken.[4] But Prynne seems to insinuate a very similar argument in his Histriomastix of 1633,[5] and in any event the validity of the patents was terminated by the final ordinance for the suppression of plays passed by the Long Parliament on 9 February 1648, which enacted that 'all stage-players, and players of interludes, and common playes, are hereby declared to be, and are, and shall
- ↑ Cf. ch. xii, s.v. King's Revels. A later warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 deals with the same abuse of players and others who 'without the knowledge and approbacon of his maiesties office of the Revels' travel 'by reason of certaine grants comissions and lycences which they haue by secret meanes procured both from the Kings Maiestie and also from diuerse noblemen' (Murray, ii. 351).
- ↑ M. S. C. i. 284; Murray, ii. 192.
- ↑ The Lord Coke his Speech and Charge. With a Discouerie of the Abuses and Corruption of Officers (1607) H2. There is an epistle to the Earl of Exeter signed R. P., said (D. N. B.) to be Robert Pricket.
- ↑ Coke, Preface to 7th Report, 'libellum quendam . . . rudem et inconcinnum . . . quem sane contestor non solum me omnino insciente fuisse divulgatum, sed . . . ne unam quidem sententiolam eo sensu et significatione, prout dicta erat, fuisse enarratam'; cf. Gildersleeve, 40; J. Haslewood in Gentleman's Magazine, lxxxvi. 1. 205; 1 N. Q. vii. 376, 433.
- ↑ Prynne, 492, 497.
