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named in the document were present.^[1] The nature of the evidence forthcoming from other companies is not so clearly specified, but no doubt it consisted of the warrant of appointment by their lord, and after 1581 of the confirmatory licence from the Master of the Revels. Worcester's men were in a difficulty at Leicester in 1583 because, although they could produce the warrant from their lord, their licence from the Master had been purloined by another company.^[2] It was probably as a quite special privilege that, when Strange's and Sussex's men travelled in 1593, they carried with them letters of assistance from the Privy Council itself. It may be gathered from the terms of the Norwich entries that the Court regarded its own permission or 'licence' as essential before players were entitled to set up their 'bills' or give their performances within its jurisdiction. The lord's warrant might protect his servants from the penalties of vagabondage; but it was not necessarily accepted, in the provinces any more than in London, as overriding the traditional right of the municipal governments to control the entertainments which might have serious results both upon the morality and the order of their areas. On the other hand, even if the plays had been less popular than they were, the livery of the Queen or of a powerful noble was not a thing to be lightly flouted. Perhaps the difficulty was solved by taking the warrant at its face value as a courteous letter of recommendation, and letting the licence to play and the 'reward' stand as return courtesies from the corporation to their very good lord. This fiction, however, can hardly have been applicable to the terms in which the Master of the Revels may be supposed to have worded his licence, and still less to those of the royal patents, which claimed to give direct authority to play 'within anie town halls or moute halls or other conveniente places within the liberties and freedoms of any cittie, vniversitie, towne or boroughe whatsoever within our realmes and domynions'. The corporations were not very likely to act upon the advice attributed to the Lord Coke in 1606 that such licences from the Crown were ultra vires.^[3] No doubt they remained the arbiters as to what places were 'conveniente'. They also prescribed times and seasons, forbidding plays at their

1. Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).
2. So, too, the Norwich accounts record in 1590 a reward to 'the lorde Shandos players' and 'Item more in rewarde to another company of his men that cam with lycens presently after saying that thos that cam before were counterfete and not the L. Shandos men'.
3. Cf. ch. ix.