George Mayler, merchant tailor, aged 40, and George Birch, coriar, aged 32, were called to give evidence as to the value of the garments and their use for a royal banquet at Greenwich in 1527.[1] In the second Mayler was himself a party. He is here described as a glazier, and an agreement of November 1528 is recited between him and one Thomas Arthur, tailor, whom he took as an apprentice for a year, promising to teach him to play and to obtain him admission into the King's company and the right to the privileges (libertatem) thereof and 'the Kinges bage'. According to Mayler, he found Arthur meat and drink and 4d. a day, but after seven weeks Arthur left him, beguiling away three of his covenant servants upon a playing tour in the provinces, out of which they made a profit of £30. He was, adds Mayler, 'right harde and dull too taike any lernynge, whereby he was nothinge meate or apte too bee in service with the Kinges grace too maike any plaiez or interludes before his highnes'. Arthur, on the other hand, alleged that it was Mayler who had broken the indentures, and sued him before the sheriffs of London for £26 damages. Owing to the accident of Mayler's being in Ludgate prison and unable to defend himself, the jury found against him for £4, and he appealed to Chancery to remove the action to that court.[2] The King's men, even apart from their other occupations as Household servants or tradesmen, were not wholly dependent on the royal bounty. The reward at Christmas was supplemented by minor gifts from the Princess Mary, or from lords and ladies of the Court, such as the Duke of Rutland and the Countess of Devon;[3] and the glamour of the King's badge doubtless added to the liberality of the company's reception in many a monastery, country mansion, and town hall. They are found during the reign at the priories of Thetford, Dunmow (1531-2), and Durham (1532-3), at the house of the Lestranges at Hunstanton (23 October 1530), at New Romney (1526-7), Shrewsbury (1527, 1533, 1540), Leicester (1531), Norwich (1533), Bristol (1535, 1536, 1537, 1541), Cambridge (1537-8), Beverley (1540-1), and Maldon (1546-7).[4] A private performance by the King's men forms an episode in the Elizabethan play of Sir Thomas More, although the Mason there named cannot be traced amongst their number.
No important change in the status of the company is to
