Maldon in 1549-50, but they are referred to more than once in the archives of the Revels. The Revels Office made them an oven and weapons of wood at Shrovetide 1548 and a seven-headed dragon at Shrovetide 1549. At Christmas 1551-2 the Privy Council gave them a warrant to borrow 'apparell and other fornyture' from the Master, and Lord Darcy gave John Birch and John Browne another for garments to serve in an interlude before the King on 6 January 1552.[1] William Baldwin, in his Beware the Cat, relates that during the Christmas of 1552-3, they were learning 'a play of Esop's Crowe, wherin the moste part of the actors were birds'.[2] Their only other play of which the name is known is that of Self Love, for which Sir Thomas Chaloner gave them 20s. on a Shrove Monday in 1551-3.[3]
The company no doubt took their share in Court revels during the earlier part of Mary's reign. But when the eclipse of gaiety came upon her later years they travelled. They are noted as the King and Queen's men in 1555-6 at Ipswich and Gloucester, in 1557 at Bristol, and in 1558 at Barnstaple, and as the Queen's men in 1555 at Leicester, in 1555-6 at Beverley, in 1556-7 at Beverley, Oxford, Norwich and Exeter, and in 1557-8 at Beverley, Leicester, Maldon, Dover, Lyme Regis, and Barnstaple. The nominal establishment continued to be eight.[4] But Heriot disappears after 1552 and John Birch, Coke, and Southey after 1556, and their vacancies do not seem to have been filled.[5]
Under Elizabeth the interlude players were certainly a moribund folk. They were reappointed 'during pleasure' under a warrant of 25 December 1559, and apparently Edmund Strowdewike and William Reading took the place of George Birch and Skinner.[6] They drew their fees of £3 6s. 8d. and livery allowances of £1 3s. 4d. from the Treasurer of the Chamber. The eight posts figure on the fee-lists long after there were no holders left.[7] The last 'reward' to the*
- ↑ Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 31, 39, 57, 86.
- ↑ Collier, i. 149. The reference to Ferrers' 'divine' and 'astronomer' (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 407) fixes the date.
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 201, from Lansd. MS. 824, f. 24.
- ↑ Fee-list in collection of Soc. of Antiquaries, cited by Collier, i. 161.
- ↑ Chamber Accounts in Collier, i. 161; Declared Accounts (Pipe Office), 541, m. 2^v.
- ↑ Reading was a London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v). The Chamber Accounts for the first few years of Elizabeth show an annuity to a George Birch under a warrant of 7 Jan. 1560.
- ↑ Eight players of interludes at £3 6s. 8d. each are in the fee-lists (cf. vol. i, p. 29), Stowe MS. 571, f. 148 (c. 1575-80), Sloane MS. 3194, f. 38 (1585), Stowe MS. 571, f. 168 (c. 1587-90), Lansd. MS. 171, f. 250 (c. 1587-91), S. P. D. Eliz. ccxxi, f. 16 (c. 1588-93), H. O. 256 (c. 1598),
