at Bath, side by side with Derby's men, in 1580-1 and 1582-3, and as players also at Bristol, Canterbury, and Gloucester in 1580-1, Plymouth in 1581-2, and Barnstaple in 1582-3 and 1583-4. With the tumbling at Court in 1580 begins a rather puzzling series of records. There are further Court entries of feats of activity by Lord Strange's men on 28 December 1581, and of feats of activity and tumbling on 1 January 1583. For this last occasion the payee of the company was John Symons. Two years later Symons and his 'fellows' were again at Court with feats of activity and vaulting, but they were then under the patronage, not of Lord Strange, but of the Earl of Oxford. There would be nothing extraordinary about such a transference of service, were it not that during the following Christmas, on 9 January 1586, tumbling and feats of activity are ascribed to John Symons and 'Mr. Standleyes boyes', and that by 'Mr. Standley' one can hardly help assuming either Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, or some other member of his family to be intended. This inference is confirmed by a mention of Lord Strange's men at Faversham in 1585-6, and it becomes necessary to assume that, after attaching himself for a year to the Earl of Oxford, Symons thought better of it, and returned to his original master. Symons and his company again showed feats of activity on 28 December 1587. No patron is named on this occasion, but as Strange's men are traceable at Coventry during 1587-8, it is natural to assume that they were still holding together. Now a new complication comes in. There were activities again at Court in the winter of 1588-9, and Symons certainly took part in them.[1] But the only men companies to whom payments were made were the Queen's and the Admiral's, who now reappear at Court after absence during two winters, and it is only in the case of the Admiral's that the payment is specified to be for activities. If the restless Symons had joined the Admiral's men, it cannot have been for long, since in the course of 1588-9 he was leading one section of the Queen's men to Nottingham. Nor had Strange's yet entirely broken up, for on 5 November 1589, both they and the Admiral's, evidently playing as distinct companies, were suppressed by the Lord Mayor in the City.[2] Strange's, who were then at the Cross Keys, played contemptuously, and some of them were imprisoned.
- ↑ The Revels account for 1587-9 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 390) includes 'a paire of fflanell hose for Symmons the Tumbler', which is not in the separate account for 1587-8 (Feuillerat, Eliz. 380).
- ↑ App. D, No. lxxxii. The forged list of Queen's men (q.v.) in 1589 is sometimes, by a further error, whose I do not know, assigned to Strange's.
