More, these men, contrary to M^r Mayors comandment, went with their drum & trumppytts thorowe the Towne, in contempt of M^r Mayor, neyther wold come at his comandment, by his offycer, viz. Worship.
William Pateson my lord Harbards man }
Thomas Powlton my lord of Worcesters man } these ij
were they which dyd so much abuse M^r Mayor in the aforesayd words.
Nota. These sayd playors have submytted them selves, & are sorye for there words past, & craved pardon, desyeringe his worship not to write to there Master agayne them, & so vpon there submyssyn, they are lycensed to play this night at there inn, & also they have promysed that vppon the stage, in the begynyng of there play, to shoe vnto the hearers that they are licensed to playe by M^r Mayor & with his good will & that they are sory for the words past.
The latter part of this record is intelligible enough; evidently
there was a repetition of the misrule at Norwich. But the
earlier part, which refers to a different matter altogether, is
distinctly puzzling. The 'theys' in the first sentence of the
Corporation minute of 6 March are complicated, and it has
sometimes been supposed that there was really a company
of Master of the Revels' men, and that it was Worcester's
men who questioned the licence of these.[1] On the whole,
I think that a different interpretation of the documents
is the more natural one. No doubt Worcester's men had
found it necessary, as a result of the powers granted to
Tilney as Master of the Revels by the patent of 24 December
1581, to renew the authority under which they travelled.
In addition to a fresh warrant from their lord licensing them
to travel as his household servants, and dated 14 January
1583, they obtained on the following 6 February a further
licence from Tilney, issued under the clause of his commission
which appointed him to 'order and reforme, auctorise
and put downe' all players in any part of England, whether
they were 'belonginge to any noble man' or otherwise.[2]
This licence, but not the other, they left at their inn in
Leicester, while passing through on some previous occasion;
and here it was found by some unlicensed players, who
appropriated it, and either through misunderstanding or
through fraud, imposed it upon the Corporation as an instrument
constituting a Master of the Revels' company. There
are two difficulties in this theory. One is that George Haysell,
to whom Tilney's licence was issued, is not one of the actors
named in the Earl of Worcester's warrant. But there are
other cases in which the constitution of a company in the
