On 27 December 1573 they gave Alcmaeon. They played on 2 February 1575, and a misfortune which befell them in the same year is recorded in a letter of 3 December from the Privy Council, which sets out that 'one of Sebastianes boyes, being one of his principall plaiers, is lately stolen and conveyed from him', and instructs no less personages than the Master of the Rolls and Dr. Wilson, one of the Masters of Requests, to examine the persons whom he suspected and proceed according to law with them.[1] Five days later the Court of Aldermen drew up a protest against Westcott's continued Romish tendencies.[2] The next Court performance by the boys was on 6 January 1576. On 1 January 1577 they gave Error, and on 19 February Titus and Gisippus. They played on 29 December 1577, and one wonders whether it was anything amiss with that performance which led to an entry in the Acts of the Privy Council for the same day that 'Sebastian was committid to the Marshalsea'.[3] Whether this was so or not, the Paul's boys were included in the list of companies authorized to practise publicly in the City for the following Christmas. On 1 January 1579 they gave The Marriage of Mind and Measure, on 3 January 1580 Scipio Africanus, and on 6 January 1581 Pompey. A play on 26 December 1581 is anonymous, but may possibly be the Cupid and Psyche mentioned as 'plaid at Paules' in Gosson's Playes Confuted of 1582.[4]
In the course of 1582 Sebastian Westcott died, and this event led to an important development in the dramatic activities of the boys.[5] Hitherto their performances, when not*
- ↑ Dasent, ix. 56.
- ↑ Hillebrand from Repertory, xix, f. 18, 'For asmoche as this Court ys enformed that one Sebastian that wyll not communicate with the Church of England kepe the playes and resorte of the people to great gaine and peryll of the coruptinge of the Chyldren wyth papistrie And therefore master Morten ys appoynted to goe to the Deane of Powles and to gyve him notyce of that dysorder, and to praye him to gyve suche remeadye therein, within his iurysdyccion, as he shall see meete, for Christian Relygion and good order'.
- ↑ Dasent, x. 127. Cath. Record Soc. i. 70 gives the date of Westcott's committal 'for papistry' from S. P. D. Eliz. cxl. 40, as 21 Dec. 1577, and that of release as 19 March 1578. According to S. P. D. Eliz. cxviii. 73, Westcott was Master of the Children in 1577 and valued at £100 in goods.
- ↑ Gosson, P. C. 188.
- ↑ Flood (Mus. Ant. iv. 187) gives an abstract of his will, dated on 3 April and proved on 14 April 1582. He describes himself as almoner of St. Paul's, dwelling in the almonry and born at Chimley in Devonshire; appoints Henry Evans overseer and Justinian Kyd executor, and leaves legacies to relatives (apparently he had no children or wife), to members of the Redford family, to 'Gyles Clothier', to the ten choristers, to 'sometimes children of the said almenerey', by name Bromeham, Richard Huse,
