along the Mile End Road.[1] The only other contemporary record of the Boar's Head is a letter to Edward Alleyn from his wife Joan on 21 October 1603, in which she says, 'All the companyes be come hoame & well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all'.[2] This Browne cannot be identified, and it is perhaps idle to conjecture that he may have been related to Robert Browne, and that it may have been at the Boar's Head that the latter played with Derby's men in 1599-1601. The Boar's Head seems to have been generally forgotten by the Restoration, but is recalled by the Marquis of Newcastle c. 1660.[3]
xiv. THE RED BULL
[Bibliographical Note.—The records of the suit of Woodford v. Holland
(1613) were printed by J. Greenstreet in the Athenaeum for 28 Nov. 1885
from Court of Requests Books, xxvi, ff. 780, 890, and cxxviii, and therefrom
by Fleay, 194; and more fully with those of the later suit of 1619
(misdated 1620) by C. W. Wallace in Nebraska University Studies, ix. 291
(cited as W. v. H.). Collier, i. 374, mentions evidence on the same transactions
as 'in the Audit Office', and misnames the complainant John
Woodward.]
Our chief knowledge of the early history of the Red Bull
is derived from disputes before the Court of Requests in 1613
and 1619 between Thomas Woodford and Aaron Holland. It
appears that Holland held a lease of the site, which was at the
upper end of St. John Street in the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell,
from Anne, widow and executrix of Christopher Bedingfield,
and had there built a play-house. The indication of a Red
Bull Yard in Ogilby and Morgan's map of 1677 to the west of
St. John Street, and just north of the angle which it forms with
Clerkenwell Green, no doubt defines the locality with some
precision.[4] In 3 Jac. I, that is, at some date between 24 March
1605 and 23 March 1606, he assigned one-seventh of the house
to Thomas Swynnerton, 'with a gatherers place thereto
belonging'. This Swynnerton transferred for £50 to Philip
Stone.[5] It was subject to a rent of £2 10s., and Holland gave
- ↑ Adams, 17, identifies the site with Boar's Head Yard, between Middlesex Street and Goulston Street, Whitechapel. But this is the house of 1557 (v. supra) within the liberties. Rocque (1746) shows an oval site, just east of Church Lane and south of the church of St. Mary, Whitechapel, which rather suggests an amphitheatre, but may be merely a churchyard.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 59.
- ↑ Cf. p. 374.
- ↑ The section is reproduced in Adams, 294.
- ↑ Not the mercer Stone who sold stuffs to the Admiral's in 1601 and 1602 (Henslowe, ii. 313); he was doubtless William Stone (Knt. in 1604).
