Stone an indenture in February 1609, which was alleged not to constitute a proper lease. In 1612-13 Stone sold his seventh for £50 to Woodford, who took profits for a quarter, and then entrusted his interest to Holland, instructing his servant Anthony Payne to pay the rent. He alleged that Holland persuaded Payne to be behindhand with the rent, and withheld the profits, estimated at £30 a year. He therefore brought his action a little before May 1613. The Court called upon Holland to show cause why he should not account for the arrears of profits, and for 1s. 6d. a week due to the gatherer's place.[1] Holland replied, and the issues were referred to the arbitration of counsel, including Woodford's 'demaund of the eighteenth penny and the eighteenth part of such moneys & other comodities as should be collected or receaued . . . for the profittes of the galleries or other places in or belonging to the play howse'.[2] Counsel made an arrangement, but did not agree in their reports of its terms, and the Court ordered Holland to give Woodford an indenture similar to that given to Stone.[3] Holland got a writ of prohibition from the King's Bench, always jealous of the jurisdiction of the Court of Requests, on 6 November 1613, and Woodford began a suit against Holland in Stone's name for not making a proper indenture in 1609. This, he says, Stone conspired with Holland to withdraw. In 1619 he brought another action for his profits before the Court of Requests, in which Holland describes him as 'Woodford, alias Simball', but the result is unknown.
The Red Bull, then, was built not later and probably not much earlier than 1606, a little before the first recorded mention of it in the following passage from The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was almost certainly produced in the winter of 1607:
'Citizen. Why so sir, go and fetch me him then, and let the Sophy
of Persia come and christen him a childe.
'Boy. Beleeue me sir, that will not doe so well, 'tis stale, it has beene had before at the red Bull.'[4]
The allusion is to an incident in the last scene of Day, Rowley,
and Wilkins' Travels of the Three Brothers.[5] This, according
- ↑ W. v. H. 296. Professor Wallace has confused this 1s. 6d. with the profits of Woodford's seventh, and thinks that a gatherer got one-eighteenth of the receipts.
- ↑ I think the inference is that the gallery profits were divided in the proportion of seven-eighteenths to the house-keepers and eleven-eighteenths to the players.
- ↑ No order seems to have been made as to the gatherer's place.
- ↑ Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV. i. 43.
- ↑ Travels of the Three Brothers (ed. Bullen, p. 88).
