relatives with him as deputies, since Edward Bowes and Thomas Bowes were often payees instead of Ralph Bowes during his term of office.[1] Towards the end of Bowes's life it would seem that Henslowe and Alleyn, who had been baiting bears on the Bankside as licensees since 1594, were in negotiation to obtain the Mastership.[2] Probably the first idea was to buy a surrender of the office from Bowes, since the Dulwich manuscripts contain an unexecuted draft of a patent to Henslowe, following the terms of that to Bowes himself and reciting such a surrender.[3] I should suppose this negotiation to be that in connexion with which Henslowe spent £2 15s. 6d. during 1597 upon visits to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests, and other Court officials, and in a fee to the Clerk of the Signet. The expenditure is entered in the diary as incurred 'a bowt the changinge of ower comysion'.[4] But before a surrender was effected it would seem that Henslowe had had to turn his thoughts to a succession. In this he was disappointed. On 4 June 1598 he wrote to Alleyn that Bowes was very sick and expected to die, and that he much feared he should lose all. Neither Caesar nor the Lord Admiral had done anything for him, and although he had received help from Lady Edmondes and Mr. Langworth, he now learnt that the reversion of the Mastership was already promised by the Queen to one Mr. Dorrington, a pensioner.[5] Bowes did in effect die very shortly after, and on 11 August 1598 John Dorrington received his patent for the Mastership.[6] To this was joined the office of Keeper of the Bandogs and Mastiffs, with a fee of 10d. a day for exercising this office and keeping twenty mastiff bitches, and a further fee of 4d. for a deputy.[7] It is not unlikely that John Dorrington
- ↑ The Privy Council Acts record warrants inter alia to Ralph in 1574 (Dasent, viii. 257), Thomas in 1576, 1577, 1578, 1579, and 1580 (ix. 121, 153, 335; x. 148; xi. 70, 392), Ralph in 1581 (xii. 321), and Edward in 1581 and 1582 (xiii. 115, 311). Edward Bowes seems to have held the Keepership of Dogs, but disclaimed having a fee of £15 17s. 4d. at the subsidy of 1588 (M. S. C. i. 355).
- ↑ Earlier licensees were William Payne and Simon Powlter (> 1574). Wistow (c. 1575), John Napton, Morgan Pope (c. 1585-7), Thomas Burnaby (c. 1590-4), and perhaps others; cf. p. 464; Wallace in The Times (1914); Kingsford, 171-8.
- ↑ Alleyn Memoirs, 213; cf. Henslowe Papers, 4.
- ↑ Henslowe, i. 71. Some payments of June 1597 on account of a privy seal and a patent for Alleyn (Henslowe, i. 200) may relate to this.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 98. Possibly an undated letter from Arthur Langworth to Alleyn (Henslowe Papers, 99), in which he refers to Bowes's illness and protests against a charge of not giving Alleyn sufficient help in procuring some 'place', relates to this. But it is allusive and obscure.
- ↑ S. P. D. Eliz. cclxviii. 18; cf. Henslowe Papers, 12.
- ↑ Probably Bowes had also held this keepership with his Mastership, as he was drawing a fee from the Chamber in 1596 (Henslowe, i. 128).
