was related to the Richard Darrington who had held this keepership with the same fees, amounting to £21 5s. 10d. a year, in 1571. Another keepership, that of the Bears, was held in 1599 by Jacob Meade, who was closely associated with Henslowe and Alleyn in the management of the Bear garden.[1] Dorrington's grant was confirmed by James I on 14 July 1603, and on 23 July he was knighted.[2] About this time Henslowe and Alleyn, who were paying Dorrington £40 a year for licence to bait,[3] must have contemplated fresh negotiations for a transfer of the patent, for the draft in the Dulwich manuscripts, originally drawn up about 1597, has been altered by Henslowe so as to adapt it to the new reign and to a surrender by Dorrington.[4] But once again they were unsuccessful, for Dorrington died, and on 20 July 1604 the Mastership was granted to one of the invading Scots, Sir William Stuart.[5] From him, however, Henslowe and Alleyn did succeed in obtaining an assignment, and a draft patent as joint Masters and Keepers, with the fees of 10d. and 4d., is dated 24 November 1604. They had, indeed, been rather in Stuart's hands, for he had refused either to give them a licence or to take over their house and bears, and they had to pay for the surrender at what they considered the high rate of £450.[6] This we learn from a petition of about 1607, in which they appealed to the King for an increase in the daily fee by 2s. 8d., in view of their losses through restraints and the deaths of bears, and of their heavy expenses, amounting to £200 a month, whereby their privilege, which
- ↑ Muniment 19 in the Dulwich MSS. is a warrant of 24 Nov. 1599 by Meade to a deputy; cf. Henslowe, ii. 38. A list of fees c. 1600 in Henslowe Papers, 108, shows, under the general heading 'Parris garden', only two keeperships, instead of the three of 1571, that of Bears at £12 8s. 1-1/2d., and that of Mastiffs at £21 5s. 10-1/2d.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 12; cf. Henslowe, ii. 37.
- ↑ Receipts by or on behalf of Dorrington dated Jan. and April 1602 are in Henslowe Papers, 101; Henslowe, i. 212. Each is for a quarter's 'rent' of £10, and the earlier is specified as 'for the commissyon for the Bear-garden'. A letter of May 1600 from Dorrington to Henslowe asking him and Meade to have the 'games' ready for Court is in Henslowe Papers, 100. In 1603 Henslowe spent 16s. 4d. 'for sewinge at the cort', on petitions to Dorrington, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Council, the drawing of two licences, and 'our warent for baytynge' (Henslowe Papers, 109). I think that from 1603, if not earlier, he had a regular appointment as deputy to Dorrington. On 18 April 1604 he received the Treasurer of the Chamber's reward as 'Deputy Master of the Game'.
- ↑ Alleyn Memoirs, 213; cf. Henslowe Papers, 4.
- ↑ S. P. D. Jac. I, 1603-10, p. 134.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 101; S. P. D. Jac. I, x, p. 167. It appears from a memorandum of Alleyn's in Henslowe Papers, 107, that he paid £250 for his share.
