the Whitefriars enjoyed certain immunities from civic levies and liabilities, nevertheless the soil of the precincts lay within the City, and the City was entitled to exercise jurisdiction therein. It may be doubted whether effect was given to this opinion.[1]
In 1587 the Council ordered another inquiry, in order to ascertain the precise nature of the Queen's title in the Blackfriars.[2] There had been a petition for redress of inconveniences from the inhabitants.[3] About the same time the chief landowner, Sir William More, appears to have suggested that the liberty should be converted into a manor, and manorial rights conferred upon him.[4] These are signs that residence in a liberty hard by a thronging population had disclosed a seamy side. Undesirable persons were bound to throng to a district where the Lord Mayor's writ did not run. An open space, for example, filled with immemorial trees planted by the friars, had been ruined to house alleys for bowling and other unlawful games.[5] Doubtless there were those who resented the fact that the attempt of the City to discourage interludes had been met by the establishment of a Blackfriars theatre in 1576, which lasted until 1584. It appears to have been a protest from the inhabitants which led the Privy Council to forbid the public theatre contemplated by James Burbage in 1596, although some years later they winked at the opening of the building as a private house. In 1596 the church fell down, and in appointing a commission to apportion the responsibility for repairs, the council also instructed them to consider the government of the liberty, 'which being grown more populus than heretofore and without any certaine and knowen officer to keepe good orders there, needeth to be reformed in that behalfe'.[6] The nature of the commission's
- ↑ Dasent, x. 429; xii. 19. Pending a decision the Lord Mayor was directed 'not to intermeddle in any cawse within the saide liberties, savinge onlie for the punishment of fellons as heretofore he hath don'. The report dated 27 Jan. 1580 is printed by Ingleby, 250, from the Bridgewater MSS. It seems to be genuine. Collier does not print it, although he mentions it (New Facts, 9) in connexion with a forged Privy Council order which he dates 23 Dec. 1579. Wallace, ii. 22, describes an unprinted statement of the City's case, dated 27 Jan. 1579, in Letter Book Z, f. 23^v.
- ↑ Dasent, xv. 137; Stowe (1720), i. 3. 177.
- ↑ This may be the undated petition relating both to the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars in B. M. Lansd. MS. 155, f. 79^v.
- ↑ Wallace, i. 174, from Loseley MSS., bundle 425.
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 124; cf. Dasent, xiii. 76.
- ↑ Dasent, xxvi. 448. Lord Hunsdon and Sir John Fortescue, both residents in or near the Blackfriars, sat on the commission with the chief justices. Lady Russell records the want of a steward and bailiff to keep order in 1597 (Hatfield MSS. vii. 298).
