findings is not upon record, but that the ultimate solution lay in the incorporation of the liberty in the City could hardly be doubtful. As far back as 1589 the Council had found it convenient to use the Lord Mayor as an agent for securing a proper contribution from the Blackfriars towards a levy. From 1597 onwards they showed an increased tendency to make similar use of an administrative machinery far more completely organized than that of the justices of the peace. In that year the Lord Mayor was instructed to make a collection in aid of the Blackfriars church repairs. In 1600 it again fell to him to assess the share of the liberty in a levy of men and money. In 1601 it is he who is called upon to suppress plays in Blackfriars during Lent.[1] The final step was, however, deferred until 20 September 1608, when the new Jacobean charter formally extended the jurisdiction of the city to various liberties, including both the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, with certain exemptions as regards assessments and the tenure of offices, but with none as regards responsibility for petty offences and the keeping of the peace.[2]
I have anticipated, in order to get the question of jurisdiction out of the way. I must now return to the topography. Sir Thomas Cawarden died on 29 August 1559. He had no son, and his executors, Lady Cawarden and Sir William More, personally took over the Blackfriars estate in survivorship, as part of the settlement of his affairs.[3] Lady Cawarden's death on 20 February 1560 left More sole owner. He retained the property until his own death in 1601, and the muniment room of his house at Loseley near Guildford contains innumerable documents relating to the business transactions in which it involved him, together with some of earlier date which he inherited from Cawarden. The researches of Professor Feuillerat in these archives render it possible to reconstruct with some minuteness the arrangement of the Blackfriars and its buildings at the time of the surrender, to trace many of the changes of the next half-century, and, as part of the process, to indicate pretty definitely the locality
- ↑ Dasent, xxvii. 13; xxx. 134, 149; cf. App. D, No. cxxvi.
- ↑ W. de G. Birch, Historical Charters and Constitutional Documents of the City of London, 142. James is said to have made the City pay for the rebuilding of the Banqueting House (cf. ch. i) in return for this extension of jurisdiction (Goodman, ii. 176). Collier, N. F. 20, 22, 32, although ignorant of the charter, quotes documents relating to the status of the Blackfriars in 1608, of which two at least, a note of the interest of the players in the theatre and a letter in their favour signed 'H. S.', are forgeries (Ingleby, 244, 246, 256).
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 66, 114; cf. Cawarden's i. p. m. in Fry, London Inquisitiones Post Mortem, i. 191.
