chamber had lived their butler.[1] Now it is noted in the surveys that Sir Thomas Cheyne had laid claim to the paved hall, the 'blind' parlour, the little chamber, and the kitchen, and it seems very doubtful whether they were covered by the specifications of Cawarden's grant.[2] He succeeded, however, in occupying them; and the inevitable law-suit was left for his successor.
Cawarden had had the buttery, frater, kitchen, and Duchy chamber on lease since 4 April 1548.[3] Some of these, as well as other conventual buildings, he had occupied from a still earlier date in his capacity as Master of the Tents and Revels. For these offices the propinquity of the Wardrobe rendered the Blackfriars very convenient. Already in 1511 temporary use had been made of some room in the precinct to prepare a pageant in for a joust at Westminster.[4] Before Cawarden became Master, the regular store-house of the Revels office had been at Warwick Inn.[5] The transfer to Blackfriars was not completed until February 1547, but it perhaps began earlier, since the papers of the Court of Augmentations contain receipts by John Barnard, for sums spent by the King's surveyor on 'the reparayng and amendyng of the Blacke Fryers in London store howse for the seyd tentes and revelles' during 1545.[6] The Chapel of St. Anne had been requisitioned with other houses 'to laye in tentes, maskes and revels' before the end of Henry VIII's reign.[7] As to the exact location of the Tents there is some interesting, although conflicting, evidence. An order of the Augmentations in 1550 allowed Sir Thomas Cheyne £5 a year for the use of his great room by the Tents from 25 March 1545 onwards.[8] The room intended was undeniably the paved hall or breakfast room under the frater, but Sir William More maintained in 1572 that the payment by the Augmentations was an irregular one, and that the paved hall had never been
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 42-51. This hall is doubtless the ground-floor frater referred to in a document of c. 1562 (M. S. C. ii. 105).
- ↑ Cf. p. 499. The 'blinde parler that my Lord warden did clayme' and 'the litle kitchyn and cole howse' are mentioned in the survey of 1550 to define the position of other parcels. But the hall and parlour might be held to be covered by the grant of the 'howse called the vpper frater', and I do not know what the 'little tenement' near that held by Kirkham from Cheyne was, if it was not the little chamber and kitchen. It is noteworthy that the disputed rooms, after being included, with a note of Cheyne's claim, in the survey of 1548, were left out of Cawarden's lease of the same year.
- ↑ M. S. C. ii. 109.
- ↑ Brewer, ii. 2. 1494.
- ↑ Tudor Revels, 7.
- ↑ Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 255; Wallace, i. 140.
- ↑ Athenaeum (1886), ii. 91.
- ↑ Feuillerat, Eliz. 430; cf. M. S. C. ii. 120; Wallace, i. 192.
