within the precinct of the black Friours', for a term of twenty-one years from Michaelmas 1600, at a rent of £40,[1] while Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins gave a joint bond in £400 as collateral security for due payment. Evans set up a company, which under various names, and throughout shifting financial managements, maintained a substantial continuity of existence, and occupied the Blackfriars for a period of eight years. Its fortunes are dealt with in detail elsewhere.[2] Only those points directly bearing upon the theatre as such need now be noted. In October 1601, when Evans was negotiating a partnership with Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas Kendall, he apparently undertook to transfer his lease to Hawkins in trust to reassign a moiety of the interest under it to these partners.[3] No reassignment, however, was in fact made. Evans carried out some repairs in December 1603, and trouble arose with his partners because he severed the schoolhouse and chamber over the same from the great hall and used them as private apartments to dine and sup in.[4] When the playing companies were hard hit by the plague of 1603-4, Evans began to treat with Burbadge for a surrender of the lease.[5] This came to nothing at the time, but in August 1608, when the Revels company was in disgrace for playing Chapman's Byron and Kirkham had declared a desire to make an end of the speculation, the suggestion was revived, and the surrender, probably with the assent of Hawkins, actually took place.[6] As part of his consideration, Evans, through a nominee, was admitted by Burbadge into a new syndicate, of which the other members were Burbadge himself and his brother Cuthbert, and some of the leading players of the King's company, by whom it was intended that the Blackfriars should now be used.[7] The
- ↑ Fleay, 211, 234, 240.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xii.
- ↑ Fleay, 224, 230, 245, 250. Evans maintained that the assignment to Hawkins was absolute, to cover his liability under the bond to Burbadge. But the court appears to have held that a reassignment was intended, but that 'the conveyance was never perfected and sealed'.
- ↑ Wallace, ii. 89, from unpublished document; Evans v. Kirkham in Fleay, 214.
- ↑ Ibid. 235.
- ↑ Ibid. 221, 231, 235, 246.
- ↑ The Burbadges say in the Sharers Papers of 1635, 'the more to strengthen the service, the boys daily wearing out, it was considered that house would be as fit for ourselves, and so purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, etc.'. They also say that the players had their shares 'of us for nothing'. Very likely they paid no fine, but they had to pay their quota towards rent. It is reasonable to infer that Thomas Evans was a relative and nominee of Henry Evans. Kirkham's allegation in the 1612 litigation that Henry Evans had shared in the Blackfriars profits during the past four years (Fleay, 225) was not seriously contested.
