mooted of buying the players out and on 9 October 1633 a commission of Middlesex justices was appointed to report as to the value of their interests.[1] These were estimated by the players at £21,990, and by the commissioners at £2,900. The only offer towards a compensation fund was one of £100 from the parish of St. Anne's.[2] Evidently the proposal was allowed to drop. On 20 November 1633, the Privy Council made an order forbidding coaches to stand in Ludgate or St. Paul's Churchyard while the performances were going on, but even this regulation was practically cancelled by an amending order made at a meeting presided over by the King in person on 29 December.[3]
It is rather disappointing that the numerous documents bearing upon the occupation of the Blackfriars between 1600 and 1608 should throw so little light upon the way in which James Burbadge adapted his purchase 'with great charge and troble' to the purposes of a theatre. The lease of 1600 did not cover the whole of the property, but only a 'great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same'. Presumably this was the case also with the leases of 1608, since the rent was the same as in 1600. The rest of the premises, with those purchased later by the younger Burbadges, may be represented by the four tenements valued at £75 a year in 1633, and the 'piece of void ground to turn coaches' valued at £6 was doubtless the fragment of the old kitchen yard north of the approach. The Kirkham law-suits tell us that one or two rooms were reserved for the residence of Evans in 1602 and that during the early part of 1604 'a certen rome, called the Scholehouse, and a certen chamber over the same' had been 'seuered from the said great hall, and made fitt by' Evans 'at his owne proper cost and chardges, to dyne
- ↑ M. S. C. i. 386.
- ↑ The report of the commissioners is printed by Collier, New Facts, 27, and H. E. D. P. i. 477. It is confirmed by a memorandum of Secretary Windebank in S. P. D. Car. I, ccli, p. 293, and I think Ingleby, 304, is wrong in suspecting a forgery (cf. M. S. C. i. 386). The commissioners allowed (a) £700 to Cuthbert and William Burbadge for 14 years' purchase of the rent of £50 reserved to them by lease, (b) £1,134 for 14 years' purchase of an interest in four tenements rated at £75 and a piece of void ground to turn coaches at £6, (c) £1,066 13s. 4d. for 100 marks apiece to 16 players for 'the interest that some of them haue by lease in the said Playhouse, and in respect of the shares which others haue in the benefits thereof', and for compensation for removal. Collier, Reply, 39, mentions but does not print another document containing a summary of the players' claim, with notes by Buck. But Buck was long dead. A third valuation published by Collier, in which Laz. Fletcher's name occurs, is certainly a forgery (Ingleby, 246).
- ↑ M. S. C. i. 386.
