The earliest record, therefore, on which reliance can be placed is the law-suit of Androwes v. Slater in 1609,[1] which recites the lease by Robert Lord Buckhurst to Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford for six years eight months and twenty days from March 1608 of 'a messuage or mansion howse parcell of the late dissolved monastery called the Whitefriars, in Fleete streete, in the subvrbs of London', while the articles of agreement between the sharers of the King's Revels syndicate (cf. ch. xii), of the same date, assign lodgings in the house to Martin Slater, and add
'The roomes of which howse are thirteene in number, three belowe
and tenne above, that is to saie, the greate hall, the kitchin by the
yard, and a cellar, with all the roomes from the east ende of the howse
to the Master of the revells' office, as the same are now severed and
devided.'[2]
The precinct of the former priory of the Carmelites or
White Friars lay between Fleet Street and the river, to the
east of Serjeants' Inn and to the west of Water Lane, which
divided it from Salisbury Court, the old inn of the bishops of
Salisbury, which had passed to the Sackvilles in the sixteenth
century, and ultimately became known as Dorset House
(Stowe, Survey, ii. 45). The precinct was a liberty, and its
history, from the point of view of local government, had been
closely analogous to that of the Blackfriars. Like the Blackfriars,
it came under complete civic control in this very year
of 1608 (cf. p. 480). The Whitefriars mansion itself the
Sackvilles probably acquired from the family of Thomas
Lord De La Warr, to whom a grant of priory property was
made in 1544 (Dugdale, vi. 1572).
From the King's Revels the Whitefriars passed to the occupation of the Queen's Revels (cf. ch. xii) in 1609, and continued in their use both before and after their amalgamation with the Lady Elizabeth's in March 1613. It is named on the title-pages of Woman a Weathercock (1612) and The Insatiate Countess (1613), and a reference in the prologue to 'daughters of Whitefriars' shows that it was also the locality of Epicoene (1609). In February 1613 it was 'taken up'
- ↑ Jonas, 132, however, quotes from the register of St. Dunstan's, Whitefriars, with the date 29 Sept. 1607, 'Gerry out of the playhouse in the Friars buried', which suggests use of the theatre before 1608. The King's Revels may well have started by 1607. He also quotes, without date, 'We present one playhouse in the same precinct, not fitting these to be now tolerable'.
- ↑ I do not know why Adams, 312, identifies the play-house with a cloister shown in Clapham's plan. Surely it is more likely to have been the hall also shown at the north-west corner.
