of plays.[1] It is, however, curious to observe that the abandoned titles of the company tended to linger on in actual use. Evans in 1612 speaks of the syndicate as 'the coparteners sharers, and Masters of the Queenes Maiesties Children of the Revells (for so yt was often called)' in 1608;[2] while the name Children of the Chapel is used in the Stationers' Register entry of Your Five Gallants in 1608, at Maidstone in 1610, and even in such official documents as the Revels Accounts for 1604-5 and the Chamber Accounts for 1612-13.
Under Keysar the name was Children of the Blackfriars. For a couple of years the company succeeded in keeping clear of further disaster. But on 29 March 1608 the French ambassador, M. de la Boderie, reported that all the London theatres had been closed, and were now threatened by the King with a permanent inhibition on account of two plays which had given the greatest offence.[3] Against one of these, which dealt with the domestic affairs of the French king, he had himself lodged a protest, and his description leaves no doubt that this was one of the parts of Chapman's Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron, which was published, without the offending scene, later in the year, as 'acted at the Black-Friars'. The other play was a personal attack upon James himself. 'Un jour ou deux devant', says La Boderie, 'ilz avoient dépêché leur Roi, sa mine d'Escosse, et tous ses favorits d'une estrange sorte; car aprés luy avoir fait dépiter le ciel sur le vol d'un oyseau, et faict battre un gentilhomme pour avoir rompu ses chiens, ils le dépeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le jour.' This piece is not extant, but I have recently come across another allusion to it in a letter of 11 March 1608 to Lord Salisbury from Sir Thomas Lake, a clerk of the signet in attendance upon the King at Thetford.[4]
'His ma^{tie} was well pleased with that which your lo. advertiseth
concerning the committing of the players y^{t} have offended in y^{e}
matters of France, and commanded me to signifye to your lo. that for
y^{e} others who have offended in y^{e} matter of y^{e} Mynes and other lewd
words, which is y^{e} children of y^{e} blackfriars, That though he had signified
his mynde to your lo. by my lo. of Mountgommery yet I should
- ↑ Cf. App. I.
- ↑ E. v. K. 221; K. v. P. 246. 'The Children of the Revells' who appeared at Leicester on 21 Aug. 1608 (Kelly, 248) might have been these boys, but might also have been the King's Revels, if the King's Revels were still in existence under that name, which is very doubtful.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman.
- ↑ S. P. D. Jac. I, xxxi. 73. The mine was no doubt the silver mine discovered at Hilderston near Linlithgow in 1607, and worked as a royal enterprise with little success; cf. R. W. Cochran-Patrick, Early Records relating to Mining in Scotland (1878), xxxvii. 116.
