Kirkham, in the hope of getting his bond of 1602 cancelled, and thus securing himself against any further persecution for petty breaches of the articles of agreement. The result of this is unknown, but in the course of it many of the incidents of 1600-8 were brought into question, and Kirkham claimed that not merely had Evans shut him out in 1604 from certain rooms in the Blackfriars which he was entitled to use, but that by the surrender of the lease in 1608 he had lost profits which he estimated at £60 a year.[1] Finally in July 1612 Kirkham brought a Chancery action against Evans, Burbadge, and John Heminges, and also against the widow of Alexander Hawkins and Edward Painton, to whom she was now married, for reinstatement in his moiety of the lease. In this suit much of the same ground was again traversed, but the Court refused to grant him any relief.
It is not altogether easy to disentangle the plays produced at the Blackfriars under Keysar from those produced immediately afterwards at the Whitefriars. The only title-page which definitely names the Children of the Blackfriars is that of Jonson's The Case is Altered (1609). But Chapman's Byron (1608) and May Day (1611) and Middleton's Your Five Gallants (n.d. ?1608) also claim to have been acted at the Blackfriars. The Q_{1} of Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) assigns it to Paul's; the Q_{2} both to Paul's and Blackfriars, with an indication of a Court performance on New Year's Day, which can only be that of 1 January 1609. This play, therefore, must have been taken over from Paul's, when that house closed in 1606 or 1607. As Middleton is not generally found writing for Blackfriars, Your Five Gallants may have been acquired in the same way. It is also extremely likely that Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois passed from Paul's to Blackfriars on its way to the King's men. No name of company or theatre is attached to Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613) or to The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1609). But the K. B. P. was published with an epistle to Keysar as its preserver and can be securely dated in 1607-8; it refers to the house in which it was played as having been open for seven years, which just fits the Blackfriars. The Faithful Shepherdess is of 1608-9 and a boys' play; the commendatory verses by Field, Jonson, and Chapman justify an attribution to the company with which they had to do. Chapman's The Widow's Tears (1612) had been staged both at Blackfriars and at Whitefriars before publication, and was probably therefore produced shortly before the
- ↑ E. v. K. 218. In K. v. P. 225, he put the total annual profits during 1608-12 at £160.
