honorable good Lordes, and so I haue and doe esteeme yow, and wold doe asmuche to gratefie yow or any of yours as any that hath ben in my place; and so I beseche yow to accoumpte of me. I haue herein yet further done for your seruante what I may, that is that if he obteine lawefully to playe at the Theater or other open place out of the Citie, he hath and shall haue my permition with his companie, drumes, and shewe to passe openly throughe the Citie, being not vpon the Sondaye, which is asmuche as I maye iustefie in this season, and for that cause I haue with his owne consent apointed him Monday next. And so I humblie comitt your Lp. to the tuition of the Almightie. At London the xxiiijth of Iuly 1582.
Your Lps. humble.
To the right honorable my singular good L. my Lorde the Erle of Warwicke.
lxiii.
[1582 (?). Extract from Orders Appointed to be Executed in the Cittie of
London for Setting Rogues and Idle Persons to Worke, and for Releefe of
the Poore, printed by Hugh Singleton (N.D.). The B.M. copy (796 E. 37)
is catalogued, with the date 1587, as an Act of the Court of Aldermen.
C. Welch, The City Printers (Bibl. Soc. Trans. xiv. 191), also gives the
date as 1587, and says that Singleton became City Printer on 4 Aug. 1584.
Whatever the date of the print, it seems clear from No. lxxv (2) (a) that
the order itself, or at any rate Art. 62 of it, is later than the crying of the
preachers against plays and earlier than the Paris Garden accident of
13 Jan. 1583. The autumn of 1582 seems to me the most likely date.
Possibly Art. 62 was alone new. Aydelotte, 70, says that the Orders
which were to enforce 18 Eliz. c. 3 were originally printed in 1579 or
1580, and refers to Journal, xx, pt. ii, f. 325. Art. 61, and also Art. 25,
which directs an inquest for 'suspect persons which . . . spend their times
at bowling allies, playes, and other places unthriftily', may belong to the
earlier version.]
Art. 61. For helpe of the hospitals & Parishes in this charge all
churchwardens & collectors for the poore be strayghtly charged to
execute the lawe against such as come not to church, against al persons
without exception, and specially against such as while they ought to
be at diuine seruice, doo spend their time and their money lewdly in
haunting of plaies, and other idle and wycked pastimes and exercises.
Art. 62. For as much as the playing of Enterludes, & the resort to the same are very daungerous for the infection of the plague, whereby infinite burdens and losses to the Citty may increase, and are very hurtfull in corruption of youth with incontinence & lewdnes, and also great wasting both of the time and thrift of many poore people and great prouoking of the wrath of God the ground of all plagues, great withdrawing of the people from publique prayer & from the seruice of God: and daily cryed out against by the graue and earnest admonitions of the preachers of the word of God: Therefore be it ordered that all such Enterludes in publique places, and the resort to the same shall wholy be prohibited as ungodly, and humble sute be made to the Lords that lyke prohibition be in places neere unto the Cittie.
