Part 15

Chalmers’ “Biographies” and Wood’s “Athenæ Oxonienses” say that “Nicholas Brigham died in his prime in December, 1559, at Westminster, leaving some MSS.: (1) ‘De Venationibus Rerum Memorabilium,’ a collection of notices of characters and events of which Bale has made much use; (2) ‘Memoirs,’ in the form of a diary in twelve books; and (3) ‘Miscellaneous Poems.’ None of these is probably in existence.” Wood thinks he was buried near Chaucer, whose tomb he had restored in 1556. But he is in error in the date; he died in 1558, leaving, by a verbal will, everything to his wife. She was granted powers of administration 20th February 1558-9, and at least before the following June, Hunnis had married Brigham’s widow. The entry among the wills, December 1559, is an objection to William Hunnis succeeding his wife, widow of Nicholas Brigham. Considerable litigation ensued in consequence of her bequests.

The young widower had, however, consoled himself within two years by marrying again. This time it was Mrs. Blancke of the Grocers’ Company; through her right Hunnis became a member of the Grocers’ Company, being admitted as redempcioner on 11th November 1560. Having found from the Guildhall records that he was a “Citizen and Grocer” of London, I made application to the Grocers’ Company, and was allowed to search their books, where I found many details unknown before. The authority of Mr. Kingdon corroborated that evidence. On 9th May 1567, he was formally admitted to the “Livery and Clothing” of the company, the fourth among a list of eighteen citizens. He duly paid his brotherhood money, two shillings. In the year 1570 his name was entered among the group of those “dwelling at Westminster and extravagant”; and he paid four shillings for the brotherhood money for the last two years, and two shillings towards defraying the expenses of the election feast. His marriage would be all the more important to him financially as he had, with other of her subjects, to wait some time before any practical recognition of his services was rendered him by Queen Elizabeth, beyond those connected with his living. The first that I have found recorded is a patent in June, the fourth year of Elizabeth, to the office of supervisor and custodian of the orchards and gardens at Greenwich, called the “great gardyne” and the “new gardyne,” to hold during his life with a salary of 12_d._ a day and various perquisites.[45] One duty was to present the Queen with seven gallons of “sweet water” a year. I am aware that Cunningham, in his notes to his edition of the “Revels Book,” asserts that this is another William Hunnis; but he had not made a thorough search, or he would have found it expressly stated that the grant was to “William Hunnis of the Chapell.” This, therefore, connects him with various payments made “to the supervisor of the gardens” for “men gardeners and women weeders at Greenwich”; and also with the famous account for seventy-nine bushels of roses and many bushels of other flowers in June of the 14th Elizabeth, “in preparation of the Banketing Howse made at White Hall for the entertainment of the said Duke.” Not only were there to be wreaths and adornments of flowers, but the floor was to be strewn with “rose-leaves pickt, and sweetened with sweet waters,” under the supervision of Hunnis. One suggestive point in connection with this patent of supervisor I have not yet worked out; but I may mention that his predecessor in office was one Philip Innes, whom Edward VI, in the fourth year of his reign, appointed for life to this post.[46] But in 1562 the said Philip Innes appears before Elizabeth and “renders up his office in favour of one William Hunnys,” and his patent is then cancelled. The new patent is at the side named “the patent of Philip Innes alias Hunnys,” and this is scratched out, and below is written fair “the patent of William Hunnys.” Is it possible that this Innes was his father, and that he had been brought up as a “gardener’s son”? Had he improved his name into Hinnes, in which form it appears oftener than in any other? I cannot yet say more than that the point is worth noting. In the first year of Mary there was another of the name, a John Innes, of Westminster, appointed to receive the “first almsmans room in the cathedral church of Westminster.”

Elizabeth often liked to pay her debts at the expense of other people. It was through a second grant of hers that I discovered Hunnis as a “citizen and grocer of the city of London.” In relation to the entry in Guildhall, which states in the Records, 30th May 1570, that a “reversion of the office of collection of the cities rightes, duties, and profittes, cominge and growinge uppon London Bridge, for wheelage and passage” was granted “to William Hunnys, citizen and grocer, and also master of Hir grace’s children of hir Chappell Royal,” upon letters of her Majesty in his favour.[47]

Various difficulties had arisen from the fact that the acting collectors had been promised that they should retain the post, not only for the twenty-one years for which they held a patent, but for the term of their natural lives and the life of the survivor, so it was agreed that the bridge-master should pay to Mr. Hunnis, in gratification of the Queen’s letters, the sum of £40 for a lease in reversion of the wheelage and passage of London Bridge.

Whether this £40 was in lieu of the reversion, or only as a _douceur_ for the time likely to elapse before the reversion should fall in, is not clear from the passage, and I have not yet been able to work it out. With his various expenses among the boys of the Chapel this £40 would not last long.

I do not now notice his poems, because I have only acquired any knowledge regarding them from printed material. But it is evident his poems read differently when connected with the events of his life. For instance, the opening device at the Kenilworth[48] festivities in 1575, when Sybilla prophesies good things to Elizabeth, comes gracefully from one who had conscientiously plotted to make her queen two years earlier than she became so--probably the only _poet_ of that conspiracy then surviving. The _rewards_ for his plays can be found among the declared accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, and his death is noted in 1597 in “the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal.”

By the favour of Elizabeth, on the death of Richard Edwards, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, on the 31st of October 1566, William Hunnis was appointed in his place on the 15th of November. But Elizabeth proved in his case not a “liberall dame,” as his perquisites, or rather his provisions, were materially curtailed, at the same time that the prices of food had much increased. This he very clearly explains in an interesting petition presented to the Council in November 1583,[49] where he states that he had to keep not only an usher, but a man-servant, to wait on the boys, and a woman-servant to keep them clean, on an income of 6_d._ a day each for their food, and £40 a year for their apparel and all other expenses, nothing being allowed for travelling and lodging when the Court required him to carry the boys with him to various places. On an examination of his demands, they appear both just and moderate. We do not wonder that he left no will, unless the verses written on the fly-leaf of Sir Thomas More’s works really represented one:[50]

To God my soul I doe bequeathe, because it is his owen, My body to be layd in grave, where to my friends best knowen, Executors I wyll none make, thereby great stryffe may growe, Because ye goods that I shall leave wyll not pay all I owe.

W. HUNNYS.

But this will has been previously noted by Warton, and I only now allude to it in connection with others that are original.

I know it is possible that some may object that the William whose name I find spelt in seventeen different ways is not the same as the “Thomas Hinnewes” tried for his life at Guildhall. But the connecting links are strong.

This laxity of orthography made me look up all resembling names in wills, inquisitions, etc, about the period, to find a pedigree for him, but without success as yet. I have not found the name “Hunnis” appear before his time, and since then only twice; the first being a Thomas Hunnis, who died in 1626, and might very well have been his son; the other a “Marchadine Hunnys, of Berks, Plebs; a Demy of Magdalene College, Oxford, 1605; M.A. 1610.” This may give a clue to the local origin of the name, but the Marchadine “Plebs” could not have been son of William, as he was always entered “gentleman,” and had a coat of arms granted him in 1568 different from that printed by the College of Heralds (Ash. MS. Bodleian Library).

My original materials have been collected from the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, the Public Record Office, the Guildhall Record Office, the books of the Grocers’ Company, and from Somerset House. Only want of space prevents my giving references in full. I sincerely hope, however, that I may have an opportunity of publishing ere long the whole series of papers which I have _in extenso_, as an addition to the known history of the poet.

_“Athenæum,” 21st February and 21st March 1891._

PS.--This first paper ever printed on Hunnis came out in time for the D. N. B. In that same year I had all the patents concerning William Hunnis translated for me, in order to be exact (I still have the dated bill for the transaction) in preparation for a Paper which I read before The New Shakespeare Society in April 1892. Dr. Furnivall allowed me extra time to read it because my materials were new. Shortly after I completed my book entitled “William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal,” which I could not afford to publish, and laid on the shelf for ten years till Dr. Furnivall recommended it to Professor Bang for the Louvain Series of “Materials for the History of the English Drama.” It was sent to him in 1904, but, by a special stroke of bad luck, was not published until 1910. The only point I had not secured was found by Professor Feuillerat too late to be included; as he only published it on 22nd December 1911 in the “Daily Chronicle.”

This gave the important story of the association of Hunnis and Farrant with the early venture of the Blackfriars private theatre in 1576. I had long sought for it; had, indeed, applied for a ticket for the Loseley Manuscripts on purpose in 1906, but, as the late owner was abroad in search of health, my search was postponed. A friend of the family assured me that there was nothing among the papers on William Hunnis, but very much about the Earl of Southampton, so I _thought_ that I could afford to wait. My only real regret, however, was that Professor Feuillerat should not have published his find earlier, to allow me to borrow it (with acknowledgement), to complete the life of the writer, of whom the reviewer in the “Times” in 1910 said, “Mrs. Stopes has made a _man_ of him.”

Unfortunately the Louvain Series is produced at such an expensive rate that it finds comparatively few English purchasers. Some of my new facts have appeared _since_ in Professor Wallace’s “Evolution of the English Drama.”

FOOTNOTES:

[42] See Art. XXV.

[43] Q.R.M. 924.17. Tower Records, 2 and 3 Ph. and Mary. P.R.O.

[44] See “Henry Seventh’s Almshouse,” “Athenæum,” 30th December 1905.

[45] Aud. Pat. Books, 4 Eliz., vol. ix, 85_b_.

[46] _Ibid._, 4 Edw. VI, vol. iii, f. 40.

[47] See Letter-Books, v, f. 292-294.

[48] See “George Gascoigne’s brief rehearsal of as much as was presented before her Majestie at Kenilworth during her last abode there, July, 1575,” printed 26th March 1576.

[49] State Papers Dom. Series. Eliz., clxiii, 88.

[50] The edition of 1557, in the Library of Trinity College, Oxford.

XVII

BURBAGE’S “THEATRE”

To few pioneers is it given to initiate, and also to develope into completeness, any great new form of national art. Chaucer was not our first poet, Shakespeare was not our first dramatist. Our first architect, our first musician, our first painter, would be hard to find. But we know where to look for our “first builder of playhouses.”

A remarkable man he must have been, strong of physique, intellect and courage, strenuous, many-sided, imaginative, far-seeing, irrepressible. A special strain of genius must have prepared him to face difficulties thrown in his way during the development of his great Idea.

In all our discussions about the Shakespeare Memorial and the National Theatre, it would be well to remember what one man did towards that end 330 years ago.

James Burbage, the joiner by apprenticeship, the player by inspiration, the manager by sheer superiority, formed the best company of players of his day, and persuaded the greatest Earl of the kingdom to secure him the first Royal Patent to players, a patent which raised them from being “vagabonds” into artists. With a strategic skill worthy of a great commander, he circumvented the fettering edicts of the Common Council by carrying his company outside their jurisdiction, and, in seeming to obey the regulations against playing in inn-yards or in open spaces, reared for himself an edifice in which he could foster and develope the national drama, an edifice which he had the foresight to name “The Theatre.” The special and particular name he chose has become the generic name or patronymic of all its descendants. Within the wooden walls of his citadel, protected by doorkeepers, he had an opportunity, not only of earning money, but of educating the people, superintending at the same time a school of actors and a school of dramatists. To him came the honour of rearing a son whom he trained to be the greatest tragedian of his day; to him came the proud satisfaction of finding and training the provincial player who helped him to make his name; to him came the appreciative insight into the powers of this “fellow,” which led him to encourage Shakespeare to make use of his opportunities of patching and improving old plays until he could stand alone; to him came the crowning glory of seeing _his man_ become the greatest dramatist of his time. And all this was done in about twenty years! What actor-manager has ever done like unto him? And all that he did was achieved under the stress and strain of active opposition from many quarters; he was constantly being harassed by regulation, legislation, and litigation with rivals, relatives, and landlords, eager to share in the profits of his phenomenal financial success (which, however, through his heavy expenses must have been much less than they supposed it to be). He was a pioneer, but he had more than his fair share of fighting to do. The Curtain “rose like an exhalation” in his wake, and left no records in its train. His very popularity made his path more thorny.

It may be well to collect what little is known of him. Halliwell-Phillips, that industrious writer, discovered many points, but his reticence, or at least haziness, about references has prevented his successors from following him to his originals. He is generally correct in his transcripts, but not always so; his inferences are sometimes erroneous; he did not cover the whole possible field, so there are many fresh references to be brought forward, not, perhaps, of prime importance, but still important enough to help to complete “the idea of the life” of James Burbage.

We do not know when or where he was born or educated, what was the occupation of his father, or when he joined the Earl of Leicester’s servants. We do know that he was bred a joiner, and must have been a member of the company, as he is frequently described as a “joiner,” in his legal actions, even after one would have thought another description of him would have been more suitable. But any _citizen_ then, even in the lesser companies, was reckoned more respectable than a “_player_.” Think of his times. On 12th February 1563 Edward, Bishop of London, wrote to advise Sir William Cecil to inhibit all players, at least for a year, it would be well if it could be for ever. They spread the plague and profaned Holy things; “the Histriones, the common players,” are “an idle sort of people which have been infamous in all good commonwealths.” In 1572 Queen Elizabeth enacted the famous statute[51] that “Rogues, Vagabonds ... fencers, Bearwards, Common Players, and Minstrels not belonging to any baron of the Realm shall be judged Vagabonds,” and made liable to be whipped and sent to some respectable service. To satisfy the Queen’s private tastes, however, and their own, many barons helped the better class of players by enrolling them as their “servants,” and thus securing them some ill-defined privileges. But the City strongly disapproved of plays and players. On 2nd March 1573-4 the Lord Mayor declined to license a place in the City, even for the servants of the Earl of Sussex; on the 22nd the Privy Council asked the Lord Mayor what cause made him thus restrain plays. Dissatisfied with his reply, the Earl of Leicester, determined that his servants should not be put to such an indignity, secured the first _Royal Patent_ under the Privy Seal for them, which introduced James Burbage into the history of his country. As it gave him, on paper, a large liberty, and raised his craft to the level of an art, often as it has been printed, it is important to start with it in any history of the stage. One forgets sometimes. On 7th May 1574 the Royal Patent warned all officials to permit

to James Burbage, John Perkyn, John Laneham, William Johnson, Robert Wylson and others, servants to our trustie and well-beloved Cousin and Councillor, the Earl of Leicester, to use, exercise and occupie the art and facultie of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes, Stage Plaies, and such other, like as they have already used and studied or hereafter shall use and study, as well as for the recreacion of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them ... together with their musick ... as well within our City of London and the Liberties of the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any other cytyes, towns, boroughes, &c., whatsoever, throughout our realm of England; willing and commanding you and every of you, as ye tender our pleasure, to permit and suffer them therein without any your letts, hindrance or molestation, any act, statute, proclamation or commandment heretofore made, or hereafter to be made to the contrary notwithstanding. Provided that the same ... be allowed by our Master of the Revells, and that they be not published or shewen in the time of Common Prayer, or in the time of great and common plague in our said City of London.

Nothing could have been more explicit, or more exasperating to the Corporation of London, than this permission to contravene their mandates.[52] The Corporation’s counterblast was the famous Order of 6th December 1574. They threatened fine and imprisonment to any who “played without a licence from the City each time,” and without giving half the proceeds to the poor. They did not “tender the Queen’s pleasure” in respect to the players.[53]

At the close of 1574, on St. Stephen’s Day, the Earl of Leicester’s servants played before the Queen at Court, and opened the year by playing on New Year’s Day, 1574-5.

Other noblemen hastened to request Royal Patents for their servants. The battle between the Privy Council and the Common Council raged all the more hotly since the players had been “patented,” and the climax came when the Lord Mayor expelled all players from the City, under an undated “Order for the relief of the Poor” printed by Singleton.