rs 
BLACKFRIARS THEATRE BUILDING 19 
of the building is interwoven with the history of the company 
of boy-actors who held its boards. Its earlier history is con- 
nected with monastic annals and the office of the Master of the 
Revels, and may here be stated briefly as a necessary preliminary.* 
The Dominican or Black Friars in 1221 made Holborn, Lon- 
don, their first’ point of settlement in England.? In 1276 they 
begged a new and larger site. Here they built and for nearly 
three centuries maintained the famous monastery that has left to 
commercialized London no other heritage or relic than such com- 
memorative names as “Blackfriars road,’ “Blackfriars bridge,” 
“Blackfriars pier,” “Blackfriars school.” 
The property lay at the extreme southwest corner of the an- 
cient City of London, partly within the old Roman wall, but 
mainly without.2 The wall then ran straight on from Ludgate 
down to the Thames. It crossed the grounds soon to be used by 
the Friars for their fine old conventual church and cloisters, and 
passed just a few yards east of the site of the later Blackfriars 
theatre, grounds now occupied mainly by The Times buildings. 
Very soon after acquiring the tract, the Black Friars through 
their powerful fellow, Archbishop Kilwardby of Canterbury, 
were influential enough to secure an order to tear down the old 
city wall that crossed their acquisition. In compensation they 
sented by “The Theatre,” Curtain, 
Rose, Swan, Globe, Fortune, Bear 
Garden, and Hope,—perished in its 
own generation and left little in- 
fluence upon the style of the mod- 
ern theatre-building. For certain 
data, cf. infra, passim. 
For data, see John Stowe, Sur- 
vey of London (1603), 341sqq.; 1d. 
(ed. 1633), 373 sqq.; id. (ed. Strype, 
1744), I, 667-80; id. (continued by 
Edmond Howes), Annales, or A 
General Chronicle of England 
(1631); A. J. Kemp, Loseley MSS. 
(1835), 16, 73, 175, 186; Appendix 
to Seventh Report of the Royal 
Commission on Historical Manu- 
scripts (1879) under “The Manu- 
scripts of William More Molyneux, 
Esq., of Loseley Park, Guildford, co. 
Surrey,” 596b-681a; Sir William 
Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum 
(ed. Caley, Ellis, and Bandinel, 
1846), VIII, 1847; William Bray, 
in Archaeologia, XVIII, 317f.; T. 
F. Ordish, in The Antiquary, XIV 
(1886), 23; and item-references, 
infra. 
"John Stowe, 
487b, 373). 
°In the yeere 1276. Gregory 
Rokefley, Maior, and the Barons of 
London, granted and gave to Rob- 
ert Kilwarby, Archbifhop of Can- 
terburie, two lanes or wayes next 
the {treet of Baynards Ca/ftell, and 
the Tower of Mountfichit, to be de- 
stroyed. On the which place the 
faid Robert builded the late new 
Church, with the reft of the Stones 
that were left of the faid Tower. 
And thus the Black-Fryers left their 
Church and houfe by Oldboorne, 
and departed to their new.”—Idem, 
487; also 373, with slight change in 
wording. 
op: ett. “ (1633); 
133 
