CHAPTER VIII 
THE oe ee S MAINTENANCE OF THE CHILDREN AT 
BLACKFRIARS 
THE next record touching the Queen’s relations to Blackfriars 
is a single paragraph in Evans’s Answer in the suit of Kirkham 
vs. Painton,? seemingly unimportant at first sight. It deals with 
one item arising out of the 1602 Articles and touches the conduct 
of the theatre both before and after. It reads thus :— 
“And towching the Eight shillings weekely to be paid,’ 
. this def‘ saith that there was a bond of ffiftye powndes made 
by the said compl* and his said partners condicioned for paiement 
of the said some of eight shillings weekely vnto this deft because 
after the said agreements made, the compl‘ and his said Partners © 
would at their directions haue the dietting and ordering of the 
Boyes vsed about the plaies there, w“ before the said Compl‘ had, 
and for the w“ he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed 
great Somes of monie.’’® 
This looks like a trivial paragraph merely “towching the Eight 
shillings.” No one has hitherto found it significant.* 
But what is meant by “the said Complainant’ ? 
For several months, before I had thoroughly worked the field, 
I was puzzled to understand this paragraph. I could make noth- 
ing of it except that it dealt with eight shillings to be paid for 
some unknown reason, and that there was an apparent clerical 
error in “the said Complainant” for “this defendant.” It seemed 
* Supra, 89°. 
*See the 50/. bond for the pay- 
ment of this amount weekly, infra, 
102°. See also the paragraph (infra, 
104°) in Kirkham’s Bill of Com- 
plaint, to which Evans is here an- 
swering. 
°Public Record Office, Chancery 
Proceedings, James I, Bills and An- 
swers, K 5, No. 25 (Kirkham vs. 
Painton, The Aunswere of Henrie 
Evans, gent’, &c). My transcript 
of the paragraph from the original 
document as here printed differs 
only slightly (in the spelling) from 
the print of Mr. Greenstreet’s tran- 
script as it appears in F. G. Fleay, 
A Chronicle History of the London 
Stage (1890), 244a. 
“Cf. infra, 104*. 
212 
