the Council.[7]

[Footnote 7: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, VI, 168.]

1573. During this year there were various fencing contests held at the
Bull in Bishopsgate.[8]

[Footnote 8: W. Rendle, _The Inns of Old Southwark_, p. 235.]

1577. In February the Office of the Revels made a payment of 10_d._
"ffor the cariadge of the parts of ye well counterfeit from the Bell
in gracious strete to St. Johns, to be performed for the play of
_Cutwell_."[9]

[Footnote 9: A. Feuillerat, _Documents Relating to the Office of the
Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth_, p. 277.]

1579. On June 23 James Burbage was arrested for the sum of L5 13_d._
"as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a
play." The name of the proprietor of this inn-playhouse is preserved
in one of the interrogatories connected with the case: "Item. Whether
did you, John Hynde, about xiii years past, in _anno_ 1579, the xxiii
of June, about two of the clock in the afternoon, send the sheriff's
officer unto the Cross Keys in Gratious Street, being then the
dwelling house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London,"
etc.[10] Nothing more, I believe, is known of this person.

[Footnote 10: Burbage _v._ Brayne, printed in C.W. Wallace, _The First
London Theatre_, pp. 82, 90. Whether Burbage was going to the Cross
Keys as a spectator or as an actor is not indicated; but the
presumption is that he was then playing at the inn, although he was
proprietor of the Theatre.]

1579. Stephen Gosson, in _The Schoole of Abuse_, writes favorably of
"the two prose books played at the Bell Savage, where you shall find
never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter
placed in vain; the _Jew_ and _Ptolome_, shown at the Bull ... neither
with amorous gesture wounding the eye, nor with slovenly talk hurting
the ears of the chast hearers."[11]

[Footnote 11: Arber's _English Reprints_, p. 40.]

1582. On July 1 the Earl of Warwick wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting
the city authorities to "give license to my servant, John David, this
bearer, to play his profest prizes in his science and profession of
defence at the Bull in Bishopsgate, or some other convenient place to
be assigned within the liberties of London." The Lord Mayor refused to
allow David to give his fencing contest "in an inn, which was somewhat
too close for infection, and appointed him to play in an open place of
the Leaden Hall," which, it may be added, was nea