contrary notwithstanding."

[Footnote 28: Dasent, _Acts of the Privy Council_, VIII, 131, 132.]

This license was a direct challenge to the authority of the Lord
Mayor. He dared not answer it as directly; but on December 6, 1574, he
secured from the Common Council the passage of an ordinance which
placed such heavy restrictions upon acting as virtually to nullify the
license issued by the Queen, and to regain for the Mayor complete
control of the drama within the city. The Preamble of this remarkable
ordinance clearly reveals the puritanical character of the City
Government:

Whereas heretofore sundry great disorders and inconveniences
have been found to ensue to this city by the inordinate
haunting of great multitudes of people, specially youths, to
plays, interludes, and shews: namely, occasion of frays and
quarrels; evil practises of incontinency in great inns
having chambers and secret places adjoining to their open
stages and galleries; inveigling and alluring of maids,
specially orphans and good citizens' children under age, to
privy and unmeet contracts; the publishing of unchaste,
uncomly, and unshamefaced speeches and doings; withdrawing
of the Queen's Majesty's subjects from divine service on
Sundays and holy days, at which times such plays were
chiefly used; unthrifty waste of the money of the poor and
fond persons; sundry robberies by picking and cutting of
purses; uttering of popular, busy, and seditious matters;
and many other corruptions of youth, and other enormities;
besides that also sundry slaughters and maimings of the
Queen's subjects have happened by ruins of scaffolds,
frames, and stages, and by engines, weapons, and powder used
in plays. And whereas in time of God's visitation by the
plague such assemblies of the people in throng and press
have been very dangerous for spreading of infection.... And
for that the Lord Mayor and his brethren the Aldermen,
together with the grave and discreet citizens in the Common
Council assembled, do doubt and fear lest upon God's
merciful withdrawing his hand of sickness from us (which God
grant), the people, specially the meaner and most unruly
sort, should with sudden forgetting of His visitation,
without fear of God's wrath, and without due respect of the
good and politique means that He hath ordained for t