o send hym to prison, he made sute that he
might be bounde to appeare at the oier and determiner, the which is
to-morrowe, where he said that he was sure the court wold not bynd hym,
being a counsellor's man. And so I have graunted his request, where he
is sure to be bounde, or else is lyke to do worse." The "stubborne
fellow" was, without doubt, none other than the high-spirited and
pugnacious James Burbage, who fought for twenty-one years over leases
with his avaricious landlord, Giles Allen, and of whom Allen's lawyer
writes in a Star Chamber document in 1601: "Burbage tendered a new lease
which he, the said Allen, refused to sign because it was different from
the first and also because Burbage had assigned the Theatre to John Hyde
and has also been a very bad and troublesome tenant to your orator."
This document also makes mention of the fact as one of the reasons for
Allen refusing to sign the new lease that "Hyde conveyed the lease to
Cuthbert, son of James." The conveyance here mentioned was made in 1589.
It is plain that Allen's lawyer implies that the mortgaging of the
Theatre to Hyde and its later conveyance to Cuthbert Burbage were made,
not alone for value received, but also for the protection of James
Burbage against legal proceedings. Here, then, we have good evidence
that James Burbage, who, in the year 1575, had been the manager, and
undoubtedly a large owner, of the Earl of Leicester's company,--at that
time the most important company of players in England,--was in 1584 a
member of Lord Hunsdon's company, and if a member--in view of his past
and present prominence in theatrical affairs--also, evidently, its
manager and owner. As no logical reasons are given by Halliwell-Phillipps,
or by the compilers who base their biographies upon his _Outlines of the
Life of Shakespeare_, for declining to accept the reference in Fleetwood's
letter to the "owner of the Theatre" as an allusion to Burbage, whom they
admit to have been, and who undoubtedly was, the owner of the Theatre from
1576 until he transferred his property to his sons, Cuthbert and Richard,
shortly before he died in 1597,[13] their refusal to see the light must
arise from their obsession that Burbage at this time was a member of
either Leicester's or the Queen's company, and as to which one they do
not seem to have a very clear impression. Shakespearean biography may be
searched in vain for any other recorded facts concerning Burbage's company
affilia