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Rh you had given your goodwill to another, and besides had persuaded one of my chiefest friends to be solicitor for him. My interest therein accrued out of frank almoin, and therefore I can claim no estate but during pleasure, yet I hoped, as other poor true tenants do, not to be turned out so long as I performed my honest duties.'

This may reasonably be taken as referring to the Mastership of the Revels, and makes it clear that, whatever Elizabeth had said or done in 1597, she had not given Buck any irrecoverable promise. Very likely she never did. But early in the new reign, on 23 June 1603, Buck received a formal grant by patent of the reversion to Tilney. On the same day was issued a new commission for the office, similar to that of 1581, but in Buck's name instead of Tilney's, from which it is to be inferred that he had become the acting Master. On 23 July 1603 he was knighted. Tilney, however, continued to render the accounts, which, with two exceptions, only exist for the whole of the reign of James in a summary form. The account for 1609-10 is by Tilney's executor, Thomas Tilney; and from 1610-11 onwards Buck is accounting officer, and in full enjoyment of the Mastership. One of the two detailed accounts is Tilney's for 1604-5, the other Buck's for 1611-12. These are made interesting by their schedules of Court performances, the authenticity of which may now be regarded as fairly vindicated. They show that the establishment remained precisely upon its sixteenth-century lines. The close of Elizabeth's reign witnessed the termination by death of Blagrave's fifty-seven years' service in the Revels. William Honing, the former Comptroller, returned to the Office as Clerk in his room, under a patent made retrospective to 25 March 1603. He was still there, as was Edward Kirkham, the