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 vestryman of St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1607, churchwarden in 1608, and governor of the free grammar school in 1612. His death on 6 January 1616 was followed almost immediately by that of his widow in April 1617, and most of his property passed into the hands of the Alleyns, together with a mass of papers, which are now amalgamated with Alleyn's own at Dulwich. The collection is of the first importance both for dramatic and for social history. It contains title-deeds of theatres, agreements, and bonds entered into by companies of players, private correspondence between the members of Henslowe's family and with the poets and actors dependent upon him, inventories of stage costumes, book-holder's 'plots' or outlines of plays, and many other documents touching in innumerable ways upon the finance and control of the stage. It also contains Henslowe's famous 'Diary'. This is not in fact a diary at all, but a folio memorandum book, which Henslowe used principally during 1592-1603, and in which he entered in picturesque confusion particulars of accounts between himself and the companies occupying his theatres, together with jottings on many personal and business matters, and records of loans, which are often written, signed, or witnessed in the autographs of players and poets.

From the diary and the related documents it is possible to reconstruct in its main outlines the history of Henslowe's theatrical enterprises, and to contrast his policy as a capitalist with that of his rivals, the Burbadges. During the earlier years covered by our information, the theatre with which he was mainly concerned was the Rose, which he had himself built on the Bankside, although he appears also to have had an interest in the distant and practically disused house at Newington Butts. At one or other of these he entertained a succession of companies for the short periods during which playing was possible in the plague-stricken period of 1592-4. In the autumn of 1594 he settled down with Alleyn and the Admiral's men at the Rose, and this combination lasted, with some reorganization of the company in 1597, until 1600, when the Admiral's men moved to the newly built Fortune, and were succeeded a couple of years later at the Rose by Lord Worcester's men. It seems clear from an analysis of the accounts which he kept during 1592-7, that Henslowe, like the housekeepers at the Globe, was in the practice of taking his profits as landlord in the form, not of a fixed rent, but of a share of the daily takings at the theatre, and in his case also the sum allotted seems to have been half the proceeds of the galleries as distinct from the outer doors of the play