Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/473

 was once worth £100 a year, could now not be let at all. It is doubtful whether they got any relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608; but about 1612 they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42 10s. and 12d. a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters until Henslowe's death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn in survivorship.

When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the 'game' was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to be. The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25 May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, 'and after dener to bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght'. Later French embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586 were similarly honoured. The custom continued during the next reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the ball 'all then took