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 his adventure. After all, he was prevented from establishing his theatre in 1596. Play-houses had just been suppressed in the City, and a number of the more important inhabitants of the Blackfriars disliked the idea of one being opened in their select residential precinct, where no common play-house had yet been seen. Farrant's theatre, nominally intended for the private practice of the Chapel boys, was presumably regarded as not falling within the category of common play-houses. A petition was sent to the Privy Council, amongst the signatories to which were Burbadge's neighbour, Sir George Carey, now Lord Hunsdon, Elizabeth Lady Russell, who lived a little farther up Water Lane, and Richard Field, the printer of Shakespeare's poems. The extant copy of the petition is not dated, but later references assign it to November 1596, and inform us that as a result the Privy Council forbade the use of the house. On James Burbadge's death in February 1597 the Blackfriars property passed to his son Richard. It is not known what use he made of it before 1600, but in that year the resumption of plays by the Chapel children under Nathaniel Giles gave him an opportunity of following Farrant's example, and letting the theatre for what were practically public performances 'vnder the name of a private howse'. With Giles were associated one James Robinson and Henry Evans, who had already been concerned in the enterprise of John Lyly and the Earl of Oxford; and it was to Evans that, on 2 September 1600, Burbadge leased 'the great hall or roome, with the roomes over the same, scituate