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 for a weekly payment of 8s., 'because after the said agreements made, the complainant [Kirkham] and his said parteners would at their directions haue the dieting and ordering of the boyes vsed about the plaies there, which before the said complainant had, and for the which he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed great sommes of monie'.

Of the new managers, Rastall was a merchant and Kendall a haberdasher, both of London. Kirkham has generally been assumed to be the Yeoman of the Revels, but of this there is not, so far as I know, any definite proof. The association did not prove an harmonious one. According to Evans, Kirkham and his fellows made false information against him to the Lord Chamberlain, as a result of which he was 'comaunded by his Lordship to avoyd and leave the same', had to quit the country, and lost nearly £300 by the charge he was put to and the negligence of Hawkins in looking after his profits. This seems to have been in May 1602. Meanwhile the performances continued. The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1602-3, but ''Sir Giles Goosecap and possibly Chapman's Gentleman Usher'' were produced by them before the end of Elizabeth's reign; and on 18 September 1602 a visit was paid to the theatre by Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, of which the following account is preserved in the journal of Frederic Gerschow, a member of his suite:

'Von dannen sind wir auf die Kinder-comoediam gangen, welche im Argument iudiciret eine castam viduam, war eine historia einer königlichen Wittwe aus Engellandt. Es hat aber mit dieser Kinder-*comoedia die Gelegenheit: die Königin hält viel junger Knaben, die sich der Singekunst mit Ernst befleissigen müssen und auf allen Instrumenten lernen, auch dabenebenst studieren. Diese Knaben