The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Bear Gardens of Southwark and the Hope Playhouse were situated in Southwark, in the parish of St Saviour. St Saviour’s parish was formed in 1540, following the purchase at 400 marks of the large church of the Augustinian priory of St Mary Overie, dissolved in October 1539, by the parishioners of the small parishes of St Margaret and St Mary Magdalen. The two parishes were then amalgamated in May 1540. A vestry was set up in 1540 consisting of thirty men, of whom six were churchwardens. As with other parishes at this time, the positions went to the men of wealth and reputation resident in the parish.
The reformed parish was large. It included Boroughside, part of the Gildable manor, which belonged to the Crown until its acquisition by the city of London in 1550. It also included the manor of Paris Garden, which was the most western part of the parish. Initially the property of the Templars, Paris Garden moved to the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem after their suppression. The manor was then acquired by the Crown on the Hospital’s dissolution in 1536.See Kingsford, ‘Paris Garden and the Bear Baiting,’ pp 157–9, and Carlin, Medieval Southwark, pp 31–2. Finally, it included the manor of the bishop of Winchester, the Clink. This is the most significant manor for this study, for that is where the Bear Gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries lay. It extended from the western boundary of Paris Garden nearly to London Bridge on the east. where it bounded the Crown’s Gildable manor. It bordered the Thames on the north and included Maid Lane and the Wilds on the south. Much of the property of the manor was sold or let on long leases on easy terms over time, although the bishopric did for example hold onto the Barge, Bell and Cock, where the Bear Garden of William Payne would be sited in the mid-sixteenth century That too extended from the riverbank to Maid Lane and, significantly for the future, on its eastern boundary lay property belonging to the Priory of Stratford atte Bow. It included the Unicorn inn and tenements with houses and shops, gardens and fishponds, and passed to the Crown on the dissolution of the priory in 1536. By 1540 it had been granted to Ralph Sadler.
Much of the manor of the Clink, like Southwark generally, was low lying, marshy, and prone to flooding. A network of ditches and sewers drained the area, originally dug in the thirteenth century and maintained by those who leased or owned the properties through which they ran. These were supervised by the manorial courts of the bishopric and a commission set up in 1554. Bankside and Maid Lane were essentially constructed as causeways or embankments, the one alongside the river, probably as a private-access path linking wharves along the riverside, and the other parallel, edged by the common sewer and ditches bordering a marshy area known as ‘the Wilds.’ Maid Lane, its name suggesting the association of the lane with prostitution, was already named thus in the thirteenth century. Although described as a footway in the court minutes of the Commissions of Sewers for 12 December 1603, it was by then a well-used thoroughfare; other minutes contain many references to the wharves or bridges erected by tenants of neighbouring properties onto the lane over the common sewer and other ditches. The riverbank itself was subject to continual support and reclamation over the centuries, with a sequence of building and rebuilding of the quays and wharves of tenants and freeholders. It became a roadway well served for access by pedestrians from the bridge and by passengers across the river from Westminster and the city. The public stairs from the water known as Mason’s Stairs was located at its western end, used by the many watermen. Jeremy Boulton found that transport and unskilled labour was the largest occupational category in the Clink and Paris Garden in the first quarter of the seventeenth century (46.7%) with watermen dominating that category (39.8%).
Travellers into Southwark from the south or south-east looking to enter the city of London for business or work needed somewhere to stay as well as some refreshment. Residents of the increasingly crowded city of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also crossed the river to meet them, or simply for recreation. There were numerous inns, especially along the streets leading from the bridge in Boroughside and beyond, providing accommodation with stabling for horses, rooms for conducting business, food and drink, and space for gambling tables. The production and retailing of food and drink was the largest occupational category in Boroughside in 1622 (29.7%), while a smaller but not insignificant percentage of the inhabitants of the Clink and Paris Garden worked in that category between 1618 and 1625 (12.9%).
The recreational facilities available in the borough in the mid-sixteenth century included a tennis court, bowling alleys, archery butts, and a bull ring recorded by 1542 on St Margaret's Hill. Moreover, there were also the Stews of Bankside. The term ‘the stews’ was originally equated with the fishponds created by tenants of properties in the marshy areas between Bankside and Maid Lane, but became synonymous with the brothels whose presence in the Liberty of the Clink was facilitated by the attempts of the city of London to eliminate prostitution within its walls, and in contrast its condoning by the manorial courts of the suburb. The city proclaimed at the end of the fourteenth century that prostitutes were to keep to the Stews in Southwark or Cock Lane in Smithfield. Brothels on Bankside numbered at least eighteen by 1506. Three of these, the Unicorn, the Bell and Cock and the Barge would be the principal properties and venues of the Bear Gardens of the later sixteenth century.
A royal proclamation of April 1546 ordered the eviction by Easter of the prostitutes and keepers of the bawd houses, ‘whited and painted, with signes on the front,’ from the Stews on Bankside in Southwark. Moreover, to discourage those who might ‘resort’ to Bankside, it was ordered in the same proclamation that bearbaiting and its ‘accustomed assemblies’ in that ‘Rowe’ or in Southwark generally should also be abolished ‘vpon like paine.’
Seventy-four years later, in 1620, one John Taylor (not John Taylor the water-poet) recalled the venues for these ‘accustomed places’ in a deposition given to the court of the Exchequer on behalf of the bishop of Winchester. He said he remembered that bearbaiting had been kept in four different places. The first, he said, was near Mason stairs on Bankside. We do not, however, have a location for this venue determined by archaeology and moreover no further concrete documentary evidence. Braines in his Globe Playhouse included a well-researched appendix on ‘The Sites of the Southwark Bear Gardens.’ There he did note, as a tentative reference to bearbaiting near Mason Stairs, the answer of Gilbert Rocket (the younger) in a case in Chancery in January 1604/5. This was to the effect that his uncle, also Gilbert Rocket, in around 1588–9 had possession of lands of John Gibbons mainly in the vicinity of Mason Stairs and Moses Alley or on Bankside but ‘also of and in one howse Called a Beare howse with th’appurtenaunces’ in the parish of St Saviour. There is nothing further in the reporting of the case that might support the ascription or identify a more precise location or sub-tenant.
To the west of Mason Stairs lay Paris Garden stairs. In some contemporary literary sources, the manor of Paris or 'Parish' Garden was an early venue for bearbaiting. A poem by Robert Crowley in 1550, for example, declaimed the profit to be made each Sunday for the bearwards ‘At Paryse Garden.’ Kingsford, however, in 1920 effectively demolished the association of any site in Paris Garden with bearbaiting, affirming instead its association with Bankside.
Taylor situated the second bearbaiting place near Maid Lane by the corner of the Pike Garden. Braines concluded this was a reference to the Great Pike Garden, and that the bear yard or garden, named by him as Bear Garden 2, was perhaps on a plot between there and land of the priory of Stratford atte Bowe, within the angle formed by Moss Alley and Maid Lane. Again, there is no further documentary evidence to confirm this as a site, but there were some suggestive archaeological excavations in 1988. These did not reveal a structure that might have been a bearbaiting ring, but did find many dog bones (no date estimated) ‘possibly associated with mastiffs from a nearby ring.’ It is not unlikely, however, that John Taylor may have been referring to a site a little further east, on land also bordering Maid Lane which had been in the possession of the priory of Stratford, and included what became known as the King’s Pike Garden. On the priory’s dissolution, its lands in Southwark were granted to Ralph Sadler who quickly sold twelve messuages, sixteen gardens, and four acres of land covered in water there to Henry Polsted in February 1539/40. Edward VI repossessed these properties in 1552, and then leased them all back to Polsted on 6 April for 21 years at £32 14s 5d.
We know from the terms of that lease some of Polsted’s tenants, including one Robert Exnyng, who had been a witness to the sale between Sadler and Polsted in 1540. Also mentioned are three tenants whom we know were associated with bearbaiting and who also appeared in a survey of Polsted’s lands a year or so later: Leonard Willis, Thomas Fluddie and John Allen. In the survey, Willis held a garden called ‘le Rose garden.’ He was confirmed in an appointment as sergeant of her Majesty’s Bears in March 1556/7. Thomas Fluddie, yeoman of the King’s Bears, is listed as holding two messuages with gardens. He had been baiting bears since at least April 1546. He was still described thus in 1555. Of great interest, moreover, is John Allen. In December 1546, he was described as a yeoman of the Prince’s Bears and was licensed to bait his bears in Southwark or its vicinity. He is listed in the survey as the tenant at £8 per annum of a principal curtilage called the bear yard, which had a bear house and garden. Moreover, in a case of around the same time in the court of Augmentations, he is assessed as liable for a half year’s rent of £4 for the bear yard and its associated premises and 30s for the rent for a half year on the garden of the Unicorn Inn. The corner of the Pike Garden, near Maid Lane, is not, however, referred to as the site of Allen’s tenancy and indeed the survey indicates that Peter Hunnye was Polsted’s tenant in the King’s Pike Garden in 1552–3. It seems possible, therefore, that a baiting-place was situated on Polsted’s lands between Maid Lane and Bankside, at a site south of the Unicorn Inn and its garden. This may have been Taylor’s second baiting-place.
Henry Polsted died in December 1555, leaving his lands, leases and rents to the use and management of his wife Alice until his young son Richard came of age. There is one other known record of the bear yard on the Polsted holdings in St Saviour’s parish. Around 1559 Alice brought a case in Chancery for recovery of debts against the heir of her deceased receiver, merchant-tailor John Whitepaine. Among other listed debts was 20s owed by one Robert Wystowe for the bear yard in St Saviour's. Sometime after, it seems likely that this bear yard fell out of use.
In 1574 the Crown properties of the Unicorn and its associated tenements and messuages, leased by Polsted, passed to Thomas and Isabel Keyes at a rental of £27 14s 10d per annum, initially for a term of twenty-one years but later extended to forty years. The Queen’s Pike Garden was excluded from the lease. In 1595 this lease passed to Robert Livesey and Gerard Gore. During the period in which the Keyes held the lease, it seems the bear yard on their property returned to tenements and gardens. Thus in 1578 their tenant, Thomas Stone, assigned the lease of his plot of land within the ‘old Beare Garden’ to Richard Ballard, a hosier of St Saviour’s, for sixteen years at a rent of 20s a year. Sometime in the following years, it passed from Ballard to a gardener named John Bixon. Another tenant of the Keyes was David Watson, who held ‘A greate Garden out of which the Pyke garden was taken.’
The garden which was ‘parcel of the old bear garden,’ had passed by 1590 into the use of the tenants of a bear yard on the adjacent Barge, Bell and Cock property. This yard was John Taylor’s third baiting-place, as cited in his deposition in 1620 and Braines’ Bear Garden 3: the Bear Garden of William Payne. On 6 March 1539/40, the bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, leased the Barge, Bell and Cock and related land to William Payne, and his wife Joan. The original lease has not survived, but its details are quoted by Joan Payne in a deed of 1575. They are cited again in a lease of 1582. It was written that the Barge, Bell and Cock, and its associated ground, lay against Bankside to the north, the kings highway, the Great Rose to the east, and the lands of Stratford Priory to the west. Then it extended, according to the quoted lease, southward to Maid Lane. This is inconsistent with what we understand regarding Polsted’s estate of the Great Rose, acquired from William Spence, that on the west it lay against the Barge and on the south against the garden late belonging to the Prioress of Stratford, and as far as Maid Lane. From this inconsistency, litigation arose in 1618 on the boundaries of the lands of the Crown and the bishopric of Winchester.
We do not have documentary evidence for how the estate of the Barge, Bell and Cock was used in the first two decades of Payne’s tenancy or in what manner it was then used for bearbaiting. Those references that we do have for those years, other than those for Bear Garden 2, do not distinguish a location. By the mid-1550s, however, Payne seems to have become a deputy of Cuthbert Vaughan, who was confirmed as master of Games, Pastimes and Sports, including Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs, in 1553. We have no record of Payne’s appointment, but once again John Taylor’s deposition in 1620 fills a gap by telling us how he knew Payne as deputy or master of Bears and how, close by the house in which he and Joan lived, he had built a baiting place ‘in the outer Court towards the Thames.’
Around October 1574 William Payne died intestate, and his wife Joan took on the administration of his estate. Six months later, on 8 April 1575, she assigned the head lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock properties to her son-in-law Thomas Warram, her daughter Margery and grand-daughter Elizabeth. The assignment was conditional on their provision of her bed and board with them in Ibworth, near Kingsclere in Hampshire, an annuity paid to her of £13 6s 8d and their payment of the annual rent of 9s 7d per annum due to the bishopric of Winchester. Seven years later, on 1 August 1582, she assigned the lease to her ‘welbelowed’ John White and John Malthouse, whom a few months later she also named as her executors. By this time Thomas Warram had recently died and his widow remarried one George Ireland. A family quarrel then transpired, in which an increasingly irascible and desperate Joan complained to many of her acquaintances, and to White and Malthouse, that she had insufficient meat and drink and would starve. At some point she asked a Ralph Johnson to go to John Malthouse and ask him to take her into his house as otherwise she did not know what to do or how to live. She moved there in June 1582 and died in December that year, leaving to her executors the ‘obligation' between herself and Thomas and Margery Warram. In 1589 John White surrendered his holding of the head lease to John Malthouse. Malthouse’s new and sole possession was not wholly quiet, however, as in 1593–4 Joan’s granddaughter Elizabeth and her husband George Hunte laid claim in the court of Requests to revenues raised from the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock under Joan’s indenture with her and her parents. The defendants, John and Elizabeth’s stepfather, George Ireland, claimed in their answer that as Margery was still alive, Elizabeth and her husband had no right to the revenues.
Warram, Malthouse and White, as lease-holders from the Bishop of Winchester, were not involved in the management of the Bear Garden on their Barge, Bell and Cock property. On 3 February 1572/3, it appears that William Payne, perhaps already failing in health, had assigned a sub-lease including the bear houses, bull houses, yards, and baiting arena to Edward Wistowe, a grocer and citizen of London. Soon after, Simon Poulton, who had worked alongside Payne, died, as did Cuthbert Vaughan, who was succeeded as master of Games by Ralph Bowes on 2 June 1573. Joan Payne ratified Wistowe’s lease after William’s death, perhaps by the ‘wrighting’ numbered ‘1’ that Edward Alleyn had in his possession sometime after the death of Philip Henslowe. Wistowe, once again according to John Taylor, succeeded Payne as deputy of Ralph Bowes ‘and did usually bayte the beares in the same place in the outer Court or yarde.’ We cannot be certain who otherwise might have assisted Wistowe in management. Simon Poulton was succeeded as yeoman of Bears by Roger Askam but his name does not appear in the records of Bear Garden at the Barge, Bell and Cock. It is interesting, however, that William Glover was cited as occupying the bear house alongside Joan Gravesend when Joan Payne assigned the Barge to Francis Puckryche on 11 November 1574. He is also listed in Alleyn’s Writings of the Bear Garden as having assigned to Wistowe a garden. Glover, we know, was heavily involved in this Bear Garden enterprise ten years later.
In 1578–9, as cited in a case of 1584 in the court of Requests, Wistowe assigned his sub-lease of the Bear Garden at the Barge, Bell and Cock to John Napton, also a grocer of London. Napton, however, did not have the funds to pay Wistowe and on 24 March 1578/9 passed the lease on to John Digges and John Gape. Scrivener Richard Dunkyn wrote the indenture and remembered it being sealed some six days later. Also involved was William Napton, another London grocer and brother to John. He testified that Digges and Gape paid Wistowe £100, and Gape and Napton stood surety for the payment of a further £200. Napton was already in considerable debt, it seems, owing his brother William £500 and some £400 to Digges and Gape. The agreement was that John Napton, managing the Bear Garden, would repay them at £4 a week out of the profits until all his debt was paid. By Christmas 1579, Napton was indeed in further financial trouble and, despite the indenture with Digges and Gape, on 23 December assigned the Bear Garden to the goldsmith Morgan Pope, possibly in return of a loan of £120. When he failed to meet the repayments, Pope took possession of the Bear Garden and assigned it to Edward Bowes, brother and deputy of the master of Bears, Ralph Bowes. Edward pleaded in January 1583/4 that it cost him dearly, more than it should have done, but that he had thought it a place long used and suitable for the keeping of the bears and dogs.
Napton, Digges, and Gape were none too pleased by this takeover. As Bowes was given a letter of attorney from Pope giving him possession, Napton was heard shouting from a window of his house in the Bear Garden: ‘Synce that poope hathe thus delt with me I haue a thinge … heare … that shall Cut his nose.’ A dispute quickly arose between Bowes and Digges and Gape. We know from a later letter from Walsingham to a master of the court of Requests that the dispute was first raised in the privy council. Walsingham, appointed to deal with it, found in favour of Bowes, by which time Digges and Gape had raised an action of trespass against Bowes’ agent, William Glover, in the King’s Bench. We have not found any record of that case, but according to Walsingham, a verdict was at some point passed against Glover. By then Bowes, in January 1583/4, had brought his bill of complaint against Digges and Gape to the court of Requests, and a month later the court ordered that his tenure was not to be interrupted in the meantime. Quite how the case was resolved is unknown, but Morgan Pope remained holder of Bear Garden 3 until around 1590. He appears in the records of the Sewers Commission until that date as responsible for the sewers and wharf there. He also seems to have been active, or at least influential in its management. It is his name that appears in Alleyn's writings of the Bear Garden regarding a ‘post’ for William Glover. He enlarged the premises of the Bear Garden by acquiring a piece of Crown land in Bear Garden 2 in October 1587 from John Bixon, possibly for use as a dog yard. He may have enlarged it further with the inclusion of part of the garden of David Watson. This acquisition was later assigned by Watson to Thomas Burnaby, Pope’s successor as lessee of the Bear Garden in 1590. As for Napton, whether he remained also involved in the administration of Bear Garden 3 is uncertain. He does appear periodically in the reports of the Sewers Commissioners in the 1580s, his name linked with Pope, and as a prisoner in the Marshalsea in 1587, then hoping not to cut Pope’s nose but to resolve matters between them. He was living in Bull Head Alley in the Liberty of the Clink and Paris Garden in 1588 and died in August 1590.
Edward Bowes, assignee of Pope, was certainly heavily involved in investment and then in management of the Bear Garden until at least the summer of 1584. He was assisted in his administration of the Bear Garden by William Glover, of course, and also by William Cudworth, yeoman of Bears. These were busy and tumultuous years, as outlined in the 'History of Entertainment' chapter.
From 1584–90 there is not much evidence of Bowes’ activities in the Bear Garden. There is a curious question addressed to the deponents for Digges and Gape in June 1584 regarding whether Bowes had been seen in London since the suit against Glover in the Bench had begun. Neither Thomas Sewall nor William Napton had seen him. He does not appear in the records of the Sewers Commissioners after 1583–4. He does, however, continue to appear bringing the bearbaiting game to the royal court until around 1588. Cudworth died soon after 1584. It therefore seems likely that the administration on site was then left mostly to William Glover.
Sometime before April 1590, Pope seems to have assigned his lease to a man named Hayes, whom so far we have not been able to trace. Alleyn had in his ‘wrightings’ a note of a poll deed made to Hayes by Pope. By that April, the lease had been passed on to Thomas Burnaby, whom we find ordered to pull up his dog kennel standing over the sewer running by his bear garden. Alleyn’s list of writings indicate the deeds that must have been sealed over the next few months: John Malthouse, holder of the head lease, must have confirmed Burnaby’s holding of the sub-lease; Ralph and Edward Bowes probably deputised him to bait bears in the Bear Garden. In addition, Thomas (and Isabel) Keyes confirmed a lease to Burnaby of some part of their lands held from the Crown, once Polsted’s lands including Bear Garden 2. The latter was sealed on 10 November in 1590 at a rent of £6 per annum. The plot bordered the Bear Garden on the north, the common sewer on the south (Maid Lane), and the remainder of Watson's garden on the west. Burnaby would continue to fence it, as he had in the past, so that the dogs and bears there were contained.
Just over a month later, on 15 December 1590, Burnaby demised the Bear Garden and all its appurtenances, including the house Napton had lived in, the game and the dogs, and all the profits of the game to Richard Reve, a citizen and glazier of London. Reve would be responsible for fees to Ralph and Edward Bowes and would pay Burnaby the considerable rent of £120 per annum. The years 1590–4 may not have been easy for Richard Reve. In August 1592 he was held responsible by the commissioners of the Sewers for accumulated fines of 35s on which Pope and Burnaby, and possibly Napton, had defaulted. He pleaded and was granted remittance of 25s on the grounds that he had been commanded to leave the Bear Garden and go with his game into the country. Reve may have been still involved in the management of the Bear Garden until 1597, when he appears once again ordered by the commissioners of the Sewers to repair his wharf at the Bear Garden. This is, however, the final notice we have of him in the Bear Garden, although he appears in the Lay Subsidy assessment for the Clink Liberty until 1600. In or around 1597 Jacob Meade, as he would testify twenty-five years later, succeeded him as keeper for the new lease holders and entertainment entrepreneurs, Edward Alleyn and Phillip Henslowe. A new chapter was about to begin in the history of the Bear Garden properties and in the entertainments that would take place there on Bankside.
In December 1594, Edward Alleyn bought the sub-lease of the Bear Garden at the Barge, Bell and Cock from Thomas Burnaby and held it for sixteen years: he and Philip Henslowe would become joint holders of the office of master of Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff dogs by 1604. Before paying the first quarter’s rent, however, as he later claimed, he checked with John Malthouse, who held the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock and the Bear Garden there from the bishop of Winchester, for which property he was paying £8 per annum. Furthermore, he checked with Isabel and Thomas Keyes, to whom £12 per annum was due, that this rent was indeed for the Crown lands of David Watson’s garden, and for the dog yard west of the Barge, Bell and Cock. Once he had confirmation, he claimed to have conveyed the interest of half the sublease from Burnaby to Philip Henslowe. Henslowe then in 1595 made a ‘bargain’ with John Malthouse regarding the ‘beargarden.’ This was the assignment to him of the head lease of the Bear Garden and related tenements on Bankside, for which he would pay the customary rental of 9s 7d for the year to the bishop of Winchester in 1601. In 1596 he acquired from Livesey and Gore the interest and remaining term of the Unicorn messuages and tenements that had been held from the Crown first by Polsted and then by Isabel Keyes and Thomas Keyes. These acquisitions by Henslowe and Alleyn were, of course, part of the consolidation of their property portfolios in St Saviour’s parish, but this rapid accumulation in one area on Bankside suggests also a newly focussed interest in commercial entertainment and in bear baiting.
In February 1609/10 Alleyn sold the interest in Bear Garden that he had bought from Thomas Burnaby to Henslowe for £580. A year later, they made an agreement that in return for Henslowe’s share in the Fortune playhouse and its adjoining tenements, Alleyn could live, when in Southwark, rent-free for a term of twenty-four years in part of the ‘newe buildinges lately built’ at the Bear Garden, namely the gatehouse complex on Bankside begun by Peter Street around 1606.
The new gatehouse was a prelude to the demolition of the Bear Garden arena and its related buildings, by then all showing dilapidation. In 1613 Henslowe and his partner Jacob Meade then built the new dual purpose Hope playhouse and bearbaiting arena with advice and input from Alleyn. Acquisition of additional land does not seem to have been necessary and, although there would be much dissension in the years following Henslowe’s death in 1616, it seems likely that the Hope was in fact built wholly on the Crown property south-east of the previous Bear Garden on the property of the bishopric of Winchester. As well as the new playhouse/bearbaiting arena, and the recently built gatehouse, the whole precinct included a new bull house, a house for young bears and another for white bears, a stable, and a hay house built on the old dog yard.
Philip Henslowe died on 6 January 1615/16 at ‘his house at the Beeare yard on the Banke side’ where Edward Alleyn also lodged, according to the minister James Archer. In the days before his death a will was written, signed, sealed, and witnessed; on Sunday the 7th it was granted probate. His wife Agnes was his named executor but their son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, and other trusted associates of both Henslowe and Alleyn were overseers. Philip Henslowe’s older brothers had died by 1615, as had the sons of Richard, the eldest of the Henslowe brothers, but his younger brother William and his two sisters were alive. He also had one surviving nephew, John, son of his older brother Edmond. John himself had a young son, also Philip, and a daughter Elizabeth. The will determined that Agnes should have all Henslowe’s lands, tenements, hereditaments, and leases during the term of her life and receive the otherwise unbequeathed residue to her and her heir, namely Joan, wife of Edward Alleyn. Some other family members were remembered. His sisters Mary and Ann and his niece Anne Parsons would be beneficiaries of property after Agnes’s death for the terms of their lives, with the remainder to his great-nephew and godson Philip. Philip also received the lands in the Great Pike Garden bought from Henry Throgmorton. Finally, his brother William and his assigns would receive, on the death of Agnes, ‘all that my messuage mansion house and lease called the Beare garden with all the Tenementes and appurtenances therevnto belonginge, which I hould and enioye by vertue of a Lease from the Lord Bishopp of [Winton].’ No other leases were mentioned by that will: not the interest and term of years of the Unicorn properties he had acquired from Livesey and Gore’s in 1596, not those lands and gardens on which some of the dog yards had been built, and crucially on which the dual-purpose Hope playhouse and bear baiting arena lay. Moreover, there were no other beneficiaries except for a gown for each of forty poor men of the liberty of the Clink, and 40s for James Archer to preach at Henslowe’s funeral. His nephew, John Henslowe, was thus disinherited.
A clause in the will stated that any doubt or question would be heard and determined by Henslowe’s overseers. If their decision was not accepted, any legacy would be void and forfeit and would pass to Edward Alleyn and his heirs. By 23 January 1615/16, however, a bill was lodged in Chancery contesting the validity of the will. The plaintiff was the disinherited John, who had become, in effect, a ward of Philip on the death in 1592 of his father, Edmond Henslowe. John thus regarded himself as Philip’s legitimate heir. The defendants were Agnes, the notary Roger Cole, who with his servant had drawn up the will, and Edward Alleyn. In reality, the focus was on Alleyn.
The original bill and answers in this case have not been found, but we can ascertain the content from other manuscripts included in this collection. Two breviates, giving some details of the Bill and Answers, are also extant in the archives of Dulwich College. The substance of John Henslowe’s bill of complaint was that Alleyn had conspired with Roger Cole to draft and write a new will while Philip lay on his death bed, thus settling the bulk of Philip’s estate, which he estimated as worth £10,000–12,000, on Agnes, his executrix, for life. This will, John maintained, replaced a former will made largely in his favour. Alleyn, he charged, had initiated this in the knowledge that the feeble Agnes would be unable to manage the estate and, through his position as her son-in-law, its management would naturally pass to him. Further, the will had been drawn up when Philip was ‘past all sence & vnderstanding’ and only able to cry ‘Noe Will Noe Will’ when the will was read to him. Alleyn had then attempted to guide Philip’s palsied hand in the signing of the will, until dissuaded, and Philip, quite able to write his name when well, had thus inscribed only a mark. Alleyn, moreover, had drawn up the clause regarding forfeitures. Probate was then rushed through the morning after Henslowe’s death even though it was the sabbath.
The answer to John Henslowe’s bill of complaint to Chancery had been given by Alleyn and the defendants by 5 February, though it was deemed to be insufficient both then and on 30 April 1616 by Master Richard Moore. According to the breviates, the defendants denied all confederacy, or that Philip had made any other will. They maintained that Philip had often said that he did not love John, who had behaved badly towards him, and that he should never be the better for anything of his and never have a penny of his goods. On the other hand, he claimed his gratitude to Agnes, to whom he had been a servant before they married, and said he owed the greatest part of his advancement to her and had often promised to make amends to her if he should die before her. Philip, they said, had been of sound mind and perfect memory, despite his illness and palsy. On 5 January he had himself given the verbal instructions to Roger Cole for the draft of the will, which Roger had performed observing the true meaning of the instructions, saving that the overseers had thought it best on 6 January to add the clause referring any doubts and controversies to the overseers. Philip had then and of his own initiative, made Alleyn rather than Agnes, whom he described to the room as an old and feeble woman, the beneficiary of forfeited legacies. He said Alleyn would curb intransigents better. Philip also himself called for the pen and ink to make his mark. The estate had been valued by appraisers at merely £1700 12s 8d, and probate was rushed as the defendants despaired of Agnes’s life as she was so sick and weak.
Perhaps until around the date of the Master Richard Moore’s report of 30 April 1616, the administration of Henslowe’s estate by the widowed Agnes Henslowe and by Alleyn and perhaps the other overseers continued relatively smoothly. The inventory of Henslowe’s estate was presented to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury around April. Jacob continued in management, now paying to Agnes the £100 rent for the Bear Gardens/Hope while Alleyn, of course, retained his position as master of Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs alone. Alleyn also took on the wider role that Philip Henslowe had taken in his partnership with Meade. Thus it was he and Meade who agreed on 20 March 1615/16 to the discharge of a debt to Philip Henslowe with the Prince Charles’ Men.
With the case proceeding in Chancery, however, the transition could not be smooth. On 23 April, the Chancery Court allowed John to take out an order of Subpena ducens tecum, to the effect that Alleyn should bring into the court the will and its associated drafts and also the documents concerning Philip Henslowe’s lands and leases. Moreover, the court would consider a sequestration of the rents and profits of Philip’s lands, including those of the Bear Gardens/Hope. That sequestration, as far as we can ascertain from the Chancery records, did not happen. Alleyn’s counsel may have argued that until the will might be overturned, the rents and profits were rightfully due to Agnes. In due course, however, Alleyn did produce the will, together with its drafts, and these were held by the court with the allowance that they might be produced for the use of the examiner taking depositions, and then returned to the court. There was some uncertainty over whether all deeds and leases had been produced. On 17 June John Henslowe swore an affidavit that four leases held by Philip and mentioned in the inventory had not been produced. The remaining lease, John said, was held from the Crown and bought from Thomas Keyes, so it may have been for part of the property on which the Hope was built. By October 1616 Alleyn had been charged with contempt of court over the alleged failure to produce all Philip’s leases and associated evidences, and on 15 October he was threatened with imprisonment in the Fleet if he did not appear to be examined by the following Saturday. One of the questions addressed to him on his appearance on 17 October was about the assignment from John Malthouse to Burnaby of a lease from the bishop of Winchester, surely the lease of the Bear Garden property at the Barge, Bell and Cock. He deposed on that day that he had produced all that he had then in his possession concerning Philip’s estate at the beginning of the preceding May. He added that he could not call to mind all that had been in his possession without perusing what he had given to the usher of the court and added (with a touch of asperity?) that he did not think John intended that he should declare all the petty leases, bonds, and legal instruments that had been part of Phillip Henslowe’s estate.
The gathering of evidence on the question of the validity of Philip Henslowe’s will continued alongside the charge of contempt. Between May and June 1616 twelve deponents were called to answer interrogatories on behalf of the plaintiff John, with a further four called in October. Questions concerned Philip’s family, and who might be his heirs, the relationship between him and John, the health of Agnes, the progress of his last days, the circumstances of writing and witnessing of his will, and the value of his estate. The ‘Bearegarden and playhouse’ were mentioned specifically in only one interrogatory (no 12), where deponents were asked whether during Philip’s last illness, or any other time, they had heard that these leases would be left to William and when he should receive their benefit and profit. Ferrers and Meade agreed that they had at some time heard Philip name William as a beneficiary of the leases but did not know when he would receive them. Robert Bromfield verified it would be after the death of Agnes. Meade had some very limited evidence of the extent and value of Philip’s estate, citing rent to Agnes Henslowe for the Bear Garden and one George Angell’s rent of £30 a year. He estimated the value of the bears, bulls, and other livestock at £50 annually but did not know the value of the players’ apparel. Deponents’ lack of knowledge of the value of Philip’s estate and goods may have been one reason for the addition of two further interrogatories. These were added on a slip four months after the first batch of depositions had been taken. One of these concerned the value and appraisal of Henslowe’s leases and goods, including bears and players’ apparel. It was answered by two appraisers of Henslowe’s will, Edward Griffen and John Pickett, and by a keeper of the players’ apparel, Randall Wood. It is interesting that they were examined on 15 and 16 October, immediately before Alleyn answered his examiners on the charge of contempt of court on 17 October. Both these appraisers reported that they had not seen any original leases but had accepted appraiser Gilbert East’s description of the leases, and from whom Henslowe had acquired each and at what price. They also said that Alleyn had produced a book in which Philip Henslowe had entered what every lease had cost him and from whom he bought them. Since that book agreed with East’s report, they accepted both it and the report at face value. Both verified they had not valued any bears, bulls, or hogs, or players’ apparel, as none were presented. So their valuation of Henslowe’s estate based on what they did see at that time was apparently around £1700, the same kind of sum given by Alleyn in his answer to John Henslowe’s bill, but very different from the valuation of over £12,000 suggested by John in his bill. Pickett deposed that afterward he and Daborne had appraised apparel to the value of £44. Randall Wood, too, testified that he saw appraised players apparel worth around £43 or £44, but also remarked that one trunk of apparel was never brought to be appraised but was, he thought, now in Alleyn’s possession.
Deponents on behalf of Alleyn, Agnes, and Roger Cole were called between August and November 1616. William Henslowe, the Bear Garden and other leases and the players’ apparel received no mention. Edward Griffen deposed in August but gave no details of the inventory, stating here too the valuation £1700 12s 8d, with the caution that £400 of that was desperate debts. It seems that the defendants’ principal concerns were to prove that Philip was sound of mind, if weak in body, when he dictated and sealed his will in his last two days, and to demonstrate the deterioration of the relationship between John Henslowe and Philip in the years before his death. Loyal women servants of Philip, who knew both Philip and Alleyn well and had helped nurse Philip in his last illness, testified to the history of the relationship between him and John. Joan Horton, Philip’s charwoman, described an incalcitrant nephew and ward who, apprenticed first to a dyer, and then a waterman, did not ‘tarrye in service,’ putting Philip to ‘great trouble, greef and vexation of mynd.’ She added that later he had taken his uncle to court, thus causing ‘much unkyndness betweene them.’ When John came to see Phillip Henslowe in his last illness Philip turned away, saying ‘A, John, Thou hast done me wronge and it sicketh to my stomache,’ Jacob Meade, too, said Philip had ‘a very hard conceipt of John’ and vowed he should ‘never have a foote of the Land or a peny worth of the Goods’ for John Henslowe had ‘wronged’ him and should never be his heir.
Over the following three months, two Chancery masters considered the evidence, and in session on 7 February 1616/17 decided the question at issue was whether Philip’s will of 6 January was valid and should therefore more suitably be settled at Common law. In the meantime, they ordered, Philip’s estate should not be distributed in a manner contrary to his will of 6 January and was retained in the hands of Agnes (and Alleyn). On the 20 June, John Henslowe’s case was dismissed from Chancery, with costs of £3 awarded to Alleyn for his vexation. By then Agnes Henslowe had died, her daughter Joan, Alleyn’s wife, being her main beneficiary. Agnes was buried in Dulwich College Chapel on 9 April 1617 but her will did not receive full probate by sentence until 3 July 1617. Probably soon after Agnes’s death, William Henslowe moved into occupation of the Hope playhouse, Bear Garden, and associated properties. On 29 June he and Jacob Meade – who always, as Cerasano writes, ‘tried to shuttle from side to side’ – apparently signed an indenture demising the Bear Garden and related properties to Meade including, as they thought, the Hope for 21 years at £100 per annum. The indenture does not seem to have survived. William, on his part, acquitted Meade from all legal actions that might be brought by anyone, especially Edward Alleyn or John Henslowe. They exchanged bonds of £500.
Edward Alleyn, no doubt mindful of all this and moreover that Philip’s properties and leases had not yet been authorised by Chancery or any court for distribution according to Philip’s will, raised a case against William in that court. The bill and related documents do not seem to have survived but are summarized in the master’s report of 16 June 1617. Alleyn had charged William with occupying the Bear Gardens/Hope without title, taking possession of documentation and insinuating himself with Alleyn’s tenants. In the meantime, John and William Henslowe had taken their case not to Common Law but to Star Chamber. In their bill of 17 May they charged not only Alleyn and Roger Cole with having drawn up a fraudulent will for Philip, but also implicated as co-conspirators several of the deponents who had been examined in Chancery on behalf of Alleyn and Cole, namely the minister, James Archer, overseer Robert Bromfield, Cole’s servant, Nicholas Shepherd, and also Joan Horton, Philip’s servant and nurse. John charged these deponents with taking bribes and committing perjury in their depositions, as well as persuading other deponents to perjure themselves.The defendants made a plea and demurrer on 26/27 May that John Henslowe’s case in Chancery had been dismissed to Common Law but were nevertheless required to make full answers to the court. This they did in July 1617, reiterating their depositions in Chancery and denying conspiracy and perjury. Alleyn, in his answer of 21 July, argued that William Henslowe had taken possession of the Bear Garden on the death of Agnes by no other authority than the very will he and John were claiming to be invalid.
Jacob Meade, still managing the Bear Gardens/Hope with William Henslowe, was also embroiled in this multi-faceted dispute with Alleyn and the two Henslowe brothers. Sometime after he and William signed their agreement on 29 June 1617, he seems to have petitioned William Herbert, earl of Pembroke and the lord chamberlain of the Household, who was then in Edinburgh with the King, complaining that Alleyn was interrupting and interfering with his assigned right to the baiting and keeping of the game in the Bear Gardens. We know this, and have an idea of the content, not from Meade’s petition, which has not been found, but from notes and a drafted response made by Alleyn. Alleyn intended to complain that Meade had not been paying rent to Alleyn, nor allowing an annual return of £60 for use of his commission as master of the Game. They also disagreed, it seems, over the value of stock.
In mid-September 1617, as a Walter Heynes later affirmed, John Henslowe died. This must have had an impact on the case in Star Chamber but we do not have the court proceedings that enable us to trace the case. At some time in the following weeks, however, William Henslowe presented a petition to Chancery directed solely against Edward Alleyn. This may have been shortly before 28 October 1617 as, on that date, Alleyn noted that he had paid 1s 6d for copying a petition of William’s. An entry in Chancery’s Book of Decrees and Orders, dated 17 November 1617, summarizes the complaint. Essentially, the case was the same as those presented by John Henslowe in January 1615/16, and to Star Chamber a year later, but stressed William’s claim to be heir as Philip’s only surviving brother. Alleyn, charged William, had persuaded the dying Philip to form a new will, while concealing an older one in William’s favour. He had then manipulated Agnes, again described as a silly old woman, thus contriving to get possession of goods, leases, and deeds worth £14,000. In an entry of 3 December 1617, but in the case of Alleyn v William Henslowe, William’s petition was described to the court by Alleyn’s counsel as scandalous and repetitious of the bill twice dismissed and left to trial at Common Law. There is no further answer recorded from William.
The following spring, probably in early May 1618, nearly a year after William had taken possession of the Bear Gardens/Hope, an information was raised in the Exchequer in the name of the attorney general, then Henry Yelverton. According to an order of the court, this was ‘by the relacion of Edward Allyn Esqr’. This did not necessarily mean that the cause was of great importance to the Crown or state. A relator action initiated by a private individual, like Alleyn, with for a fee the lodging of an ‘information’ and under the name of the attorney general, was a device used from the mid-sixteenth century in the Exchequer and in Chancery or Star Chamber. Informations could be ‘indistinguishable from private-plaintiff bills’ and the extent of the actual involvement of the attorney-general could be minimal. The relator paid all the court fees and costs of counsel but could receive a share of any fines if the suit was successful. To the relator’s advantage, and thanks to the prerogatives of the attorney general, the case might be heard more quickly, with certain court procedures and timelines bypassed.
Alleyn’s instigation is apparent from his diary. On 10 March, for example, he entered in his book that he had paid 5s for search in the Augmentation Office, 6s 8d for a copy of a survey of Henry Polsted's lands, and 2s 8d for a copy of its demise. On 8 May he paid 5s for entering his suit in the name of the attorney general, on 14 May he paid Sir John Jackson (a baron of the Exchequer) £1 2s for ‘renuing’ his Exchequer bill. Then on 15 May he paid Mr Bowyar £1 2s for ‘mr attornes’ hand to the bill and on 22 May he paid Mr Tichborne’s bill for Easter term, including £1 12s for drawing up the Exchequer bill, engrossing it and making a fair copy. The information charged William, and Jacob Meade, with non-payment of rent owing to the King and his lessees following their occupation of those parts of Philip Henslowe’s Bear Garden that were not on land of the bishopric of Winchester at the Barge, Bell and Cock on Bankside, but on the Crown land (once leased to Polsted) demised to Philip in 1595–6, and on which the Hope playhouse and bearbaiting arena had been built. William and Meade were moreover charged with setting up false boundaries on Crown land, beyond the Hope. As well as setting out these charges, the defendants were instructed upon their oaths to discover and answer for the true boundaries and limits of the Crown lands, and to calculate how much accumulated rent in their custody was due to the King and how much to his lessees.
William and Jacob Meade answered on 8 June 1618. William declared that he hoped to prove that Philip had intended him to inherit the whole of the property, including the Hope playhouse and bearbaiting arena, while Meade for his part denied that he knew if the Hope lay on Crown land. He asserted that he paid his rent to William, according to his lease, and that would be the case whether the lands he was occupying were those of the bishop of Winchester or the Crown. In addition, William professed to have been unable to find relevant records establishing the boundaries despite a diligent search. The replication in the name of the attorney general denied William’s claim to the Crown lands conveyed to Philip Henslowe and strongly upheld Alleyn’s position on the validity of the will.
Following William’s professed inability to find records, the court ordered on 20 June with the consent of both parties that a commission survey the lands in question, as conveyed to Polsted. Letters patent were issued five days later. Lionel Tichborne (Tichbourne) was commissioned, as was Robert Bromfield, a close associate of Alleyn in the parish of Saint Saviour and one of Philip Henslowe’s overseers. On 12 September Alleyn paid 18s 2d for the commission, and 3s 4d for a copy of a rejoinder, probably that of William Henslowe and Meade. Some two weeks later, on 28 September, he entered in his diary that the commission had sat that day at the Bear Garden and that he had dined with Bromfield and Tichborne with wine first at the Bear Garden.
We do not have records that reveal how the Bear Gardens/Hope was being managed while this case progressed through the court. Thus we can only assume that William Henslowe and Jacob Meade continued as they had done after the death of Agnes Henslowe, with Alleyn, of course, still master of Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs. What is apparent, however, is that over the winter of 1618–19, Alleyn sought rapprochement with William Henslowe. On 24 October they met and sealed a bond of a £1000 to stand to an award, perhaps to the proceedings in commission. In November they met with Sir Edmund Bowyer and Sir Thomas Grymes, possibly for arbitration. Then began a series of shared drinks and dinners. The culmination was on the 1 March 1618/19, when Alleyn wrote in his diary, ‘On this day william Hensloe dined with us & we seald our wrighting of peac.’ This writing does not appear to have survived. After the death of William Henslowe in around May 1624, his wife and stepdaughters pleaded in Chancery that the substance of the writing was that Alleyn granted for life, at £20 per annum, parts of the Bear Garden and playhouse to William. Whether this was the correct interpretation is uncertain. Alleyn did, however, meet with William and Jacob Meade three times in the last week of March, according to his diary, and then William is not mentioned in the diary again until October 1621, when Alleyn refers to a suit in court. What this suit was we do not know, unless it was concerned with the recorded dispute between them concerning Alleyn’s tenancy of a house he had occupied within the Bear Garden, rent free, under an agreement made with Philip Henslowe in 1610–11. After the rapprochement with William in 1619, however, Alleyn now turned his attention to his volatile relationship with Jacob Meade. Thus we find that Alleyn rode to London to meet Jacob on 25 April and spent 7s at dinner with the arbitrators. In July he paid Mr Adye 10s for advice about Jacob. On 22 September 1619 he settled with Jacob, however temporarily, writing in his Diary ‘blessed be ye god of peac.’
These negotiations between the three parties seem to have been independent of the proceedings in the Exchequer. Perhaps they indicate the pressure that William and Jacob Meade were under. By 4 June 1619 an order in the court stated that the commission had not yet been executed. On the same day, Alleyn recorded in his diary that he had paid Sir John Jackson £1 2s for a motion to have the commission proceed. On 12 June William and Jacob Meade, perhaps trying to detach themselves from the issue, through their counsel pleaded their inability as mere tenants of the bishop of Winchester to verify the boundaries of the Bear Garden and Hope playhouse, and requested that the bishop himself should appear to answer the bill and satisfy the commission. Six months later, on 27 January 1619/20, Sir John Jackson moved that the Bishop should answer by the following Monday. Alleyn recorded this on the same day, noting that he paid 23s for entering the order. On 3 February the new bishop of Winchester, Lancelot Andrewes, gave his answer, repeating the terms of the lease granted to William Payne – with its controversial boundary to Maid Lane on the south side – and accusing Philip Henslowe of altering and confounding the limits of the property. Four months later, on 30 June, it was ordered by the Court that both parties might examine witnesses.
Depositions finally took place between 19 September and 10 October 1620. While they indicate that the theatre and bear baiting arena of the Hope was built on land south of Bear Garden 3 at the Barge, Bell and Cock, as a corpus they are not entirely conclusive on whether the site was on lands of the bishopric of Winchester, so rightfully managed by William Henslowe and Jacob Meade, or on lands of the Crown, held by Edward Alleyn. For example, both Luce Bachelor, the daughter of the bearward and Bear Garden deputy, William Glover, and her sister-in-law Katherine Glover, believed the Hope was built on land held from the bishop of Winchester. John Baxter, however, believed it was built on Crown land that had been a dog yard on the former Polsted property, adjacent to Bear Garden established by William Payne on the land of the bishopric of Winchester. He added that the Hope was built there on the advice of Edward Alleyn himself that no part of the ‘Circle of the Playhouse’ should be on the bishopric’s land in case of ‘discord.’ Jane Peircy, daughter of Thomas Keyes, who from 1574 held a lease of the Crown lands of the Unicorn properties, remembered that a rental of £6 per annum from the dog yard was payable to her father. An attempt to render Alleyn’s claim more conclusive may have been why, on 23 October, two further witnesses were called in the name of the attorney general, Joan Furlong and Ruth Munday, both of whom testified to the lease of Crown lands to the Keyes, and to the ownership and development of the dog yard on Crown land.
A remaining issue was the examination by both parties of leases and other evidences that might establish the boundaries of the Bear Garden and Hope. Alleyn himself wrote in his diary, 14 November 1620, that he had been to visit the Bishop about viewing the documentation. On 22 November it was recorded in the Exchequer that the Bishop of Winchester and Alleyn, named as prosecutor, had met three times for this purpose, although Alleyn had not turned up for a fourth. The Exchequer record continued that further evidence, which had been produced by Chancery, would be distributed to the Bishop and Alleyn for their perusal prior to publication. In late January 1620/1 Walter Heynes and Lionel Tichborne, both men in Alleyn’s service, gave their testimonies. Haynes deposed on 24 January that they had compared a copy of the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock with the record at Winchester, while Tichborne confirmed on 29 January that he had examined a copy of a lease of 1537–8 and compared it with the original in the court of Augmentation. By 26 April 1621 the depositions in the suit had still not been published. Counsel for the bishop and other defendants asked for a further delay on the grounds that Haynes and Tichborne had been examined by Alleyn as prosecutor, and that they also needed to be examined on behalf of the defendants.
The following Hilary term, 1621/2 – probably in January – the bishop of Winchester raised a bill against Alleyn and Jacob Meade in the Exchequer, complaining that Alleyn had caused the ‘Information’ to be exhibited against him in the name of the attorney general. On 29 January Alleyn had dinner with Tichborne while they drew up Jacob’s and his answers, which were given in February and May. The Bishop accused Alleyn (and his tenants) of encroaching upon the bishopric’s property, and of concealing leases and other evidences that would clarify the situation. An apparently indignant Alleyn accused the bishop in reply of successive delaying tactics in the resolution of the ‘Information’ laid in the name of the attorney general and expressed surprise that the bishop did not know where or how to distrain for his rent. He laid out the history of his acquisition of the Bear Garden properties and from whom he and Philip Henslowe had acquired the relevant properties from Burnaby, Malthouse, and the Keyes, and told how he had insisted on corroboration from those lease holders of their title to the lands. The answer from Meade, his co-defendant, once again caught between two stools, supported Alleyn as he had supported William Henslowe in 1618, while for his own part he maintained his status as William’s undertenant, and denied possession or concealment of any leases or evidences as such.
Alleyn gave his testimony on 18 May 1622. That same day, the court ordered at the instigation of Mr Ould that the depositions in the case raised in the name of the attorney general, which had been taken over eighteen months previously should be published the following Friday.. Alleyn gave him 10s for the motion. On June 1 he paid a shilling for a copy of the order for publication and on the 22 June he paid £1 4s for 36 sheets of depositions at 8d per sheet, and 2s for the hand of a baron of the Exchequer. The court recorded on 9 July that the case would be heard in court the following term. That day Alleyn paid 2s 6d for the entry of the order. Thus far, however, we do not know if there was a decision made before; as Cerasano observes, the issue was resolved ‘through the deaths of the parties involved.’ Certainly, in a plea and demurrer dated 29 June 1624 that Alleyn made to Chancery, he asserted that at that date the cause was still pending in the Exchequer and waiting to be finally heard and determined.
Alleyn’s plea and demurrer was his response to a plea made by Jacob Meade on 31 May 1624 in the Chancery Court versus Alleyn and his co-defendants. These were the recently widowed Anne (or Agnes Henslowe), wife of William Henslowe, and her daughters, Mary Moushurst and Elizabeth Moushurst. Alleyn held that Jacob Meade was raising a petition based on effectively the same grounds and involving the same witnesses as the case still pending in the Exchequer in the name of the attorney general. Meade had asserted in his plea that Philip Henslowe in his will had meant William to inherit not only the lease from the bishop of Winchester of that part of the Bear Garden at the Barge, Bell and Cock, but also the lease of the Crown land on which the bear-baiting ring now stood. William had therefore, as he claimed, conveyed both properties to Meade in 1617 and Meade had paid his rent to him alone. In addition, however, Meade charged Alleyn of having conspired with William to make the above-mentioned secret agreement, their writing of peace, to the end that while William might occupy the properties leased from the Crown for the term of his life, Alleyn could claim ownership on William’s death. Alleyn had therefore, said Meade, duly claimed title on William’s death and had since then taken most of the profit into his own hands. Meade claimed to have spent £400 on building and repairs to the Hope and was therefore struggling financially.
The charges laid by Meade against William’s widow and stepdaughters seem to have turned on the question of the inability of his estate to satisfy the bond of £500 that William and Meade had apparently signed in 1617 to protect Meade against any actions imposed on him by Alleyn, or any interest or title Alleyn might claim on the income or property managed by Meade. This inability, Meade said, was the result of a secret and deceitful conveyance of the bulk of William’s lands and property and goods to Elizabeth and Mary Mousehurst in exchange for maintenance and perhaps a lump sum. In their answer of 7 June, the Mousehursts denied that William was as wealthy in land or goods as Meade had estimated but was in debt and dependent on loans his stepdaughters had made him from their portions. Moreover, he had taken offense in dealings with his quarrelsome family, they said, and had accordingly rewritten his will in favour of his family by marriage and on the 13 November 1623 chosen to assign to them the remaining years of his lease of the Bear Garden held from the bishop of Winchester.
Three weeks after the Mousehursts had given their answer, on 29 June 1624 Alleyn made his plea and demurrer. It seems that Meade was then, or shortly before, taken ill, as he made his will on 1 July, with a codicil added on the 4th. He was buried in St Saviour’s on 9 July. As far as we know, the Mousehursts do not appear to have continued with their challenge to Alleyn’s tenure of the Bear garden lease. Meade’s successor as deputy and keeper of the Bear Garden seems to have been John Nurse. A year later, on 23 June 1625, he wrote to Alleyn regarding the payment of rent and mentioned his ‘baytinge’ as the reason he was sending it with a Mr Facey instead of delivering it in person.
The following year, on 25 November 1626, Edward Alleyn died, having made his will twelve days earlier. There was some continuity on the Bear Garden properties after the tenure of Alleyn. Soon after Alleyn’s death, in February 1626/7, for example, his cousin Matthias Alleyn and his tenants were presented for defects on the Thames wharf against the Dancing Bears and westwards on the Bankside, at the same time as John Nurse was presented for the sewer along by the house where his bears were at the Bear Garden. The continuing history of entertainment there and until 1642 is explored in the Introduction: History of Entertainment; see also Appendix 1.
In his will, Alleyn had bequeathed to Dulwich College the remaining term of the leases of the Bear Garden, that is the lease of the Crown estates of the Unicorn and its associated messuages and tenements on which the bear baiting arena then lay, and his lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock, held from the Bishop of Winchester. The bequest was on condition that his cousins and executors, Matthias and Thomas Alleyn, then warden and master of the college, paid his second wife Constance the £1500 Edward Alleyn had agreed to settle on her when they married in December 1623. He referred in his will to an earlier assignment of these leases he had made five months earlier on 20 June as a somewhat tardy security for the £1500 settlement together with a statute or bond for £2000. These were to Sir Thomas Grymes (Crimes), and Sir Nicholas Carew, sons-in-law of Constance’s grandfather, George More of Loseley. A letter drafted by Alleyn sometime after 24 January 1624/5 told how Grymes had been present at the house of John Donne, Constance’s father, on 21 October 1623 for marriage negotiations. At that time, the security for money Alleyn was to settle on Constance had been leases of the manor of Lewisham and of tenements at Blackfriars. According to Young, Alleyn had been involved in prolonged lawsuits regarding these properties at the time. Eventually, under pressure from Constance’s family, he had assigned his leases of the Bear Garden properties instead. Whether Constance ever got her marriage settlement, however, is uncertain. It is uncertain for how long Matthias Alleyn held property on Bankside, for example. Furthermore, there are no manuscripts at Dulwich College relating directly to the Bear Garden dated after Alleyn’s death.
A few months after the marriage of Constance and Alleyn, on 11 March 1623/4, Constance’s grandfather, Sir George More of Loseley, acquired the Crown lease of the Unicorn and its associated messuages, tenements, and gardens. This and several other grants to More in the same year, followed a petition from him to James I in 1623 asking for a lease of Crown lands as a reward for service, indicating the financial pressure the Mores were suffering at the time. For a consideration of £100, George More then assigned the term of the lease to his eldest son and heir, Sir Robert More, in December 1624. Robert died in 1626, naming his wife Frances as executor of his will. Frances lived another ten years and and her inventory, dated 20 May 1636, included the entry, ‘Item a Lease of the Bearegarden & certayne Tenementes on the Bankside to enter about eight years to come vallued at Mx li.'
Richard Sydenham and Edward Smith had been assigned the Crown lease of the Unicorn by 13 June 1635–6. We have not yet identified Edward Smith, although he appears together with Richard Sydenham in another land grant that year as an heir and assign of an Edward Sydenham. Richard was probably brother to Sir Edward Sydenham of St Martin-in-the-Fields who died in 1675 leaving all his property in Kent to his ‘deare brother Richard Sydenham the elder of Grayes Inn Lane’ in Middlesex. Richard took up the cause of Parliament and in the early 1650s he was one of the trustees headed by Thomas Coke and nominated in an Act of Parliament to sell fee farm rents formerly paid to the Crown. In consideration of £249 13s 6d, dated 5 June and 25 July 1650, they granted the fee farm rent of £27 14s 10d of the Unicorn and its appurtenaunces to John Haughton, citizen and turner of London.
On the restoration of the monarchy, the fee farm of the Crown lands of the Unicorn would seem to have perhaps returned to the Sydenhams, for in 1664 Sir Edward Sydenham and his son Charles defended their claim to the Bear Garden on the Crown property against one made by James Davies, then master of Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs. Some three years later, it was claimed by John Squibb who was the son-in-law and, later, executor of Sir Edward Sydenham. Then, on 17 January 1671/2, Robert Squibb, grandson of Sir Edward Sydenham, purchased the freehold in a part of the wider revenue-raising sale that year of fee farms belonging to the Crown.
The Bear Garden arena remained sited on Crown lands until its demolition in 1656. As for any associated buildings and yards on the the land of the Barge, Bell and Cock, the lease from the bishop of Winchester was in the hands of Thomas Lardge in 1631. His lease was dated 25 February and confirmed on 6 March 1631/2. When he died in June 1640 the lease passed to his executor and brother-in-law, John Archer and by 1647 was in the hands of one Richard Thomas Walker at the customary rent of 20s.
Thomas Godfrey may have been the tenant and keeper of the Bear Garden as early as 1631 and seems to have remained so through all the successive upheavals and closures. In around February or March 1656, however, the ‘Hope on Bankside in Southwerke, commonly called the Bear Garden’ was demolished, reputedly by Thomas Walker. Thereafter, for the 1662 bear garden of James Davies was built nearer Maiden Lane, ‘industry took precedence over entertainment in a series of pothouses, glasshouses and metalworks.’