ff 274v–5 (3 May)
...
It may please your honor According to oure dutie I and my bretheren haue had care for staye of infection of the plage and published orders in that behalfe which we intend god willing to execute with dilligence. Among other we finde one very great and dangerous inconuenience the assemblie of people to playes beare bayting fencers and prophane spectacles at the Theatre and Curtaine and other like places to which doe resorte great multitudes of | the basist sort of people; and many enfected with sores runing on them being out of our iurisdiction and some whome we cannot discerne by any diligence; and which be otherwise perilous for contagion biside the withdrawing from Gods service, the peril of ruines of so weake byldinges, and the auancement of incontinencie and most vngodly confederacies, the terrible occasion of gods wrathe and heauye striking with plages. It aualieth not to restraine them in London vnlesse the like orders be in those places adioyning to the liberties for amendment whereof I beseche your honor to be meane to the most honourable Counsel, and the rather I ame to make that humble sute for that I wold be lothe to susteine hir maiestes heauie displeasure when such forren and extraordinarie occasions shalbe be aboue all our habilities by any dilligence or foresight to redresse it And so I haue to troble your honor. At London this 3 of May 1583
Your honours to comaund
To the right honorable Sir ffrances
Walsingham knight principal
Secretarie to the Quenes most excellent
Maiestie/
539[Footnote: 539: 9 corrected from 8]
For an abstract of this record and details of its transcription in other printed sources, see the related EMLoT event.
Record title: Letter from the Lord Mayor to Sir Francis Walsingham
Repository:
LMA
Shelfmark: COL/RMD/PA/01/001
Repository location: London
This letter in May from Sir Thomas Blanke, the lord mayor, preserved in the city's Remembrancia, came in the same year as the disaster at the Bear Garden on Bankside in January, continuing official pressure on the bearbaiting enterprise there; see for example Holinshed, Third Volume of Chronicles. The appeal to suppress assemblies for entertainment apparently brought no action from the privy council, and so Blanke wrote again in July; see Letter from the Mayor of London to the Privy Council.
April 1580–May 1592; English; paper; viii + 342 + iii (with contemporary entry numbers); 279mm x 195mm; ink foliation; most pages repaired; rebound 1970 in white vellum on boards with marbled inside end covers, title on spine in black ink (first word written sideways): 'REMEMBRANCIA | I | 1579 | 22 ELIZ. | 1592 | 35 ELIZ.'
© London Metropolitan Archives (City of London), COL/RMD/PA/01/001