hoped now to
reestablish the Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars as they had been
in his younger days. Like James Burbage, he was a man of ideas. His
plan was to interest in his undertaking the Master of the Chapel,
Nathaniel Giles, who had succeeded to the office at the death of
Hunnis in 1597, and then to make practical use of the patent granted
to the Masters of the Children to take up boys for Her Majesty's
service. Such a patent, in the normal course of events, had been
granted to Giles, as it had been to his predecessors. It read in part
as follows:

Elizabeth, by the grace of God, &c., to all mayors,
sheriffs, bailiffs, constables, and all other our officers,
greeting. For that it is meet that our Chapel Royal should
be furnished with well-singing children from time to time,
we have, and by these presents do authorize our
well-beloved servant, Nathaniel Giles, Master of our
Children of our said Chapel, or his deputy, being by his
bill subscribed and sealed, so authorized, and having this
our present commission with him, to take such and so many
children as he, or his sufficient deputy, shall think meet,
in all cathedral, collegiate, parish churches, chapels, or
any other place or places, as well within liberty as
without, within this our realm of England, whatsoever they
be.[314]

[Footnote 314: The full commission is printed in Wallace, _The
Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, p. 61.]

In such a commission Evans saw wonderful possibilities. He reasoned
that since the Queen had forced upon the Chapel Children the twofold
service of singing at royal worship and of acting plays for royal
entertainment, this twofold service should be met by a twofold
organization, the one part designed mainly to furnish sacred music,
the other designed mainly to furnish plays. Such a dual organization,
it seemed to him, was now more or less necessary, since the number of
boy choristers in the Chapel Royal was limited to twelve, whereas the
acting of plays demanded at least twice as many. Once the principle
that the Chapel Royal should supply the Queen with plays was granted,
the commission could be used to furnish the necessary actors; and the
old fiction, established by Farrant and Hunnis, of using a "private"
playhouse as a means of exercising or training the boys for Court
service, would enable the promoters to give public performances and
thus han