the popularity of the King's Men in their
winter home is borne out by a petition to the city authorities made by
"the constables and other officers and inhabitants of Blackfriars" in
January, 1619. They declared that to the playhouse "there is daily
such resort of people, and such multitudes of coaches (whereof many
are hackney-coaches, bringing people of all sorts), that sometimes all
our streets cannot contain them, but that they clog up Ludgate also,
in such sort that both they endanger the one the other, break down
stalls, throw down men's goods from their shops, and the inhabitants
there cannot come to their houses, nor bring in their necessary
provisions of beer, wood, coal, or hay, nor the tradesmen or
shopkeepers utter their wares, nor the passenger go to the common
water stairs without danger of their lives and limbs." "These
inconveniences" were said to last "every day in the winter time from
one or two of the clock till six at night."[367]

[Footnote 367: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 91.]

As a result of this petition the London Common Council ordered,
January 21, 1619, that "the said playhouses be suppressed, and that
the players shall from thenceforth forbear and desist from playing in
that house."[368] But the players had at Court many influential
friends, and these apparently came to their rescue. The order of the
Common Council was not put into effect; and so far as we know the only
result of this agitation was that King James on March 27 issued to his
actors a new patent specifically giving them--described as his
"well-beloved servants"--the right henceforth to play unmolested in
Blackfriars. The new clause in the patent runs: "as well within their
two their now usual houses called the Globe, within our County of
Surrey, and their private house situate in the precinct of the
Blackfriars, within our city of London."[369] At the accession of King
Charles I, the patent was renewed, June 24, 1625, with the same clause
regarding the use of Blackfriars.[370]

[Footnote 368: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 311.]

[Footnote 369: The Malone Society's _Collections_, I, 281.]

[Footnote 370: _Ibid._, I, 282.]

In 1631, however, the agitation was renewed, this time in the form of
a petition from the churchwardens and constables of the precinct of
Blackfriars to William Laud, then Bishop of London. The document gives
such eloquent testimony to the popularity of the playhouse that I have
inserted