h are
restrained by the number of coaches from going out, or
coming home in seasonable time, to the prejudice of their
occasions. And some persons of honor have left, and others
have refused houses for this very inconvenience, to the
prejudice and loss of the parish.

7. The Lords of the Council in former times have by order
directed that there shall be but two playhouses tolerated,
and those _without the city_, the one at the Bankside, the
other near Golding Lane (which these players still have and
use all summer), which the Lords did signify by their
letters to the Lord Mayor; and in performance thereof the
Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen did give order that
they should forbear to play any longer there, which the
players promised to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas (while he was Recorder of London) to observe,
entreating only a little time to provide themselves
elsewhere.[371]

[Footnote 371: Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879),
I, 455.]

Bishop Laud endorsed the petition with his own hand "To the Coun.
Table," and in all probability he submitted it to the consideration of
the Privy Council. If so, the Council took no action.

But in 1633, as a result of further complaints about the crowding of
coaches, the Privy Council appointed a committee to estimate the value
of the Blackfriars Theatre and "the buildings thereunto belonging,"
with the idea of removing the playhouse and paying the owners
therefor. The committee reported that "the players demanded L21,000.
The commissioners [Sir Henry Spiller, Sir William Beecher, and
Laurence Whitaker] valued it at near L3000. The Parishioners offered
towards the removing of them L100."[372] Obviously the plan of removal
was not feasible, if indeed the Privy Council seriously contemplated
such action. The only result of this second agitation was the
issuance on November 20 of special instructions to coachmen: "If any
persons, men or women, of what condition soever, repair to the
aforesaid playhouse in coach, as soon as they are gone out of their
coaches, the coachmen shall depart thence and not return till the end
of the play."[373] Garrard, in a letter to the Lord Deputy dated
January 9, 1633, says: "Here hath been an order of the Lords of the
Council hung up in a table near Paul's and the Blackfriars to command
all that resort to the playhouse there to send