dvantages, of the Bankside. Since 1315 the Field
had been in the possession of the city,[33] and had been used as a
public playground, where families could hold picnics, falconers could
fly their hawks, archers could exercise their sport, and the militia
on holidays could drill with all "the pomp and circumstance of
glorious war." In short, the Field was eminently respectable, was
accessible to the city, and was definitely associated with the idea of
entertainment. The locality, therefore, was almost ideal for the
purpose Burbage had in mind.[34]

[Footnote 33: See _The Remembrancia_, p. 274; Stow, _Survey_. The
Corporation of London held the manor on lease from St. Paul's
Cathedral until 1867.]

[Footnote 34: Doubtless, too, Burbage was influenced in his choice by
the fact that he had already made his home in the Liberty of
Shoreditch, near Finsbury Field.]

The new playhouse, of course, could not be erected in the Field
itself, which was under the control of the city; but just to the east
of the Field certain vacant land, part of the dissolved Priory of
Holywell, offered a site in every way suitable to the purpose. The
Holywell property, at the dissolution of the Priory, had passed under
the jurisdiction of the Crown, and hence the Lord Mayor and the
Aldermen could not enforce municipal ordinances there. Moreover, it
was distant from the city wall not much more than half a mile. The old
conventual church had been demolished, the Priory buildings had been
converted into residences, and the land near the Shoreditch highway
had been built up with numerous houses. The land next to the Field,
however, was for the most part undeveloped. It contained some
dilapidated tenements, a few old barns formerly belonging to the
Priory, and small garden plots, conspicuous objects in the early maps.

[Illustration: THE SITE OF THE FIRST PLAYHOUSES

Finsbury Field lies to the north (beyond Moor Field, the small
rectangular space next to the city wall), and the Holywell Property
lies to the right of Finsbury Field, between the Field and the
highway. Holywell Lane divides the garden plots; the Theatre was
erected just to the north, and the Curtain just to the south of this
lane, facing the Field. (From the _Map of London_ by Braun and
Hogenbergius representing the city as it was in 1554-1558.)]

Burbage learned that a large portion of this land lying next to the
Field was in the possession of a well-to-do gentleman named Gyles
All