e to signify that by the same
authority I do authorize and appoint William Davenant,
Gent., one of Her Majesty's servants, for me and in my name
to take into his government and care the said company of
players, to govern, order, and dispose of them for action
and presentments, and all their affairs in the said house,
as in his discretion shall seem best to conduce to His
Majesty's service in that quality. And I do hereby enjoin
and command them, all and every of them, that are so
authorized to play in the said house under the privilege of
His or Her Majesty's Servants, and every one belonging as
prentices or servants to those actors to play under the same
privilege, that they obey the said Mr. Davenant and follow
his orders and directions, as they will answer the contrary;
which power and privilege he is to continue and enjoy during
that lease which Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, _alias_ Hucheson,
hath or doth hold in the said playhouse, provided he be
still accountable to me for his care and well ordering the
said company.[612]

[Footnote 611: Stopes (_op. cit._) dates this June 5, but Collier,
Malone, and Chalmers all give June 27, and Mrs. Stopes is not always
quite accurate in such matters.]

[Footnote 612: Collier, _The History of English Dramatic Poetry_
(1879), II, 32, note 1.]

Under the direction of Davenant the company acted at the Cockpit until
the closing of the theatres two years later.

The history of the playhouse during the troubled years that followed
is varied. In the churchwarden's account of St. Giles's Parish is
found the entry: "1646. Paid and given to the teacher at the Cockpit
of the children, 6_d._"[613] Apparently the old playhouse was then
being temporarily used as a school.

[Footnote 613: John Parton, _Some Account of the Hospital and Parish
of St. Giles in the Fields_, p. 235.]

Wright, in his _Historia Histrionica_, tells us that at the outbreak
of the civil war most of the actors had joined the royal army and
served His Majesty, "though in a different, yet more honorable
capacity." Some were killed, many won distinction; and "when the wars
were over, and the royalists totally subdued, most of 'em who were
left alive gathered to London, and for a subsistence endeavored to
revive their old trade privately. They made up one company out of all
the scattered members of several, and in the winter before