t to be removed to Barking, seven miles from London.

The first theatre in Whitefriars seems to have been one built in the
hall of the old Whitefriars Monastery. Mr. Collier gives the duration of
this theatre as from 1586 to 1613. A memorandum from the manuscript-book
of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels to King Charles I., notes
that "I committed Cromes, a broker in Long Lane, the 16th of February,
1634, to the Marshalsey, for lending a Church robe, with the name of
Jesus upon it, to the players in Salisbury Court, to represent a flamen,
a priest of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission and
acknowledgment of his fault, I released him the 17th February, 1634."
From entries of the Wardmote Inquests of St. Dunstan's, quoted by Mr.
Noble, it appears that the Whitefriars Theatre (erected originally in
the precincts of the monastery, to be out of the jurisdiction of the
mayor) seems to have become disreputable in 1609, and ruinous in 1619,
when it is mentioned that "the rain hath made its way in, and if it be
not repaired it must soon be plucked down, or it will fall." The
Salisbury Court Theatre, that took its place, was erected about 1629,
and the Earl of Dorset somewhat illegally let it for a term of sixty-one
years and L950 down, Dorset House being afterwards sold for L4,000. The
theatre was destroyed by the Puritan soldiers in 1649, and not rebuilt
till the Restoration.

At the outbreak of pleasure and vice, after the Restoration, the actors,
long starved and crestfallen, brushed up their plumes and burnished
their tinsel. Killigrew, that clever buffoon of the Court, opened a new
theatre in Drury Lane in 1663, with a play of Beaumont and Fletcher's;
and Davenant (supposed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son) opened the
little theatre, long disused, in Salisbury Court, the rebuilding of
which was commenced in 1660, on the site of the granary of Salisbury
House. In time Davenant migrated to the old Tennis Court, in Portugal
Street, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and when the Great
Fire came it erased the Granary Theatre. In 1671, on Davenant's death,
the company (nominally managed by his widow) returned to the new theatre
in Salisbury Court, designed by Wren, and decorated, it is said, by
Grinling Gibbons. It opened with Dryden's _Sir Martin Marall_, which had
already had a run, having been first played in 1668. On Killigrew's
death, the King's and Duke's Servants united, and removed to Drury La