e, met with signal
discomfiture. Dogget forthwith applied to the Lord Chief Justice Holt
for his discharge under the Habeas Corpus Act, and readily obtained
it, with, it may be gathered, liberal compensation for the violence to
which he had been subjected.

The proceedings of the Lord Chamberlain had, indeed, become most
oppressive. Early in 1720, the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord
Chamberlain, took upon himself to close Drury Lane Theatre. Steele,
then one of the patentees, addressed the public upon the subject. He
had lived in friendship with the duke; he owed his seat in Parliament
to the duke's influence. He commenced with saying: "The injury which I
have received, great as it is, has nothing in it so painful as that it
comes from whence it does. When I complained of it in a private letter
to the Chamberlain, he was pleased to send his secretary to me with a
message to forbid me writing, speaking, corresponding, or applying to
him in any manner whatsoever. Since he has been pleased to send an
English gentleman a banishment from his person and counsels in a style
thus royal, I doubt not but that the reader will justify me in the
method I take to explain this matter to the town." Steele could obtain
no redress, however. He was virtually dispossessed of his rights as
patentee. He estimated his loss at nine thousand eight hundred pounds,
and concluded his statement of the case with the words: "But it is
apparent the King is grossly and shamelessly injured ... I never did
one act to provoke this attempt, nor does the Chamberlain pretend to
assign any direct reason of forfeiture, but openly and wittingly
declares that he will ruin Steele.... The Lord Chamberlain and many
others may, perhaps, have done more for the House of Hanover than I
have, but I am the only man in his majesty's dominions, who did all he
could." For some months Steele was replaced by other patentees, of
whom Cibber was one, more submissive to "the lawful monarch of the
stage," as Dennis designated the Chamberlain; but in 1721, upon the
intervention of Walpole, Steele was restored to his privileges. It is
not clear, however, that he took any legal measures to obtain
compensation for the wrong done him. Cibber is silent upon the
subject; because, it has been suggested, the Chamberlain had been
instrumental in obtaining him the appointment of poet laureate, which
could hardly have devolved upon him in right of his poetic
qualifications.

Nevertheless, Ci