lows, six poor brothers, six poor sisters, and twelve poor scholars, its endowment, besides the Dulwich estate, comprising property in Lambeth and Bishopsgate, together with the Fortune Theatre, the freehold of which Alleyn had secured in 1610. During the five years covered by his diary, and possibly until his death, Alleyn personally managed the affairs of the college, his average yearly expenditure on all accounts amounting to 1,700l. The position to which he had now attained was one of some consequence. He was on visiting terms with members of the nobility, bishops, ambassadors, and other persons of note, and among his friends were the Earl of Arundel and Sir William Alexander, the poet, the latter of whom, like Ben Jonson, made him the subject of laudatory verse. He appears, too, as the patron of Thomas Dekker, John Taylor, the water poet, and other writers; and members of his own former profession were his constant guests. Of the London theatres he seems to have had an interest in the Rose, the Hope, and the Red Bull, as well as in the Fortune; but the evidence adduced by Mr. Collier to show that he also possessed a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, purchased from Shakespeare, is of modern fabrication. On 31 Oct. 1618 he let the Fortune on lease for 31 years, and on 9 Dec. 1622 he dryly records in his diary its destruction by fire. A new house, however, was in course of erection before 16 April 1622, leases of some of the shares being signed on 20 May.
On 28 June 1623, Alleyn lost his wife Joan, with whom he had evidently lived on most affectionate terms. She was buried in the college chapel on 1 July, her epitaph stating that she was 52 years of age, and died without issue. Only five months later, on 3 Dec. 1623, Alleyn married Constance, daughter of Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's. As he must have been nearly forty years her senior, the match was a strange one. Its history is given by Alleyn himself in a curious letter addressed to Dr. Donne, with whom he had causes of difference, early in 1625, and from it we learn that it was arranged as early as 31 Oct. by Alleyn's friend and neighbour, Sir Thomas Grymes, whose wife was Constance Donne's maternal aunt. Very little is known of Alleyn's life in the three years he survived this marriage. From a letter dated 23 July 1624, he seems to have been anxious at that time to obtain ‘sum further dignetie,’ by which perhaps knighthood is meant; but whatever it was, it was never conferred. In 1626 he bought a property in Simondstone in Aysgarth, and a journey, which he apparently made into Yorkshire to visit it in July, may have brought on his fatal illness. On the authority of his executor and first warden of the college he died on 25 Nov. 1626, and he was buried in the chapel two days later. So far as appears, he never had any children, and the nearest relative named in his will, dated 13 Nov. 1626, was a cousin. To his ‘dear and loving wife’ (who, on 24 June, 1630, married Samuel Harvey, of Abury Hatch) he left 100l. and her jewels, besides 1,500l. under settlement. In completion of a scheme, which he had begun in 1620 by building ten almshouses in Cripplegate, his executors were ordered to build ten others in each of the parishes of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, and St. Saviour, Southwark; and among other charitable bequests the college also received two leases in Southwark as an addition to its settled estates. The statutes of the college, prepared no doubt long before, were signed by Alleyn on 29 Sept., and his last recorded act was to add two clauses on 20 Nov. A curious feature in these statutes is the extent to which they modified the original constitution of the charity, a process which, in our own time, has been more than once repeated under authority of parliament, with the uniform result of enlarging its sphere of usefulness.
As depicted in the large collection of his own and Henslowe's papers at Dulwich, Alleyn's character was one of singular amiability, combined with great shrewdness and aptitude in business affairs; and his piety and benevolence are no less conspicuous in his early correspondence and in his diary than in his last will and in the noble foundation by which he is best remembered. That a man of so kindly a nature should have made profit from the cruelties of the Bear Garden is repugnant to modern ideas; but it was quite in character with the manners of his own time. Of literary ability and tastes he gives no sign, nor is there reason to suppose that he had a hand in any of the plays in which he performed on the stage, except perhaps in a piece styled by Henslowe ‘Tambercam.’ He evidently possessed a knowledge of music, and he is once, in 1595, formally described as a ‘musicion.’ A full-length portrait at Dulwich represents him as a man of dignity and presence, outwardly well qualified to sustain the tragic characters in which he is said to have most excelled.
