another of Susan Baskervile's sons, William Browne, who played with them as a hired man. A third settlement, reassuring the pensions, and substituting William Browne for Francis, who was now dead, was made on 3 June 1617, when the company were 'now comme, or shortlie to comme from the said Playhowse called the Redd Bull to the Playhowse in Drurie Lane called the Cockpitt'; and to this the parties, so far as the company were concerned, were Beeston, Heywood, Worth, Cumber, Walpole, Blaney, Robins, and Drewe. Apparently Reynolds and Read, and also Perkins and Thomas Basse, although their names were recited in the deed, refused to seal. Some further light is thrown on this by allegations of Worth, Cumber, and Blaney, in opposition to those of Mrs. Baskervile in 1623. The company of 1617 contained some members 'new come into' it, 'which were of other companyes at the tyme of graunting the first annuity'. The terms of the agreement were carefully looked into, and were found to bind the company to procure the subscription of any future new members to its terms. This was inconsistent with a proviso of 1616 that the pensions should only last so long as four of those then signing should play together; and therefore, while some of the company signed and gave bonds by way of security on an oral promise by Mrs. Baskervile that this proviso should in fact hold good, others refused to do so. These were the wiser, for in 1623, when Worth, Cumber, and Blaney were the only three of the 1617 signatories who still held together, Mrs. Baskervile sued them on their bonds, and although they applied to Chancery for equitable enforcement of the alleged oral promise, Chancery held that the agreement, being made between players, was 'vnfitt to be releeued or countenaunced in a courte of equitie'. In some other respects the players' account of the transactions differs from Mrs. Baskervile's, and in particular they alleged that the Baskerviles had secured their interest by bribing Beeston, to whom 'your oratours and the rest of thier fellowes at that tyme and long before and since did put the managing of thier whole businesses and affaires belonging vnto them ioyntly as they were players in trust', so that she knew well that whatever he promised the rest 'would allowe of the same'. This Mrs. Baskervile repudiates as regards the bribe, and does not wholly accept as regards Beeston's position in the company, although she admits that both before and after her husband's death they 'did putt much affiance in the said Huttchinson alias Beeston, concerninge the managing of their affaires'.
I am afraid that Beeston's character does not come
