now none of the most recent, helped them to get a footing in Strassburg, where they stayed until July and again played The Fall of Constantinople, as well as a play of Government.[1] In August they were at Augsburg and possibly Ulm.[2] In October they projected a return visit to Strassburg, but were rejected, 'so dies Jar hie lang genug super multorum opinionem gewessen'.[3] Possibly they fell back upon Stuttgart.[4] In February 1615 they were in Cologne, and here a queer thing happened. The whole company, with Spencer's wife and children, was converted to Catholicism by the eloquence of a Franciscan friar. The event is recorded in the town archives and also in a manuscript Franciscan chronicle preserved in the British Museum:[5]
'Twentie fowre stage players arrive out of Ingland at Collen: all
Inglish except one Germanian and one Dutchman. All Protestants.
Betwixt those and father Francis Nugent disputation was begunne and
protracted for the space of 7 or eight dayes consecutively; all of them
meeting at one place together. The chiefe among them was one N.
Spencer, a proper sufficient man. In fine, all and each of them beeing
clearlie convinced, they yielded to the truth; but felt themselves so
drie and roughharted that they knew not how to pass from the bewitching
Babylonian harlot to their true mother the Catholic church, that
always pure and virginal spouse of the lamb.'
It need hardly be said that in so Catholic a city as Cologne
this singular act of grace gave the performances of the English
comedians an extraordinary vogue. In June and July 1615
Spencer was at Strassburg, in company with one Christopher
Apileutter, who may have been the Germanian or the Dutchman
of the Cologne notice.[6] He attended the autumn fair
at Frankfort, using an imperial patent, perhaps given him
at Regensburg in 1613.[7] During the winter of 1615-16 he
was again in Cologne, still profiting by his conversion.[8] This,
however, had not made of him such a bigot, as to be unable
to render acceptable duty in the Protestant courts where his
earliest successes had been won. For a year his movements
became obscure. But in August 1617 he was playing before
the Elector of Saxony and the Emperor Matthias at Dresden.[9]
And in the following year he once more entered the Brandenburg
service. During the interval which had elapsed since
- ↑ Archiv, xv. 118.
- ↑ Ibid. xii. 320; xiii. 322.
- ↑ Ibid. xv. 119.
- ↑ Ibid. xv. 215; cf. Herz, 48.
- ↑ Wolter, 96; Cohn in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 260; Cohn, xci, from Harl. MS. 3888, The Evangelic Fruict of the Seraphicall Franciscan Order.
- ↑ Archiv, xv. 119.
- ↑ Mentzel, 59.
- ↑ Cohn in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 261; Wolter, 96.
- ↑ Meissner, 59, and in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xix. 122.
