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Government and Not-for-Profit
Accounting Concepts and Practices
Granof 6th Edition Solutions Manual
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Chapter 1
The Government and Not-For-Profit Environment

Questions for Review and Discussion

1. The critical distinction between for-profit businesses and not-for-profits including

governments is that businesses have profit as their main motive whereas the others
have service. A primary purpose of financial reporting is to report on an entity’s
accomplishments — how well it achieved its objectives. Accordingly, the financial
statements of businesses measure profitability, their key objective. Financial reports
of governments and other not-for-profits should not focus on profitability, since it is
not a relevant objective. Ideally, therefore, they should focus on other performance
objectives, such as how well the organizations met their service goals. In reality,
however, the goal of reporting on how well they have achieved such goals has proven
difficult to attain and the financial reports have focused mainly on financially-related
data.

2. Governments and not-for-profits are “governed” by the budget, whereas businesses

are governed by the marketplace. The budget is the key political and fiscal document
of governments and not-for-profits. It determines how an entity obtains its resources
and how it allocates them. It encapsulates most key decisions of consequence made
by the organization. In a government the budget is not merely a managerial document;
it is the law.

3. Owing to the significance of the budget, constituents want assurance that the entity
achieves its revenue estimates and complies with its spending mandates. They expect
the financial statements to report on how the budget was administered.

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

4. Interperiod equity is the concept that taxpayers of today pay for the services that they
receive and not shift the payment burden to taxpayers of the future. Financial
reporting must indicate the extent to which interperiod equity has been achieved.
Therefore, it must determine and report upon the economic costs of the services
performed (not merely the cash costs) and of the taxpayers’ contribution toward
covering those costs.

5. The matching concept may be less relevant for governments and not-for-profits than
for businesses because there may be no connection between revenues generated and
the quantity, quality or cost of services performed. An increase in the demand for, or
cost of, services provided by a homeless shelter would not necessarily result in an
increase in the amount of donations that it receives. Of course, governments and not-
for-profits are concerned with measuring interperiod equity and for that purpose the
matching concept may be very relevant.

6. Governments must maintain an accounting system that assures that restricted

resources are not inadvertently expended for inappropriate purposes. Moreover,
statement users may need separate information on the restricted resources by category
of restriction and the unrestricted resources. In practice, these requirements have led
governments to adopt a system of “fund” accounting and reporting.

7. Even governments within the same category may engage in different types of
activities. For example, some cities operate a school system whereas others do not.
Those that are not within the same category may have relatively little in common. For
example, a state government shares few characteristics with a city.

8. If a government has the power to tax, then it has command over, and access to,
resources. Therefore, its fiscal well-being cannot be assessed merely by measuring
the assets that it “owns.” For example, the fiscal condition of a city should incorporate
the wealth of the residents and businesses within the city, their earning capacity, and
the city’s willingness to exploit its tax base.

9. Many governments budget on a cash or near-cash basis. However, the cash basis of
accounting does not provide adequate information with which to assess interperiod
equity. Financial statements that satisfy the objective of reporting on interperiod
equity may not satisfy that of reporting on budgetary compliance. Moreover,
statements that report on either interperiod equity or budgetary compliance are
unlikely to provide sufficient information with which to assess service efforts and
accomplishments.

10. Measures of service efforts and accomplishments are more significant in governments
and not-for-profits because their objectives are to provide service. By contrast, the
objective of businesses is to earn a profit. Therefore, businesses can report on their
accomplishments by reporting on their profitability. Governments and not-for-profits
must report on other measures of accomplishment.

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

11. The FASB influences generally accepted accounting principles of governments in two
key ways. First, FASB pronouncements are included in the GASB “hierarchy” of
GAAP. FASB pronouncements that the GASB has specifically made applicable to
governments are included in the highest category; those that the GASB has not
specifically adopted are included in the lowest category. Second, the business-type
activities of governments are required (with a few exceptions) to follow the business
accounting principles as set forth by the FASB.

12. It is more difficult to distinguish between internal and external users in governments
than in businesses because constituents, such as taxpayers, may play significant roles
in establishing policies that are often considered within the realm of managers. Also,
legislators are internal to the extent they set policy, but external insofar as the
executive branch must account to the legislative branch.

Exercises

EX 1-1

1. a
2. c
3. c
4. c
5. b
6. c
7. d
8. c
9. b
10. c

EX 1-2

1. b
2. b
3. d
4. b
5. a
6. c
7. a
8. b
9. a
10. b

EX 1-3

a. 1. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is the independent

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

organization that establishes and improves standards of accounting and financial reporting
for U.S. state and local governments. Established in 1984 by agreement of the Financial
Accounting Foundation (FAF) and 10 national associations of state and local government
officials, the GASB is recognized by governments, the accounting industry, and the capital
markets as the official source of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for state
and local governments.

Accounting and financial reporting standards designed for the government environment
are essential because governments are fundamentally different from for-profit businesses.
Furthermore, the information needs of the users of government financial statements are
different from the needs of the users of private company financial statements. The GASB
members and staff understand the unique characteristics of governments and the
environment in which they operate.

The GASB is not a government entity; instead, it is an operating component of the FAF,
which is a private sector not-for-profit entity. Funding for the GASB comes primarily from
an accounting support fee established under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act as well as the sale of certain publications. Its standards are not
federal laws or regulations and the organization does not have enforcement authority.
Compliance with GASB’s standards, however, is enforced through the laws of some
individual states and through the audit process, when auditors render opinions on the
fairness of financial statement presentations in conformity with GAAP.

2. The mission of GASB is:

To establish and improve standards of state and local governmental accounting and
financial reporting that will:
• Result in useful information for users of financial reports, and
• Guide and educate the public, including issuers, auditors, and users of those
financial reports.
The mission is accomplished through a comprehensive and independent process that
encourages broad participation, objectively considers all stakeholder views, and is subject
to oversight by the Financial Accounting Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

3. Based on GASB’s White Paper, Governmental Accounting and Financial Reporting

is and Should be Different, due to the key environmental differences between governments
and for-profit business enterprises. The differing needs of the users of governmental and
business enterprise financial reports reflect the different environments in which the
organizations operate. Some of the principal environmental differences are:

Organizational Purposes. The purpose of the government is to enhance or maintain the

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

well-being of citizens by providing public services according to the established goals. A

government’s financial reports should give creditors, legislative and oversight officials,
citizens, and other stakeholders the information necessary to make assessments and
decisions relevant to their interests in the government’s accomplishment of its objectives.
In contrast, business enterprises focus on wealth creation, interacting only with those
segments of society that fulfill their mission of generating a financial return on investment
for shareholders. It's primary focus of reporting has been on earnings and its components,
with little or no explicit focus on nonfinancial measures of performance.

Sources of Revenue. The principal source of revenue for government is taxation, which
is a legally mandated involuntary transaction between individual citizens and businesses
and their government. The principal source of revenue of business enterprises is voluntary
exchange transactions between willing buyers and sellers.

Potential for Longevity Because of their ongoing power to tax and because of the ongoing
need for public services, governments rarely liquidate. The possibility of achieving
longevity, however, is not as likely for business enterprises. Business enterprises will go
out of existence if, for an extended period of time, they are unable to sell their products or
services for more than it costs to produce them. Further, a business may also cease to exist
if it is acquired by another entity.

Relationship with Stakeholders. The governments should meet a standard of

accountability, since the citizens are interested in evaluating inter-period equity by
determining whether current taxpayers and users of government services fully financed the
costs of providing current-period services or whether taxes and user fees from prior or
future periods were, or will be, needed to finance the current services provided. For
business, their financial reports show changes in equity of the enterprise during the current
period.

Role of the Budget. For governments, a budget takes on a special legal significance.
Governmental budgets are expressions of public policy priorities and legally authorize the
purposes for which public resources may be spent. In fact, governmental budgets can be
the primary method by which citizens and their elected representatives hold the
government’s management financially accountable. For business enterprises, the budget
represents an internal financial management tool that is controlled entirely by management
and is considered proprietary in nature.

b. 1. The purpose of the Government Finance Officers Association is to enhance and

promote the professional management of governments for the public benefit by identifying
and developing financial policies and best practices and promoting their use through
education, training, facilitation of member networking, and leadership.

The objectives of the GFOA are:

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

• Expert Knowledge. Continue to be recognized as a leading source of expert knowledge

in public financial management by exercising leadership in research, recommended
practice and policy development and information dissemination.

• Education and Training. Enhance the expertise and professionalism of financial

managers and policy makers and provide recognition for their achievements.

• Leadership Development. Engage in efforts to assist finance officers to develop the

skills and capabilities necessary to enable them to become organizational leaders as
well as technical experts.

• Raising Public Awareness of Sound Financial Policy and Practice. Take leadership in
promoting public awareness of policies and practices that enhance sound financial
management of public resources.

• Enhanced Cooperation. Cooperate with and complement the services provided by

other organizations (U.S., Canadian and international) to increase the effectiveness of
GFOA.

• Strategic Use of Technology. Provide information and analytical tools to help

governments identify and apply appropriate, economical technologies to support
efficient resource allocation, quality services and effective decision-making and to
promote citizen involvement.

• Association Operations. Conduct the operations of the Association in a manner that

exemplifies the highest standards of financial management and member service.
2. The GFOA established the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial
Reporting Program (CAFR Program) in 1945 to encourage and assist state and local
governments to go beyond the minimum requirements of generally accepted accounting
principles to prepare comprehensive annual financial reports that evidence the spirit of
transparency and full disclosure and then to recognize individual governments that succeed
in achieving that goal.

Reports submitted to the CAFR program are reviewed by selected members of the GFOA
professional staff and the GFOA Special Review Committee (SRC), which comprises
individuals with expertise in public-sector financial reporting and includes financial
statement preparers, independent auditors, academics, and other finance professionals.
3 The number of state and local governmental entities that were awarded the CAFR
Certificate for the fiscal year 2010 are:

Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting 2010 Program

Results:

College/University - 69
Municipality - 1,852

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

Council of Government - 17
Employee Benefit - 160
County - 498
School District - 495
Enterprise Fund - 408
Special District - 205
Investment Pool – 8
State - 39
Total winners 3,751
Problems

P. 1-1.

a. The authority’s cash requirements in Year 1 would be as follows (in millions):

Wages, salaries and other operating costs $6.0

Purchase of equipment $10.0
Less: Issuance of bonds 10.0 0.0
Interest on bonds 0.5
Purchase of additional equipment 0.9
Total cash outlays (revenue requirements) $7.4

b. In Year 2, they would be:

Wages, salaries and other operating costs $6.0

Interest on bonds 0.5
Total cash outlays (revenue requirements) $6.5

c. In Year 10, they would be:

Wages, salaries and other operating costs $6.0

Interest on bonds 0.5
Repayment of bonds 10.0
Total cash outlays (revenue requirements) $16.5

d. The budgeting and taxing policies fail to promote interperiod equity. The economic
costs incurred by the authority — the wages, salaries, other operating costs, and
portion of equipment consumed — were the same each year. Yet, tax payments will
depend on when the equipment was purchased and when the debt was repaid.
Taxpayers of Year 10 will have to pay for equipment that provided services to the
taxpayers of the previous nine years.

Interperiod equity could be achieved by budgeting on an accrual rather than a cash

basis. The budget would then include an annual charge of $1.3 million for
depreciation — $1 million on the ten-year equipment; $0.3 million on the three-year
equipment. Annual required revenues would be $7.8 million:

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

Wages, salaries and other operating costs $6.0

Interest on bonds 0.5
Depreciation on equipment 1.3
Total revenue requirements $7.8

This practice might, however, be objectionable to some taxpayers because it requires

that they contribute cash to the authority in years prior to those in which it will actually
be expended. Thus, for example, at the end of Year 1 the authority will have a cash
“reserve” of $0.4 million — the difference between the $7.8 million in taxes collected
and the $7.4 million in cash outlays. The authority could also achieve interperiod
equity by issuing serial bonds (those in which a portion of the principal matures each
year over the life of the issue) or by establishing and contributing to a debt service
“sinking fund.” By taking either of these approaches, the authority would, in effect,
be repaying the bonds over the period in which the equipment is used and thereby
matching equipment costs with equipment benefits.

P. 1-2

1. The information provided should, by itself, pose no obstacle to approving the loan.
For sure, revenues just cover expenditures, allowing for no excess to cover the debt
service on the loan and the additional operating expenditures that will be incurred
when the classroom building is put into use. The key issue facing a loan officer,
however, is whether the church members are both willing and fiscally able to pay for
the new facility and to cover the additional operating costs. The fiscal capacity of the
church cannot be assessed independently of that of its members.

The financial statements reveal that the church’s assets will have a market value of
$7.2 million (new and old facilities plus cash and investments) when the classroom
building is complete. If some or all of these assets are used to secure the loan, then
the bank may have a reasonable cushion against default. However, market values of
churches or other special-purpose facilities are notoriously unreliable. Moreover, for
obvious reasons, banks are reluctant to foreclose on local churches.

2. The loan officer may wish to review the financial statements for “smoking guns” such
as contingent liabilities, litigation, or unusual transactions. However, assuming that
none are found, there is likely to be little in the financial statements to provide the
basis for a loan decision.

3. If the loan officer were to approve the loan, he would likely do so in large measure
because he has had a business relationship with members of the church and has
confidence in their ability to manage the church and assure that the loan is repaid.
Accordingly, he would probably want to review whatever information is available as
to the character and credit worthiness of key church members and officers.

4. As implied in part a, as a matter of policy the church, like many not-for-profit

organizations, generates only enough revenues to meet its expenditures. If the
members opt to enhance the level of services provided by the church by building a

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

new facility — and thereby increase expenditures — then presumably they will also
increase their dues and contributions.

Financial statements of many not-for-profits are inadequate for making loan decisions
because they report only on the entities themselves. However, the entities’ true fiscal
condition cannot be determined apart from that of their constituents.

P. 1-3

The objective of budgetary compliance can best be served by recording each transaction
on the same basis as it is budgeted — in this case, on a modified cash basis. That of
interperiod equity can best be achieved by identifying the economic substance of each
transaction and recording it when it has its substantive economic impact — that is, on an
accrual basis.

1. Budgetary compliance: No expenditure recognized in 2014. Recognize the $128,000

in wages and salaries as an expenditure entirely when paid in 2015.

Interperiod equity: Recognize the amounts when earned, entirely in 2014.

2. Budgetary compliance: Recognize cost of the pension contribution when the

$170,000 payment was made in 2015.

Interperiod equity: Recognize the actuarially required pension contribution of

$225,000 in 2014, the year the employees earned the benefits, irrespective of the city’s
actual cash contribution.

3. Budgetary compliance: Recognize the vehicle cost when the cars were paid for,
$105,000 in 2014.

Interperiod equity: Recognize the vehicle cost over the three-year period in which the
vehicles will be used, $35,000 per year.

4. Budgetary compliance: Recognize the $1,000 in interest revenue when received in

2015, inasmuch as the interest revenue would increase the value of the marketable
securities and marketable securities are included within the government’s definition
of cash.

Interperiod equity: Recognize the interest when earned, in 2014.

5. Budgetary compliance: Recognize the expenditure for use of the building as the
building is paid for, $400,000 per year for 25 years.

Interperiod equity: Recognize the cost of the building as it is used, irrespective of

when it is paid for; in this case $400,000 per year for 25 years.

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

6. Budgetary compliance: Recognize the issuance of the bonds and the purchase of the
building in 2014. Recognize the expenditure for use of the building when it is paid
for, $10 million in 2036.

Interperiod equity: As previously stated, recognize the cost of the building as it is

used, irrespective of when it is paid for, in this case $400,000 per year for 25 years.

7. Budgetary compliance: Recognize the entire $120,000 in license fee revenue in 2014
as cash is received.

Interperiod equity: Recognize the license fee revenue over the period covered by the
license and in which the related inspections will be carried out, thus $60,000 for the
half-year of 2014 and $60,000 for 2015.

8. Budgetary compliance: Recognize the $300,000 borrowed as a revenue when

received in 2014, and then as an expenditure when repaid in 2015. Note that in this
example, the increase in cash may be considered “other sources of funds” rather than
as revenue. The impact on fund balance is the same, however.

Interperiod equity: This transaction would result in an increase in cash and an

offsetting increasing in a payable. No recognition would be given as a revenue or an
expenditure to either the receipt of the amount borrowed or its subsequent repayment.

P. 1-4

1. a. The statements are clearly silent as to the accomplishments of the university.

Indeed, they give no indication either as to what the university’s objectives are
or whether they have been met.

b. Efficiency is a ratio of inputs to outputs (resources to results). Inasmuch as the

statements do not report on results, the user can make no assessments as to
efficiency.

c. The statements give no information as to the nature, condition or market value

of the university’s physical properties. Equally significant they give no clues as
to what the university’s plant requirements are for the present, let alone what
they will be in the future.

d. The statements provide no indication as to what the university’s fiscal

requirements will be in the future. They say nothing, for example, about
anticipated student enrollments, state appropriations, research grants, program
requirements, etc. Accordingly, no comparison can be made between 2014 and
2015.

e. The statements indicate that the ratio of cash to both short and long-term
obligations is approximately the same in 2015 as it was in 2014. Assuming that
the cash balance was adequate for 2015 it appears that it will be adequate for
2016. However, the statements give no indication as to whether cash inflows can

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

be expected to be the same in the future as they were in the past or whether there
will be new demands for cash (e.g., for maintenance and repairs or for new
facilities or programs).

2. Each of the questions is consistent with the objectives. They demonstrate that the
financial statements of not-for-profits, if limited to the types of data included in
business-type statements, cannot possibly fulfill all the GASB or FASB objectives.
These statements provide insufficient information to assess past performance or the
adequacy of current resources to meet future requirements. At the very least they
would have to contain information on the entity’s goals and accomplishments.

P. 1-5

1. Among governments that should be considered are towns, townships, cities, school
districts, utility districts, road districts, library districts, hospital districts, community
college districts, airport authorities and transportation districts.

2. The overlapping governments may rely on the same property or citizens for their tax
revenues. Thus, to determine the “fiscal capacity” of one government it may be
necessary to assess that of the others. For example, the outstanding debt of the school
district must be taken into account in evaluating the borrowing capacity of the
overlapping city, because the debt of both governments will have to be repaid from
taxes on the same property.

P. 1-6

a. (1) Inasmuch as the city budgets on a cash basis, delaying the payment of bills
by one week would reduce the budget deficit, shifting cost to the next year. It
would have no impact on the accrual-based financial statements and only a very
minor direct impact on the city’s substantive economic well-being (i.e., the city
would have the use of the required cash for an additional few days).

(2) Speeding-up recognition of property taxes would also reduce the budget deficit
but have no impact on the financial statements and would shift revenue from one
year to another. It would have no direct impact on the city’s substantive
economic well-being as it would not affect the timing of actual cash collections.

(3) Delaying the recognition of expenditures would also reduce the budget deficit,
have no impact on the financial statements and have no impact on the city’s
substantive economic well-being. Like speeding-up recognition of property
taxes, it would not affect the timing of actual cash collections.

(4) Deferring maintenance would reduce the budget deficit and reduce the
expenditures reported in the accrual-based financial statements. Assuming that
the initially planned maintenance expenditures were necessary (and that the
city’s maintenance schedule was optimal), the change would have a negative
effect on the city’s substantive well-being. It would likely result in increased
expenditures in the future.

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

Each of these proposals may substantively affect the city’s financial well-being
indirectly in that they would enable the city to legally balance its budget and thereby
avoid the adverse consequences of a deficit. Of course, sophisticated analysts might
recognize the city’s measures as gimmicks and “one-shots” that would create fiscal
pressures in the future. They might thereby downgrade the city’s credit rating or take
other actions that would have a negative impact on the city’s fiscal well-being.

b. Accounting principles do not directly affect an entity’s economic well-being.

However, if they change the data presented in budgets or other financial reports that
are relied upon to make legal determinations, credit assessments, or other decisions,
their indirect impact can be profound. As a consequence of those decisions the city
can be denied loans or grants (or have to incur higher interest costs) or alter the
allocation of its resources.

P. 1-7

There are no clear-cut answers to these questions. It addresses an issue that has been on the
GASB’s agenda since the board was first established and will be dealt with in greater depth
later in the text in the chapter on business-type activities.

1. In a broad sense, the financial reporting objectives of the private company are likely
to be similar to those of the government. Financial reporting should provide
information on the past performance and current financial condition of the
department. To be sure, the owners of the private company measure performance in
terms of profitability, whereas the citizens of the town are concerned mainly with
“service” (subject to the constraint that costs are covered by fees). This difference
alone may have important implications as to the types of data that are collected and
how they are reported. From a practical perspective, however, the “traditional”
information requirements — data on revenues, expenditures, assets and liabilities —
are likely to be the same.

2. In light of the requirement that the department was expected to break-even, there are
likely to be few operating differences between the information needs of the managers
of the department as owned and operated by the private company as opposed to the
town.

P. 1-8

1. Assuming that the PAC is profit oriented and is thereby interested in maximizing the
present value of incremental cash flows, the decision is straight-forward:

Additional annual net cash flows: 20 students x

50 weeks x incremental revenues of $30 ($130 less $100) $30,000
Present value of an annuity of $1 for 3 periods at 10 percent 2.4869
Present value of net cash flows $74,607

Because the present value of the incremental cash inflows exceeds the asset cost of
$60,000, the PAC should acquire the asset.

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Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

2. The CYA, by contrast has no such convenient algorithm to rely upon. The key
question faced by the CYA is whether alternative uses of the $60,000 would better
enable it to fulfill its mission. The limited information provided is inadequate to make
a decision.

3. The objective of not-for-profits such as the CYA is to serve their communities, not to
earn profits or maximize cash flows. Hence, the conventional discounted cash flow
capital budgeting model is not appropriate because it focuses on cash flows. To be
appropriate for a not-for-profit, a capital budgeting model would have to take into
account the benefits that relate specifically to the organizations’ unique objectives.

Nevertheless, for some capital budgeting decisions, the conventional discounted cash
flow approaches may be appropriate. These would include purchase decisions, for
example, when the benefits to be derived from the asset under consideration are cash
savings rather than enhanced service.

P. 1-9

1. Were the city to accept the offer, its total savings would be only $8.1 million.

Wages and salaries $4.0

Supplies 2.6
Other cash expenditures 1.3
Rent 0.2
Total savings $8.1

The cost of obtaining the service from the private company would be $8.5 million.
Hence the offer should be rejected.

For purposes of this decision, the cost of $8.9 million used to establish billing rates is
not relevant. It includes allocated overhead costs, some of which could not be reduced
were the city to accept the offer.

2. The total savings to the city would be unaffected by its allocation policy. They would
remain at $8.1 million. Therefore, if the offer were rejected when costs were allocated,
it should also be rejected when costs were not allocated. The $7.9 million is no more
relevant than the $8.9 million. The relevant amount is still the $8.1 million in expected
savings.

There may be sound reasons for the city to allocate overhead costs for purposes of
establishing billing rates. However, the allocated costs are not relevant for the
decision whether to perform a service internally or acquire it externally.

1-13
Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

P. 1-10

a.

1. The reported pension cost should be based on the actuarially required

contribution, not on the actual cash contribution.

2. The contribution to the rainy-day reserve should be accounted for as an internal

designation of resources. The accounting should make clear that total assets of
the government are not affected by the arbitrary, nonbinding management
decision to set aside cash for a particular purpose. Thus, the transfer should
affect only asset accounts, not revenues or expenditures.

3. The securities should be accounted for at market value. In that way the gain
would not be recognized entirely in the year of sale — a year in which increase
in market price did not necessarily take place — and management could not pick
the year to enhance its revenues.

4. The city could automatically report an annual maintenance expenditure equal to

some predetermined amount (perhaps an average of expenditures over the
previous five years.) The charge would be offset by a liability (e.g., “deferred
maintenance”), which would be reduced only by actual maintenance outlays.

b. A fundamental objective of financial reporting is to report on budgetary compliance.

To the extent that the financial reports are on an accrual basis whereas the budget is
on a cash basis, they would not achieve this objective. Moreover, the reported
expenditures, for both maintenance and (though to a lesser extent) pensions could be
considered arbitrary — that is, not based on specific transactions.

Questions for Research, Analysis and Discussion

1. The GASB in 2006 issued a “white paper,” “Why Governmental Accounting and
Financial Reporting Is—and Should Be—Different,” which as implied by the title sets
forth numerous reasons as to why governments are unique and therefore justify their
own standard-setting organization. The characteristics identified include:

• Organizational purposes
• Sources of revenue
• Relations with stakeholders
• Potential for longevity
• Role of the budget

In addition the report points to several other differences in how governmental

accounting differs from business accounting:

• The reporting model has several unique features.

1-14
Granof & Khumawala 6e, Government and Not-for-Profit Accounting

• There are special issues of how to define the reporting entity.

• Long-lived assets have different purposes (e.g., in governments they are not
intended to generate cash flows).
• They engage in numerous types of nonexchange transactions.

The GASB white paper is available on the organization’s web site.

Not-for-profit entities, obviously have many of the characteristics of both governments

and businesses. Some, like agricultural cooperatives, country clubs or hospitals, are
virtually the same as businesses. Others, such as health and welfare organizations have
more of the characteristics of governments. In reality, not-for-profit entities could
legitimately be placed within the purview of either the GASB or the FASB. The
decision to place not-for-profits within the purview of the FASB was influenced more
by “political” considerations than by any fundamental organizational characteristics.

2. The GASB in its Concepts Statement No. 1, Objectives of Financial Reporting,

explicitly recognizes that “Financial reporting should provide information to assist
users in assessing the service efforts, costs, and accomplishments of the governmental
entity.” Moreover, it had devoted Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and
Accomplishments (SEA) Reporting entirely to this objective. After 20 years of
conducting research and constituent outreach on SEA reporting, GASB issued in 2009
the revised and updated version of its Concepts Statement No. 2, Service Efforts and
Accomplishments Reporting As Amended by GASB Concepts Statements No. 3 and No.
5 and offers the strongest endorsement to date of enhanced SEA reporting. It has long
been the position of many GASB members and constituents that information on service
efforts and accomplishments (SEA) should indeed be incorporated into comprehensive
annual financial reports. Nevertheless, many other constituents of the GASB believe
that, even though, information on SEA is important, it does not relate directly to
financial reporting and should be reported in separate statements. Accordingly, the
GASB has not yet formally proposed incorporating SEA information in the
Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR).

1-15
Other documents randomly have
different content
1581 Pompey. A play on 26 December 1581 is anonymous, but may
possibly be the Cupid and Psyche mentioned as ‘plaid at Paules’ in
Gosson’s Playes Confuted of 1582.[35]
In the course of 1582 Sebastian Westcott died, and this event led
to an important development in the dramatic activities of the boys.
[36] Hitherto their performances, when not at Court, had been in
their own quarters ‘at Paules’, although the notice of 1578, as well as
Gosson’s reference, suggests that the public were not altogether
excluded from their rehearsals. Probably they used their singing
school, which may have been still, as in the twelfth century, the
church of St. Gregory itself.[37] This privacy, even if something of a
convention, had perhaps enabled them to utilize the services of the
grammar school when they had occasion to make a display of
erudition.[38] After Westcott’s death, however, they appear to have
followed the example of the Chapel, who had already in 1576 taken
a step in the direction of professionalism, by transferring their
performances to Farrant’s newly opened theatre at the Blackfriars.
Here, if the rather difficult evidence can be trusted, the Paul’s boys
appear to have joined them, and to have formed part of a composite
company, to which Lord Oxford’s boys also contributed, and which
produced the Campaspe and Sapho and Phao of the earl’s follower
John Lyly. Lyly took these plays to Court on 1 January and 3 March
1584, and Henry Evans, who was also associated with the
enterprise, took a play called Agamemnon and Ulysses on 27
December. On all three occasions the official patron of the company
was the Earl of Oxford. In Agamemnon and Ulysses it must be
doubtful whether the Paul’s boys had any share, for in the spring of
1584 the Blackfriars theatre ceased to be available, and the
combination probably broke up.[39] This, however, was far from
being the end of Lyly’s connexion with the boys, for the title-pages
of no less than five of his later plays acknowledge them as the
presenters. They had, indeed, a four years’ period of renewed
activity at Court, under the mastership of Thomas Giles, who, being
already almoner, became Master of the Song School on 22 May
1584, and in the following year received a royal commission to ‘take
up’ boys for the choir, analogous to that ordinarily granted to
masters of the Chapel Children.[40] There is no specific mention of
plays in the document, but its whole basis is in the service which the
boys may be called upon to do the Queen in music and singing.
Under Giles the company appeared at Court nine times during four
winter seasons; on 26 February 1587, on 1 January and 2 February
1588, on 27 December 1588, 1 January and 12 January 1589, and
on 28 December 1589, 1 January and 6 January 1590. The title-
pages of Lyly’s Endymion, Galathea, and Midas assign the
representation of these plays at Court to a 2 February, a 1 January,
and a 6 January respectively. Endymion must therefore belong to
1588 and Midas to 1590; for Galathea the most probable of the
three years is 1588. Mother Bombie and Love’s Metamorphosis can
be less precisely dated, but doubtless belong to the period 1587–90.
At some time or other, and probably before 1590, the Paul’s boys
performed a play of Meleager, of which an abstract only, without
author’s name, is preserved. It is not, I think, to be supposed that
Lyly, although he happened to be a grandson of the first High Master
of Colet’s school, had any official connexion either with that
establishment or with the choir school. It is true that Gabriel Harvey
says of him in 1589, ‘He hath not played the Vicemaster of Poules
and the Foolemaster of the Theatre for naughtes’.[41] But this is
merely Harvey’s jesting on the old dramatic sense of the term ‘vice’,
and the probabilities are that Lyly’s relation as dramatist to Giles as
responsible manager of the company was much that which had
formerly existed between John Heywood and Sebastian Westcott.
Nevertheless, it was this connexion which ultimately brought the
Paul’s plays to a standstill. Lyly was one of the literary men
employed about 1589 to answer the Martin Marprelate pamphleteers
in their own vein, and to this end he availed himself of the Paul’s
stage, apparently with the result that, when it suited the
government to disavow its instruments, that stage was incontinently
suppressed.[42] The reason may be conjectural, but the fact is
undoubted. The Paul’s boys disappear from the Court records after
1590. In 1591 the printer of Endymion writes in his preface that
‘Since the Plaies in Paules were dissolved, there are certaine
Commedies come to my handes by chaunce’, and the prolongation of
this dissolution is witnessed to in 1596 by Thomas Nashe, who in his
chaff of Gabriel Harvey’s anticipated practice in the Arches says,
‘Then we neede neuer wish the Playes at Powles vp againe, but if
we were wearie with walking, and loth to goe too farre to seeke
sport, into the Arches we might step, and heare him plead; which
would bee a merrier Comedie than euer was old Mother Bomby’.[43]
A last theatrical period opened for the boys with the appointment
about 1600 of a new master. This was one Edward Pearce or Piers,
who had become a Gentleman of the Chapel on 16 March 1589, and
by 15 August 1600, when his successor was sworn in, had ‘yealded
up his place for the Mastership of the children of Poules’.[44] I am
tempted to believe that in reviving the plays Pearce had the
encouragement of Richard Mulcaster, who had become High Master
of the grammar school in 1596, and during his earlier mastership of
Merchant Taylors had on several occasions brought his boys to
Court. Pearce is first found in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s
Accounts as payee for a performance on 1 January 1601, but several
of the extant plays produced during this section of the company’s
career are of earlier date, and one of them, Marston’s i Antonio and
Mellida, can hardly be later than 1599. A stage direction of this play
apparently records the names of two of the performers as Cole and
Norwood.[45] The Paul’s boys, therefore, were ‘up again’ before their
rivals of the Chapel, who cannot be shown to have begun in the
Blackfriars under Henry Evans until 1600.[46] This being so, they
were probably also responsible for Marston’s revision in 1599 of
Histriomastix, which by giving offence to Ben Jonson, led him to
satire Marston’s style in Every Man Out of His Humour, and so
introduced the ‘war of the theatres’.[47] Before the end of 1600 they
had probably added to their repertory Chapman’s Bussy d’Ambois,
and certainly The Maid’s Metamorphosis, The Wisdom of Dr.
Dodipoll, and Jack Drum’s Entertainment, all three of which were
entered on the Stationers’ Register, and the first two printed, during
that year. Jack Drum’s Entertainment followed in 1601 and contains
the following interesting passage of autobiography:[48]
Sir Edward Fortune. I saw the Children of Powles last night,
And troth they pleas’d me prettie, prettie well:
The Apes in time will doe it handsomely.
Planet. I faith, I like the audience that frequenteth there
With much applause: A man shall not be chokte
With the stench of Garlick; nor be pasted
To the barmie Iacket of a Beer-brewer.
Brabant Junior. ’Tis a good, gentle audience, and I hope the boies
Will come one day into the Court of requests.
Brabant Senior. I, and they had good Plaies. But they produce
Such mustie fopperies of antiquitie,
And do not sute the humorous ages backs,
With clothes in fashion.

The criticism, being a self-criticism, must not be taken too

seriously. So far as published plays are concerned, Histriomastix is
the only one to which it applies. In Marston, Chapman, and
Middleton the company had enlisted vigorous young playwrights,
who were probably not sorry to be free from the yoke of the
professional actors, and appear to have followed the exceptional
policy of printing some at least of their new plays as soon as they
were produced.
On 11 March 1601, two months after the boys made their first
bow at Court, the Lord Mayor was ordered by the Privy Council to
suppress plays ‘at Powles’ during Lent. It is to be inferred that they
were, as of old, acting in their singing school. Confirmation is
provided by a curious note appended by William Percy to his
manuscript volume of plays, presumably in sending them to be
considered with a view to production by the boys. The plays bear
dates in 1601–3, but it can hardly be taken for granted that they
were in fact produced by the Paul’s or any other company. The note
runs:
A note to the Master of Children of Powles.
 Memorandum, that if any of the fine and formost of these Pastorals
and Comoedyes conteyned in this volume shall but overeach in length
(the children not to begin before foure, after prayers, and the gates of
Powles shutting at six) the tyme of supper, that then in tyme and
place convenient, you do let passe some of the songs, and make the
consort the shorter; for I suppose these plaies be somewhat too long
for that place. Howsoever, on your own experience, and at your best
direction, be it. Farewell to you all.[49]

Both parts of Marston’s Antonio and Mellida were entered on the

Stationers’ Register in the autumn of 1601 and printed in 1602. The
second part may have been on the stage during 1601, and in the
same year the boys probably produced John Marston’s What You
Will, and certainly played ‘privately’, as the Chamberlain’s men did
‘publicly’, Satiromastix in which Dekker, with a hand from Marston,
brought his swashing blow against the redoubtable Jonson. This also
was registered in 1601 and printed in 1602. There is no sign of the
boys at Court in the winter of 1601–2. In the course of 1602 their
play of Blurt Master Constable, by Middleton, was registered and
printed. They were at Court on 1 January 1603, for the last time
before Elizabeth, and on 20 February 1604, for the first time before
James. Either the choir school or the grammar school boys took part
in the pageant speeches at the coronation triumph on 15 March
1604.[50] To the year 1604 probably belongs Westward Ho! which
introduced to the company, in collaboration with Dekker, a new
writer, John Webster. Northward Ho! by the same authors, followed
in 1605. The company was not at Court for the winter of 1604–5,
but during that of 1605–6 they gave two plays before the Princes
Henry and Charles. For these the payee was not Pearce, but Edward
Kirkham, who is described in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s account
as ‘one of the Mres of the Childeren of Pawles’. Kirkham, who was
Yeoman of the Revels, had until recently been a manager of the
Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars. It may have been the
disgrace brought upon these by Eastward Ho! in the course of 1605
that led him to transfer his activities elsewhere.[51] With him he
seems to have brought Marston’s The Fawn, probably written in
1604 and ascribed in the first of the two editions of 1606 to the
Queen’s Revels alone, in the second to them ‘and since at Poules’.
The charms of partnership with Kirkham were not, however,
sufficient to induce Pearce to continue his enterprise. The last
traceable appearance of the Paul’s boys was on 30 July 1606, when
they gave The Abuses before James and King Christian of Denmark.
[52] Probably the plays were discontinued not long afterwards. This
would account for the large number of play-books belonging to the
company which reached the hands of the publishers in 1607 and
1608. The earlier policy of giving plays to the press immediately
after production does not seem to have endured beyond 1602.
Those now printed, in addition to Bussy D’Ambois, What You Will,
Westward Ho! and Northward Ho! already mentioned, included
Middleton’s Michaelmas Term, The Phoenix, A Mad World, my
Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One, together with The
Puritan, very likely also by Middleton, and The Woman Hater, the
first work of Francis Beaumont. The Puritan can be dated, from a
chronological allusion, in 1606. The title-pages of The Woman Hater,
A Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One specify
them to have been ‘lately’ acted. It is apparent from the second
quarto of A Trick to Catch the Old One that the Children of the
Blackfriars took it over and presented it at Court on 1 January 1609.
This was probably part of a bargain as to which we have another
record. Pearce may have had at the back of his mind a notion of
reopening his theatre some day. But it is given in evidence in the
lawsuit of Keysar v. Burbadge in 1610 that, while it was still closed,
he was approached on behalf of the other ‘private’ houses in
London, those of the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, and offered a
‘dead rent’ of £20 a year, ‘that there might be a cessation of
playeinge and playes to be acted in the said howse neere St. Paules
Church’.[53] This must have been in the winter of 1608–9, just as the
Revels company was migrating from the Blackfriars to the
Whitefriars. The agent was Philip Rosseter who, with Robert Keysar,
was financially interested in the Revels company. When the King’s
men began to occupy the Blackfriars in the autumn of 1609, they
took on responsibility for half the dead rent, but whether the
arrangement survived the lawsuit of 1610 is unknown.

ii. THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AND OF THE QUEEN’S REVELS

The Children of the Chapel (1501–1603).
Masters of the Children: William Newark (1493–1509), William
Cornish (1509–23), William Crane (1523–45), Richard Bower (1545–
61), Richard Edwardes (1561–6), William Hunnis (1566–97), Richard
Farrant (acting, 1577–80), Nathaniel Giles (1597–1634).
The Children of the Queen’s Revels (1603–5).
The Children of the Revels (1605–6).
Masters: Henry Evans, Edward Kirkham, and others.
The Children of the Blackfriars (1606–9).
The Children of the Whitefriars (1609–10).
Masters: Robert Keysar and others.
The Children of the Queen’s Revels (1610–16).
Masters: Philip Rosseter and others.
[Bibliographical Note.—Official records of the Chapel are
to be found in E. F. Rimbault, The Old Cheque Book of the
Chapel Royal (1872, Camden Soc.). Most of the material for
the sixteenth-century part of the present section was
collected before the publication of C. W. Wallace, The
Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare (1912,
cited as Wallace, i), which has, however, been valuable for
purposes of revision. J. M. Manly, The Children of the
Chapel Royal and their Masters (1910, C. H. vi. 279), W. H.
Flood, Queen Mary’s Chapel Royal (E. H. R. xxxiii. 83), H.
M. Hildebrand, The Early History of the Chapel Royal (1920,
M. P. xviii. 233), are useful contributions. The chief
published sources for the seventeenth century are three
lawsuits discovered by J. Greenstreet and printed in full by
F. G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890),
127, 210, 223. These are (a) Clifton v. Robinson and Others
(Star Chamber, 1601), (b) Evans v. Kirkham (Chancery,
May–June 1612), cited as E. v. K., with Fleay’s pages, and
(c) Kirkham v. Painton and Others (Chancery, July–Nov.
1612), cited as K. v. P. Not much beyond dubious
 hypothesis is added by C. W. Wallace, The Children of the
Chapel at Blackfriars (1908, cited as Wallace, ii). But
Professor Wallace published an additional suit of
importance, (d) Keysar v. Burbadge and Others (Court of
Requests, Feb.–June 1610), in Nebraska University Studies
(1910), x. 336, cited as K. v. B. This is apparently one of
twelve suits other than Greenstreet’s, which he claims (ii.
36) to have found, with other material, which may alter the
story. In the meantime, I see no reason to depart from the
main outlines sketched in my article on Court Performances
under James the First (1909, M. L. R. iv. 153).]
The Chapel was an ancient part of the establishment of the
Household, traceable far back into the twelfth century.[54] Up to the
end of the fourteenth, we hear only of chaplains and clerks. These
were respectively priests and laymen, and the principal chaplain
came to bear the title of Dean.[55] Children of the Chapel first
appear under Henry IV, who appointed a chaplain to act as Master of
Grammar for them in 1401.[56] In 1420 comes the first of a series of
royal commissions authorizing the impressment of boys for the
Chapel service, and in 1444 the first appointment of a Master of the
Children, John Plummer, by patent.[57] It is probably to the known
tastes of Henry VI that the high level of musical accomplishment,
which had been reached by the singers of the Chapel during the
next reign was due.[58] The status and duties of the Chapel are set
out with full detail in the Liber Niger about 1478, at which date the
establishment consisted of a Dean, six Chaplains, twenty Clerks, two
Yeomen or Epistolers, and eight Children. These were instructed by
a Master of Song, chosen by the Dean from ‘the seyd felyshipp of
Chapell’, and a Master of Grammar, whose services were also
available for the royal Henchmen.[59] There is no further record of
the Master of Grammar; but with this exception the establishment
continued to exist on much the same footing, apart from some
increase of numbers, up to the seventeenth century.[60] Although
subject to some general supervision from the Lord Chamberlain and
to that extent part of the Chamber, it was largely a self-contained
organization under its own Dean. Elizabeth, however, left the post of
Dean vacant, and the responsibility of the Lord Chamberlain then
became more direct.[61] It probably did not follow, at any rate in its
full numbers, a progress, but moved with the Court to the larger
‘standing houses’, except possibly to Windsor where there was a
separate musical establishment in St. George’s Chapel.[62] It does
not seem, at any rate in Tudor times, to have had any relation to the
collegiate chapel of St. Stephen in the old palace of Westminster.[63]
The number of Children varied between eight and ten up to 1526,
when it was finally fixed by Henry VIII at twelve.[64] The chaplains
and clerks were collectively known in the sixteenth century as the
Gentlemen of the Chapel, and the most important of them, next to
one who acted as subdean, was the Master of the Children, who
trained them in music and, as time went on, also formed them into a
dramatic company. The Master generally held office under a patent
during pleasure, and was entitled in addition to his fee of 7½d. a
day or £91 8s. 1½d. a year as Gentleman and his share in the
general ‘rewards’ of the Chapel, to a special Exchequer annuity of 40
marks (£26 13s. 4d.), raised in 1526 to £40, ‘pro exhibicione
puerorum’, which is further defined in 1510 as ‘pro exhibicione
vesturarum et lectorum’ and in 1523 as ‘pro sustencione et diettes’.
[65] To this, moreover, several other payments came to be added in
the course of Henry VIII’s reign. Originally the Chapel dined and
supped in the royal hall; but this proved inconvenient, and a money
allowance from the Cofferer of the Household was substituted, which
was fixed in 1544 at 1s. a day for each Gentleman and 2s. a week
for each Child.[66] The allowance for the Children was afterwards
raised to 6d. a day.[67] Long before this, however, the Masters had
succeeded in obtaining an exceptional allowance of 8d. a week for
the breakfast of each Child, which was reckoned as making £16 a
year and paid them in monthly instalments of 26s. 8d. by the
Treasurer of the Chamber. The costs of the Masters in their journeys
for the impressment of Children were also recouped by the Treasurer
of the Chamber. And from him they also received rewards of 20s.
when Audivi vocem was sung on All Saints’ Day, £6 13s. 4d. for the
Children’s feast of St. Nicholas on 6 December, and 40s. when Gloria
in Excelsis was sung on Christmas and St. John’s Days. These were,
of course, over and above any special rewards received for dramatic
performances.[68] In the provision of vesturae the Masters were
helped by the issue from the Great Wardrobe of black and tawny
camlet gowns, yellow satin coats, and Milan bonnets, which
presumably constituted the festal and penitential arrays of the choir.
[69] The boys themselves do not appear to have received any wages
but, when their voices had broken, the King made provision for them
at the University or otherwise, and until this could be done, the
Treasurer of the Chamber sometimes paid allowances to the Master
or some other Gentleman for their maintenance and instruction.[70]
The earlier Masters were John Plummer (1444–55), Henry
Abyngdon (1455–78), Gilbert Banaster (1478–83?), probably John
Melyonek (1483–5), Lawrence Squier (1486–93), and William
Newark (1493–1509).[71] Some of these have left a musical or
literary reputation, and Banaster is said to have written an interlude
in 1482.[72] But until the end of this period only occasional traces of
dramatic performances by the Chapel can be discerned. An alleged
play by the Gentlemen at the Christmas of 1485 cannot be verified.
[73] The first recorded performance, therefore, is one of the
disguisings at the wedding of Prince Arthur and Katharine of Spain in
1501, in which two of the children were concealed in mermaids
‘singing right sweetly and with quaint hermony’.[74]
Towards the end of Henry VII’s reign begins a short series of
plays given at the rate of one or two a year by the Gentlemen, which
lasted through 1506–12.[75] Thereafter there is no other play by the
Gentlemen as such upon record until the Christmas of 1553, when
they performed a morality of which the principal character was
Genus Humanum.[76] This had been originally planned for the
coronation on the previous 1 October, and as a warrant then issued
states that a coronation play had customarily been given ‘by the
gentlemen of the chappell of our progenitoures’, it may perhaps be
inferred that Edward VI’s coronation play of ‘the story of Orpheus’ on
22 February 1547 was also by the Gentlemen.[77] In the meantime
the regular series of Chapel plays at Court had been broken after
1512, and when it was taken up again in 1517 it was not by the
Gentlemen, but by the Children.[78] This is, of course, characteristic
of the Renaissance.[79] But an immediate cause is probably to be
found in the personality of William Cornish, a talented and energetic
Master of the Children, who succeeded William Newark in the
autumn of 1509, and held office until his death in 1523.[80] Cornish
appears to have come of a musical family.[81] He took part in a play
given by the Gentlemen of the Chapel shortly before his
appointment as Master. And although it was some years before he
organized the Children into a definite company, he was the ruling
spirit and chief organizer of the elaborate disguisings which glorified
the youthful court of Henry VIII from the Shrovetide of 1511 to the
visit of the Emperor Charles V in 1522, and hold an important place
in the story, elsewhere dealt with, of the Court mask.[82] In these
revels both the Gentlemen and the Children of the Chapel, as well as
the King and his lords and ladies took a part, and they were often
designed so as to frame an interlude, which would call for the
services of skilled performers.[83]
In view of Cornish’s importance in the history of the stage at
Court, it is matter for regret that none of his dramatic writing has
been preserved, for it is impossible to attach any value to the
fantastic attributions of Professor Wallace, who credits him not only
with the anonymous Calisto and Meliboea, Of Gentleness and
Nobility, The Pardoner and the Frere, and Johan Johan, but also with
The Four Elements and The Four P. P., for the authorship of which by
John Rastell and John Heywood respectively there is good
contemporary evidence.[84] Cornish was succeeded as Master of the
Children by William Crane (1523–45) and Crane by Richard Bower,
whose patent was successively renewed by Edward VI, presumably
by Mary, and finally by Elizabeth on 30 April 1559.[85] His service
was almost certainly continuous, and it is therefore rather puzzling
to be told that a commission to take up singing children for the
Chapel, similar to that of John Melyonek in 1484, was issued in
February 1550 to Philip van Wilder, a Gentleman of the Privy
Chamber.[86] Neither the full text nor a reference to the source for
the warrant is given, and I suspect the explanation to be that it was
not for the Chapel at all. Philip van Wilder was a lutenist, one of a
family of musicians of whom others were in the royal service, and he
may not improbably have had a commission to recruit a body of
young minstrels with whom other notices suggest that he may have
been connected.[87] Bower himself had a commission for the Chapel
on 6 June 1552.[88] Although the Children continued to give
performances at Court both under Crane and under Bower, it may be
doubted whether they were quite so prominent as they had been in
Cornish’s time. Certainly they had to contend with the competition of
the Paul’s boys. Crane himself is not known to have been a
dramatist. It has been suggested that Bower’s authorship is
indicated by the initials R. B. on the title-page of Apius and Virginia
(1575), but, in view of the date of the publication, this must be
regarded as very doubtful. The chief Marian producer of plays was
Nicholas Udall, but it remains uncertain whether he wrote for the
Chapel Children. Professor Wallace has no justification whatever for
his confident assertions that John Heywood ‘not only could but did’
write plays for the Chapel, that he ‘had grown up in the Chapel
under Cornish’, and that ‘as dramatist and Court-entertainer’ he ‘was
naturally associated with the performances of the Chapel’.[89] There
is no proof whatever that Heywood began as a Chapel boy, and
although he certainly wrote plays for boys, they are nowhere said or
implied to have been of the Chapel company. There are scraps of
evidence which indicate that they may have been the Paul’s boys.[90]
It is also conceivable that they may have been Philip van Wilder’s
young minstrels.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, then, the Chapel had already
a considerable dramatic tradition behind it. But for a decade its
share in the Court revels remains somewhat obscure. The Treasurer
of the Chamber records no payments for performances to its Masters
before 1568.[91] A note in a Revels inventory of 1560 of the
employment of some white sarcenet ‘in ffurnishinge of a pley by the
children of the Chapple’ may apparently refer to any year from 1555
to 1560, and it is therefore hazardous to identify the Chapel with the
anonymous players of the interlude of 31 December 1559 which
contained ‘suche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off’.[92]
Bower may of course have retained Catholic sympathies, but he died
on 26 July 1561, and it is difficult to suppose that the high dramatic
reputation of his successor Richard Edwardes was not based upon a
greater number of Court productions than actually stand to his
name.[93] Edwardes had been a Gentleman of the Chapel from 1556
or earlier. His patent as Master is dated on 27 October 1561, and on
the following 10 December he received a commission the terms of
which served as a model for those of the next two Masterships:[94]
Memorandum quod xo die Januarii anno infra scripto istud breve
deliberatum fuit domino custodi magni Sigilli apud Westmonasterium
exequendum.
Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of England Fraunce & Ireland
defender of the faythe &c. To our right welbeloved & faythfull
counsaylour Sir Nicholas Bacon knight Keper of our great Seale of
Englande, commaundinge you that vnder our great Seale aforsayd ye
cause to be made our lettres patentes in forme followinge. To all
mayours sherifs bayliefes constables & all other our officers gretinge.
For that it is mete that our chappell royall should be furnysshed with
well singing children from tyme to tyme we have & by these presentes
do authorise our welbeloved servaunt Richard Edwardes master of our
children of our sayd chappell or his deputie beinge by his bill
subscribed & sealed so authorised, & havinge this our presente
comyssion with hym, to take as manye well singinge children as he or
his sufficient deputie shall thinke mete in all chathedrall & collegiate
churches as well within libertie[s] as without within this our realme of
England whatsoever they be, And also at tymes necessarie, horses,
boates, barges, cartes, & carres, as he for the conveyaunce of the
sayd children from any place to our sayd chappell royall [shall thinke
mete] with all maner of necessaries apperteynyng to the sayd children
 as well by lande as water at our prices ordynarye to be redely payed
when they for our service shall remove to any place or places,
Provided also that if our sayd servaunt or his deputie or deputies
bearers hereof in his name cannot forthwith remove the chyld or
children when he by vertue of this our commyssyon hathe taken hym
or them that then the sayd child or children shall remayne there vntill
suche tyme as our sayd servaunt Rychard Edwardes shall send for him
or them. Wherfore we will & commaunde you & everie of you to
whom this our comyssion shall come to be helpinge aydinge &
assistinge to the vttermost of your powers as ye will answer at your
vttermoste perylles. In wytnes wherof &c. Geven vnder our privie
seale at our Manor of St James the fourth daye of Decembre in the
fourth yere of our Raigne.
R. Jones.

At Christmas 1564–5 the boys appeared at Court in a tragedy by

Edwardes, which may have been his extant Damon and Pythias.[95]
On 2 February 1565 and 2 February 1566 they gave performances
before the lawyers at the Candlemas feasts of Lincoln’s Inn.[96]
There is nothing to show that the Chapel had any concern with the
successful play of Palamon and Arcite, written and produced by
Edwardes for Elizabeth’s visit to Oxford in September 1566.
Edwardes died on the following 31 October, and on 15 November
William Hunnis was appointed Master of the Children.[97] His formal
patent of appointment is dated 22 April 1567, and the bill for his
commission, which only differs from that of Edwardes in minor
points of detail, on 18 April.[98] Hunnis had been a Gentleman at
least since about 1553, with an interval of disgrace under Mary,
owing to his participation in Protestant plots. He was certainly
himself a dramatist, but none of his plays are known to be extant,
and a contemporary eulogy speaks of his ‘enterludes’ as if they
dated from an earlier period than that of his Mastership. It is,
however, natural to suppose that he may have had a hand in some
at least of the pieces which his Children produced at Court. The first
of these was a tragedy at Shrovetide 1568. In the following year is
said to have been published a pamphlet entitled The Children of the
Chapel Stript and Whipt, which apparently originated in some gross
offence given by the dramatic activities of the Chapel to the growing
Puritan sentiment. ‘Plaies’, said the writer, ‘will never be supprest,
while her maiesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and sattens.
They had as well be at their Popish service, in the deuils garments.’
And again, ‘Even in her maiesties chappel do these pretty upstart
youthes profane the Lordes Day by the lascivious writhing of their
tender limbs, and gorgeous decking of their apparell, in feigning
bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous heathen poets’. I should
feel more easy in drawing inferences from this, were the book
extant.[99] But it seems to indicate either that the controversialist of
1569 was less careful than his successors to avoid attacks upon
Elizabeth’s private ‘solace’, or that the idea had already occurred to
the Master of turning his rehearsals of Court plays to profit by giving
open performances in the Chapel. That the Court performances
themselves took place in the Chapel is possible, but not very likely;
the usual places for them seem to have been the Hall or the Great
Chamber.[100] But no doubt they sometimes fell on a Sunday.
The boys played at Court on 6 January 1570 and during
Shrovetide 1571. On 6 January 1572 they gave Narcissus, and on 13
February 1575 a play with a hunt in it.[101] On all these occasions
Hunnis was payee. An obvious error of the clerk of the Privy Council
in entering him as ‘John’ Hunnis in connexion with the issue of a
warrant for the payment of 1572 led Chalmers to infer the existence
of two Masters of the name of Hunnis.[102] During the progress of
1575 Hunnis contributed shows to the ‘Princely Pleasures’ of
Kenilworth, and very likely utilized the services of the boys in these.
[103] And herewith his active conduct of the Chapel performances
appears to have been suspended for some years. A play of Mutius
Scaevola, given jointly at Court by the Children of the Chapel and
the Children of Windsor on 6 January 1577, is the first of a series for
which the place of Hunnis as payee is taken by Richard Farrant. To
this series belong unnamed plays on 27 December 1577 and 27
December 1578, Loyalty and Beauty on 2 March 1579, and Alucius
on 27 December 1579.[104] Farrant, who is known as a musician,
had been a Gentleman of the Chapel in 1553, and had left on 24
April 1564, doubtless to take up the post of Master of the Children of
Windsor, in which capacity he annually presented a play at Court
from 1566–7 to 1575–6.[105] But evidently the two offices were not
regarded as incompatible, for on 5 November 1570, while still
holding his Mastership, he was again sworn in as Gentleman of the
Chapel ‘from Winsore’.[106] A recent discovery by M. Feuillerat
enables us to see that his taking over of the Chapel Children from
Hunnis in 1576 was part of a somewhat considerable theatrical
enterprise. Stimulated perhaps by the example of Burbadge’s new-
built Theatre, he took a lease of some of the old Priory buildings in
the Blackfriars; and here, either for the first time, or in continuation
of a similar use of the Chapel itself, which had provoked criticism,
the Children appeared under his direction in performances open to
the public.[107] The ambiguous relation of the Blackfriars precinct to
the jurisdiction of the City Corporation probably explains the
inclusion of the Chapel in the list of companies whose exercises the
Privy Council instructed the City to tolerate on 24 December 1578. It
is, I think, pretty clear that, although Farrant is described as Master
of the Chapel Children by the Treasurer of the Chamber from 1577
to 1580, and by Hunnis himself in his petition of 1583,[108] he was
never technically Master, but merely acted as deputy to Hunnis,
probably even to the extent of taking all the financial risks off his
hands. Farrant was paid for a comedy at Lincoln’s Inn at Candlemas
1580 and is described in the entry as ‘one of the Queen’s chaplains’.
[109] On 30 November 1580 he died and Hunnis then resumed his

normal functions.[110] The Chapel played at Court on 5 February

1581, 31 December 1581, 27 February 1582, and 26 December
1582. One of these plays may have been Peele’s Arraignment of
Paris; that of 26 December 1582 was A Game of Cards, possibly the
piece which, according to Sir John Harington, was thought
‘somewhat too plaine’, and was championed at rehearsal by ‘a
notable wise counseller’.[111] On the first three of these occasions
the Treasurer merely entered a payment to the Master of the
Children, without giving a name, but in the entry for the last play
Hunnis is specified. It is known, moreover, that Hunnis, together
with one John Newman, took a sub-lease of the Blackfriars from
Farrant’s widow on 20 December 1581. They do not seem to have
been very successful financially, for they were irregular in their rent,
and neglected their repairs. It was perhaps trepidation at the
competition likely to arise from the establishment of the Queen’s
men in 1583, which led them to transfer their interest to one Henry
Evans, a scrivener of London, from whom, when Sir William More
took steps to protect himself against the breach of covenant involved
in an alienation without his consent, it was handed on to the Earl of
Oxford and ultimately to John Lyly.[112] In November 1583,
therefore, Hunnis found himself much dissatisfied with his financial
position, and drew up the following memorial, probably for
submission to the Board of Green Cloth of the royal household:[113]
‘Maye it please your honores, William Hunnys, Mr of the Children of
hir highnes Chappell, most humble beseecheth to consider of these
fewe lynes. First, hir Maiestie alloweth for the dyett of xij children of
hir sayd Chappell daylie vid a peece by the daye, and xlli by the yeare
for theyre aparrell and all other furneture.

‘Agayne there is no ffee allowed neyther for the mr of the sayd

children nor for his ussher, and yet neuertheless is he constrayned,
over and besydes the ussher still to kepe bothe a man servant to
attend upon them and lykewyse a woman seruant to wash and kepe
them cleane.
‘Also there is no allowance for the lodginge of the sayd chilldren,
such tyme as they attend vppon the Courte, but the mr to his greate
charge is dryuen to hyer chambers both for himself, his usher
chilldren and servantes.
‘Also theare is no allowaunce for ryding jornies when occasion
serueth the mr to trauell or send into sundrie partes within this
realme, to take vpp and bring such children as be thought meete to
be trayned for the service of hir Maiestie.
‘Also there is no allowance ne other consideracion for those
children whose voyces be chaunged, whoe onelye do depend vpon
 the charge of the sayd mr vntill such tyme as he may preferr the
same with cloathing and other furniture, vnto his no smalle charge.
‘And although it may be obiected that hir Maiesties allowaunce is
no whitt less then hir Maiesties ffather of famous memorie therefore
allowed: yet considering the pryces of thinges present to the tyme
past and what annuities the mr then hadd out of sundrie abbies within
this realme, besydes sondrie giftes from the Kinge, and dyuers
perticuler ffees besydes, for the better mayntenaunce of the sayd
children and office: and besides also there hath ben withdrawne from
the sayd chilldren synce hir Maiesties comming to the crowne xijd by
the daye which was allowed for theyr breakefastes as may apeare by
the Treasorer of the Chamber his acompt for the tyme beinge, with
other allowaunces incident to the office as appeareth by the auntyent
acomptes in the sayd office which I heere omytt.

‘The burden heerof hath from tyme to tyme so hindred the Mrs of
the Children viz. Mr Bower, Mr Edwardes, my sellf and Mr Farrant: that
notwithstanding some good helpes otherwyse some of them dyed in
so poore case, and so deepelie indebted that they haue not left
scarcelye wherewith to burye them.
‘In tender consideracion whereof, might it please your honores that
the sayde allowaunce of vjd a daye apeece for the childrens dyet
might be reserued in hir Maiesties coffers during the tyme of theyre
attendaunce. And in liew thereof they to be allowed meate and drinke
within this honorable householde for that I am not able vppon so
small allowaunce eny longer to beare so heauie a burden. Or
otherwyse to be consydred as shall seeme best vnto your honorable
wysdomes.
‘[Endorsed] 1583 November. The humble peticion of the Mr of the
Children of hir highnes Chappell [and in another hand] To have
further allowances for the finding of the children for causes within
mentioned.’
The actual request made by Hunnis seems a modest one. He
seems to have thought that for his boys to have the run of their
teeth at the tables of Whitehall would be a better bargain than the
board-wages of 6d. a day. Doubtless he knew their appetites. I do
not think that the Green Cloth met his views, for in the next reign
the 6d. was still being paid and was raised to 10d. for the benefit of
Nathaniel Giles.[114] Possibly Hunnis did get back the £16 a year for
breakfasts, which seems to be the fee described by him as 1s. a day,
although that in fact works out to £18 5s. a year, and the £9 13s. 4d.
for largess, if that also had been withdrawn, since these are included
in fee lists for 1593 and 1598.[115] The ‘perticuler ffees’ to which he
refers are presumably the allowances occasionally paid by Henry for
the maintenance of boys whose voices had changed. In any case
Hunnis’s personal grievance must have been fully met by liberal
grants of Crown lands which were made him in 1585.[116] It will be
observed that he says nothing of any profits derived by him from the
dramatic activities of the Children; whether in the form of rewards at
Court or in that of admission fees to public performances. Plays were
no part of the official functions of the Chapel, although it is
consistent with the general policy of the reign towards the London
stage to suppose that Elizabeth and her economical ministers were
well enough content that the deficiencies of her Chapel maintenance
should be eked out, and her Christmas ‘solace’ rendered possible,
out of the profits of public exercise. So far, however, as the Chapel
was concerned, this convenient arrangement was, for the time,
nearly at an end. The facts with regard to the boy companies during
1584 are somewhat complicated. The Treasurer of the Chamber paid
the Master of the Chapel Children, without specifying his name, for
plays on 6 January and 2 February 1584. He also paid John Lyly for
plays by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘servants’ on 1 January and 3 March
1584, and Henry Evans for a play by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘children’ on
27 December 1584. Were this all, one would naturally assume that
Oxford had brought to Court the ‘lads’ who appeared under his
name at Norwich in 1580, and that these formed a company, quite
distinct from the Chapel, of which the Earl entrusted the
management either jointly or successively to Lyly and Evans. Lyly, of
course, is known to have been at one time in the Earl’s service.[117]
One would then be left to speculate as to which company played at
the Blackfriars during 1584 and where the other played. But the real
puzzle begins when it is realized that in the same year 1584 two of
Lyly’s plays, Campaspe and Sapho and Phao, were for the first time
printed, that these have prologues ‘at the Blackfriars’, that their title-
pages indicate their performance at Court, not by Oxford’s company,
but by the Chapel and the Paul’s boys, of which latter the Treasurer
of the Chamber makes no mention, and that the title-pages of the
two issues of Campaspe further specify, in the one case Twelfth
Night, and in the other, which is apparently corrected, New Year’s
Day, as the precise date of performance, while that of Sapho and
Phao similarly specifies Shrove Tuesday. But New Year’s Day and
Shrove Tuesday of 1584 are the days which the Treasurer of the
Chamber assigns not to the Chapel, but to Oxford’s company; and
even if you accept Professor Feuillerat’s rather far-fetched
assumption that the days referred to in the title-pages were not
necessarily those falling in the year of issue, you will not find a New
Year’s Day, or for the matter of that a Twelfth Night, since the
opening of the Blackfriars, which, if a play-day at all, is not occupied
either by some Chapel or Paul’s play of which the name is known, or
by some other company altogether.[118] The conjecture seems
inevitable that, when he found himself in financial straits and with
the rivalry of the Queen’s men to face in 1583, Hunnis came to an
arrangement with the Paul’s boys, who had recently lost Sebastian
Westcott, on the one hand, and with the Earl of Oxford and his
agents Lyly and Evans on the other, and put the Blackfriars at the
disposal of a combination of boys from all three companies, who
appeared indifferently at Court under the name of the Master or that
of the Earl. In the course of 1584 Sir William More resumed
possession of the Blackfriars. Henry Evans must have made some
temporary arrangement to enable the company to appear at Court
during the winter of 1584–5.[119] But for a year or two thereafter
there were no boys acting in London until in 1586 an arrangement
with Thomas Giles, Westcott’s successor at St. Paul’s, afforded a new
opportunity for Lyly’s pen.[120]
The Chapel had contributed pretty continuously to Court drama
for nearly a century. They now drop out of its story for about
seventeen years.[121] In addition to the two plays of Lyly, one other
of their recent pieces, Peele’s Arraignment of Paris, was printed in
1584. Two former Children, Henry Eveseed and John Bull, afterwards
well known as a musician, became Gentlemen on 30 November 1585
and in January 1586 respectively.[122] Absence from Court did not
entail an absolute cessation of dramatic activities. Performances by
the Children are recorded at Ipswich and Norwich in 1586–7 and at
Leicester before Michaelmas in 1591. There is, however, little to bear
out the suggestion that the Chapel furnished the boys who played at
Croydon, probably in the archbishop’s palace, during the summers of
1592 and 1593, other than the fact that the author of the play
produced in 1593, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, was Thomas
Nashe, who was also part author with Marlowe of Dido, one of two
plays printed as Chapel plays in 1594. The extant text of the other
play, The Wars of Cyrus, seems to be datable between 1587 and
1594. Hunnis died on 6 June 1597, and on 9 June 1597 Nathaniel
Giles, ‘being before extraordinary’, was sworn as a regular
Gentleman of the Chapel and Master of the Children. Giles, like
Farrant, came ‘from Winsore’. Born about 1559, he was educated at
Magdalen College, Oxford, and was appointed Clerk in St. George’s
Chapel, Windsor, and Master of the Children on 1 October 1595. He
earned a considerable reputation as a musician, and died in
possession of both Masterships at the age of seventy-five on 24
January 1634.[123] His patent of appointment to the Chapel Royal is
dated 14 July and his commission 15 July 1597.[124] They closely
follow in terms those granted to Hunnis.[125]
Three years later the theatrical enterprise which had been
dropped in 1584 was renewed by Giles, in co-operation with Henry
Evans, who had been associated with its final stages. The locality
chosen was again the Blackfriars, in the building reconstructed by
James Burbadge in 1596, and then inhibited, on a petition of the
inhabitants, from use as a public play-house. Of this, being ‘then or
late in the tenure or occupacion of’ Henry Evans, Richard Burbadge
gave him on 2 September 1600 a lease for twenty-one years from
the following Michaelmas at a rent of £40.[126] According to
Burbadge’s own account of the matter, Evans ‘intended then
presentlye to erect or sett vp a companye of boyes ... in the same’,
and knowing that the payment of the rent depended upon the
possibility of maintaining a company ‘to playe playes and interludes
in the said Playhowse in such sort as before tyme had bene there
vsed’, he thought it desirable to take collateral security in the form of
a bond for £400 from Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins.
[127] Long after, the Blackfriars Sharers Papers of 1635 describe the
lease as being to ‘one Evans that first sett vp the boyes commonly
called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chapell’.[128] I find
nothing in this language to bear out the contention of Professor
Wallace that Evans’s occupation of the Blackfriars extended back
long before the date of his lease, and that, as already suggested by
Mr. Fleay, the Chapel plays began again, not in 1600, but in 1597.
[129] Burbadge speaks clearly of the setting up of the company as
still an intention when the lease was drawn, and the reference to
earlier plays in the house may either be to some use of it unknown
to us between 1596 and 1600, or perhaps more probably to the
performances by Evans and others before the time of James
Burbadge’s reconstruction. Mr. Fleay’s suggestion rested, so far as I
can judge, upon the evidence for the existence of Jonson’s Case is
Altered as early as January 1599 and its publication as ‘acted by the
children of the Blacke-friers’. But this publication was not until 1609
and represents a revision made not long before that date; and as
will be seen the company did not use the name Children of the
Blackfriars until about 1606. There is no reason to suppose that they
were the original producers of the play. A confirmatory indication for
1600 as the date of the revival may be found in the appearance of
the Chapel at Court, for the first time since 1584, on 6 January and
22 February 1601. On both occasions Nathaniel Giles was payee.
The performance of 6 January, described by the Treasurer of the
Chamber as ‘a showe with musycke and speciall songes’ was
probably Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels, which that description well fits;
that of 22 February may have been the anonymous Contention
between Liberality and Prodigality. Both of these were published in
1601. Jonson has preserved for us in his Folio of 1616 the list of the
principal actors of Cynthia’s Revels, who were ‘Nat. Field, Sal. Pavy,
Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Rob. Baxter and Ioh. Frost’. The
induction of the play is spoken by ‘Iacke’ and two other of the
Children, of whom one, impersonating a spectator, complains that
‘the vmbrae, or ghosts of some three or foure playes, departed a
dozen yeeres since, haue bin seene walking on your stage heere’.
Liberality and Prodigality may be one of the old-fashioned plays here
scoffed at, but it is probable that Jonson also had in mind Lyly’s
Love’s Metamorphosis, which was published in 1601 as ‘first playd by
the Children of Paules, and now by the Children of the Chappell’, and
there may have been other revivals of the same kind. The company
was included in the Lenten prohibition of 11 March 1601. Later in
the year they produced Jonson’s Poetaster, containing raillery of the
common stages, which stimulated a reply in Dekker’s Satiromastix,
and which, together with their growing popularity, sufficiently
explains the reference to the ‘aerie of children, little eyases’ in
Hamlet.[130] The Poetaster was published in 1602 and the actor-list
of the Folio of 1616 contains the names of ‘Nat. Field, Sal Pavy, Tho.
Day, Ioh. Underwood, Wil. Ostler and Tho. Marton’. The full name of
Pavy, who died after acting for three years, is given as Salathiel in
the epigram written to his memory by Jonson; it appears as Salmon
in a document which adds considerably to our knowledge both of
the original constitution of the company and of the lines on which it
was managed. This is a complaint to the Star Chamber by one Henry
Clifton, Esq., of Toftrees, Norfolk, against a serious abuse of the
powers of impressment entrusted under the royal commission to
Nathaniel Giles.[131] Clifton alleged that Giles, in confederacy with
Evans, one James Robinson and others, had set up a play-house for
their own profit in the Blackfriars, and under colour of the
commission had taken boys, not for the royal service in the Chapel
Royal, but employment in acting interludes. He specified as so taken,
‘John Chappell, a gramer schole scholler of one Mr. Spykes schole
neere Criplegate, London; John Motteram, a gramer scholler in the
free schole at Westmi[n]ster; Nathan ffield, a scholler of a gramer
schole in London, kepte by one Mr. Monkaster; Alvery Trussell, an
apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and Thomas
Grymes, apprentices to Richard and Georg Chambers; Salmon Pavey,
apprentice to one Peerce’. These were all children ‘noe way able or
fitt for singing, nor by anie the sayd confederates endevoured to be
taught to singe’. Finally they had made an attempt upon Clifton’s
own son Thomas, a boy of thirteen, who had been seized by
Robinson in Christ Church cloister on or about 13 December 1600,
as he went from Clifton’s house in Great St. Bartholomew’s to the
grammar school at Christ Church, and carried off to the play-house
‘to exercyse the base trade of a mercynary enterlude player, to his
vtter losse of tyme, ruyne and disparagment’. Clifton went to the
Blackfriars, where his son was ‘amongste a companie of lewde and
dissolute mercenary players’, and made a protest; but Giles,
Robinson, and Evans replied that ‘yf the Queene would not beare
them furth in that accion, she should gett another to execute her
comission for them’, that ‘they had aucthoritie sufficient soe to take
any noble mans sonne in this land’, and that ‘were yt not for the
benefitt they made by the sayd play howse, whoe would, should
serve the Chappell with children for them’. Then they committed
Thomas Clifton to the charge of Evans in his father’s presence, with
a threat of a whipping if he was not obedient, and ‘did then and
there deliuer vnto his sayd sonne, in moste scornefull disdaynfull and
dispightfull manner, a scrolle of paper, conteyning parte of one of
theire sayd playes or enterludes, and him, the sayd Thomas Clifton,
comaunded to learne the same by harte’. Clifton appealed to Sir
John Fortescue and got a warrant from him for the boy’s release
after a day and a night’s durance. It was not, however, until a year
later, on 15 December 1601, that he made his complaint.[132] During
the following Christmas Giles brought the boys to Court on 6 and 10
January and 14 February 1602, and then with the hearing of the
case in the Star Chamber during Hilary Term troubles began for the
syndicate. Evans was censured ‘for his vnorderlie carriage and
behauiour in takinge vp of gentlemens childeren against theire wills
and to ymploy them for players and for other misdemeanors’, and it
was decreed that all assurances made to him concerning the play-
house or plays should be void and should be delivered up to be
cancelled.[133] Evans, however, had apparently prepared himself
against this contingency by assigning his lease to his son-in-law
Alexander Hawkins on 21 October 1601. This at least is one
explanation of a somewhat obscure transaction. According to Evans
himself, the assignment was to protect Hawkins from any risk upon
the bond given to Burbadge. On the other hand, there had already
been negotiations for the sale of a half interest in the undertaking to
three new partners, Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas
Kendall, and it was claimed later by Kirkham that the assignment to
Hawkins had been in trust to reassign a moiety to these three, in
return for a contribution of capital variously stated at from £300 to
£600. No such reassignment was, however, carried out.[134] But
although the lease from Burbadge was certainly not cancelled as a
result of the Star Chamber decree, it probably did seem prudent that
the original managers of the theatre should remain in the
background for a time. Nothing more is heard of James Robinson,
while the partnership between Evans and Hawkins on the one side
and Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall on the other was brought into
operation under articles dated on 20 April 1602. For the observance
of these Evans and Hawkins gave a bond of £200.[135] Kirkham,
Rastall, and Kendall in turn gave Evans a bond of £50 as security for
a weekly payment of 8s., ‘because after the said agreements made,
the complainant [Kirkham] and his said parteners would at their
directions haue the dieting and ordering of the boyes vsed about the
plaies there, which before the said complainant had, and for the
which he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed great
sommes of monie’.[136]
Of the new managers, Rastall was a merchant and Kendall a
haberdasher, both of London.[137] Kirkham has generally been
assumed to be the Yeoman of the Revels, but of this there is not, so
far as I know, any definite proof. The association did not prove an
harmonious one. According to Evans, Kirkham and his fellows made
false information against him to the Lord Chamberlain, as a result of
which he was ‘comaunded by his Lordship to avoyd and leave the
same’, had to quit the country, and lost nearly £300 by the charge
he was put to and the negligence of Hawkins in looking after his
profits.[138] This seems to have been in May 1602. Meanwhile the
performances continued. The company did not appear at Court
during the winter of 1602–3, but Sir Giles Goosecap and possibly
Chapman’s Gentleman Usher were produced by them before the end
of Elizabeth’s reign; and on 18 September 1602 a visit was paid to
the theatre by Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, of which the
following account is preserved in the journal of Frederic Gerschow, a
member of his suite:[139]
‘Von dannen sind wir auf die Kinder-comoediam gangen, welche im
Argument iudiciret eine castam viduam, war eine historia einer
königlichen Wittwe aus Engellandt. Es hat aber mit dieser Kinder-
comoedia die Gelegenheit: die Königin hält viel junger Knaben, die
sich der Singekunst mit Ernst befleissigen müssen und auf allen
Instrumenten lernen, auch dabenebenst studieren. Diese Knaben
haben ihre besondere praeceptores in allen Künsten, insonderheit
sehr gute musicos.’
‘Damit sie nun höfliche Sitten anwenden, ist ihnen aufgelegt,
wöchentlich eine comoedia zu agiren, wozu ihnen denn die Königin
ein sonderlich theatrum erbauet und mit köstlichen Kleidern zum
Ueberfluss versorget hat. Wer solcher Action zusehen will, muss so
gut als unserer Münze acht sundische Schillinge geben, und findet
sich doch stets viel Volks auch viele ehrbare Frauens, weil nutze
argumenta und viele schöne Lehren, als von andern berichtet, sollen
tractiret werden; alle bey Lichte agiret, welches ein gross Ansehen
macht. Eine ganze Stunde vorher höret man eine köstliche musicam
instrumentalem von Orgeln, Lauten, Pandoren, Mandoren, Geigen und
Pfeiffen, wie denn damahlen ein Knabe cum voce tremula in einer
Basgeigen so lieblich gesungen, dass wo es die Nonnen zu Mailand
ihnen nicht vorgethan, wir seines Gleichen auf der Reise nicht gehöret
hatten.’
This report of a foreigner must not be pressed as if it were precise
evidence upon the business organization of the Blackfriars. Yet it
forms the main basis of the theory propounded by Professor Wallace
that Elizabeth personally financed the Chapel plays and personally
directed the limitation of the number of adult companies allowed to
perform in London, as part of a deliberate scheme of reform, which
her ‘definite notion of what the theatre should be’ had led her to
plan—a theory which, I fear, makes his Children of the Chapel at
Blackfriars misleading, in spite of its value as a review of the
available evidence, old and new, about the company.[140] Professor
Wallace supposes that Edward Kirkham, acting officially as Yeoman
of the Revels, was Elizabeth’s agent, and that, even before he
became a partner in the syndicate, he dieted the boys and supplied
them with the ‘köstlichen Kleidern zum Ueberfluss’ mentioned by
Gerschow, accounting for the expenditure either through the Revels
Accounts or through some other unspecified accounts ‘yet to be
discovered’.[141] Certainly no such expenditure appeared in the
Revels Accounts, and no other official account with which Kirkham
was concerned is known. It may be pointed out that, if we took
Gerschow’s account as authoritative, we should have to suppose that
Elizabeth provided the theatre building, which we know she did not,
and I think it may be taken for granted that her payments for the
Chapel were no more than those with which we are already quite
familiar, namely the Master’s fee of £40 ‘pro exhibicione puerorum’,
the board-wages of 6d. a day for each of twelve children, possibly
the breakfast allowance of £16 a year and the largess of £9 13s. 4d.
for high feasts, and the occasional rewards for actual performances.
None of these, of course, passed through the Revels Office, and
although this office may, as in the past, have helped to furnish the
actual plays at Court, the cost of exercising in public remained a
speculation of the Master and his backers, who had to look for
recoupment and any possible profits to the sums received from
spectators. If it is true, as Gerschow seems to say, that
performances were only given on Saturdays, the high entrance
charge of 1s. is fully explained. The lawsuits, of course, bear full
evidence to the expenditure by the members of the syndicate upon
the ‘setting forward’ of plays.[142] Nor is there any ground for
asserting, as Professor Wallace does, that there were two distinct
sets of children, one lodged in or near the palace for chapel
purposes proper, and the other kept at the Blackfriars for plays.[143]
It is true that Clifton charged Giles with impressing boys who could
not sing, but Gerschow’s account proves that there were others at
the Blackfriars who could sing well enough, and it would be absurd
to suppose that there was one trained choir for the stage and
another for divine service. Doubtless, however, the needs of the
theatre made it necessary to employ, by agreement or impressment,
a larger number of boys than the twelve borne on the official
establishment.[144] And that boys whose voices had broken were
retained in the theatrical company may be inferred from the report
about 1602 that the Dowager Countess of Leicester had married
‘one of the playing boyes of the chappell’.[145] I cannot, finally, agree
with Professor Wallace in assuming that the play attended by
Elizabeth at the Blackfriars on 29 December 1601 was necessarily a
public one at the theatre; much less that it was ‘only one in a series
of such attendances’. She had dined with Lord Hunsdon at his house
in the Blackfriars. The play may have been in his great chamber, or
he may have borrowed the theatre next door for private use on an
off-day. And the actors may even more probably have been his own
company than the Chapel boys.[146]
The appointment of a new Lord Chamberlain by James I seems to
have enabled Evans to return to England. He found theatrical affairs
in a bad way, owing to the plague of 1603, and ‘speach and treatie’
arose between him and Burbadge about a possible surrender of his
lease.[147] By December, however, things looked brighter. Evans did
some repairs to the Blackfriars, and the enterprise continued.[148]
Like the adult companies, the partners secured direct royal
protection under the following patent of 4 February 1604:[149]
Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Mayors Shiriffes
Justices of Peace Baliffes Constables and to all other our De licencia
officers mynisters and lovinge Subiectes to whome theis speciali pro
presentes shall come, greeting. Whereas the Queene our Eduardo Kirkham
deerest wief hath for her pleasure and recrea[~c]on et aliis pro le
when she shall thinke it fit to have any playes or shewes
 appoynted her servauntes Edward Kirkham Alexander Revell domine
Hawkyns Thomas Kendall and Robert Payne to provyde Regine.
and bring vppe a convenient nomber of Children, whoe
shalbe called children of her Revelles, knowe ye that we have
appointed and authorized and by theis presentes doe authorize and
appoynte the said Edward Kirkham Alexander Hawkins Thomas
Kendall and Robert Payne from tyme to tyme to provide keepe and
bring vppe a convenient nomber of Children, and them to practize and
exercise in the quality of playinge by the name of Children of the
Revells to the Queene within the Black-fryers in our Cytie of London,
or in any other convenient place where they shall thinke fit for that
purpose. Wherefore we will and commaunde [you] and everie of you
to whome it shall appertayne to permytt her said Servauntes to keepe
a convenient nomber of Children by the name of Children of her
Revells and them to exercise in the quality of playing according to her
pleasure. Provided allwaies that noe such Playes or Shewes shalbee
presented before the said Queene our wief by the said Children or by
them any where publiquelie acted but by the approbacion and
allowaunce of Samuell Danyell, whome her pleasure is to appoynt for
that purpose. And theis our lettres Patentes shalbe your sufficient
warraunte in this behalfe. In witnes whereof &c., witnes our self at
Westminster the fourth day of February.
per breve de priuato sigillo &c.
Apparently it was still thought better to keep the name of Evans out
of the patent, and he was represented by Hawkins; of the nature of
Payne’s connexion with the company I know nothing. The adoption
of the name of Children of the Queen’s Revels should perhaps be
taken as indicating that, as the boy-actors grew older, the original
connexion with the Chapel became looser. The use of Giles’s
commission as a method of obtaining recruits was probably
abandoned, and there is no evidence that he had any further
personal association with the theatre.[150] The commission itself
was, however, renewed on 13 September 1604, with a new provision
for the further education of boys whose voices had changed;[151]
and in December Giles was successful in getting the board-wages
allowed for his charges raised from 6d. to 10d. a day.[152]
The Revels children started gaily on the new phase of their career,
and the Hamlet allusion is echoed in Middleton’s advice to a gallant,
‘if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars, where he
should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man’.[153] They were at
Court on 21 February 1604 and on 1 and 3 January 1605. Their
payees were Kirkham for the first year and Evans and Daniel for the
second. Evidently Daniel was taking a more active part in the
management than that of a mere licenser. Their play of 1 January
1605 was Chapman’s All Fools (1605), and to 1603–5 may also be
assigned his Monsieur d’Olive (1606), and possibly his Bussy
d’Ambois (1607), and Day’s Law Tricks (1608). I venture to
conjecture that the boys’ companies were much more under the
influence of their poets than were their adult rivals; it is noteworthy
that plays written for them got published much more rapidly than
the King’s or Prince’s men ever permitted.[154] And it is known that
one poet, who now began for the first time to work for the
Blackfriars, acquired a financial interest in the undertaking. This was
John Marston, to whom Evans parted, at an unspecified date, with a
third of the moiety which the arrangement of 1602 had left on his
hands.[155] Marston’s earliest contributions were probably The
Malcontent (1604) and The Dutch Courtesan (1605). From the
induction to the Malcontent we learn that it was appropriated by the
King’s men, in return for the performance by the boys of a play on
Jeronimo, perhaps the extant I Jeronimo, in which the King’s claimed
rights. Marston’s satirical temper did not, however, prove altogether
an asset to the company; and I fear that the deference of its
directors to literary suggestions was not compatible with that
practical political sense, which as a rule enabled the professional
players to escape conflicts with authority. The history of the next few
years is one of a series of indiscretions, which render it rather
surprising that the company should throughout have succeeded in
maintaining its vitality, even with the help of constant
reconstructions of management and changes of name. The first
trouble, the nature of which is unknown, appears to have been
caused by Marston’s Dutch Courtesan. Then came, ironically enough,
the Philotas of the company’s official censor, Samuel Daniel. Then, in
1605, the serious affair of Eastward Ho! for which Marston appears
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