I said I would continue about Sir Henry and his tents and so here it is. Yes, he was the Master of the Tents, and when there was a problem with rain/snow coming into the Revels Office (based in Clerkenwell, near the Red Bull) a record of his using one of his tents to remedy the difficulty was generated.
As I wrote in a previous post, I thought he physically used the canvas of the tent to gum up or delay a water ingress problem like a leak, but then it occurred to me that what he could have done was prevent rain from making its way into the building by introducing a tent as a porch-type structure by the door, thereby preventing those entering from treading water immediately into the building.
Sir Henry was an early member of ´The Spanish Company´, which suffered a chequered existence with the onset of the famous war with Spain (including the Armada). He was like Antonio – the ´Merchant´ in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice – in that he did not, as a rule, travel with his ships but benefited from the profits on the goods that came back from their journeys. He built and owned some of these ships. In Antonio´s case, bad luck came in the shape of wreckage at sea; and Sir Henry was to be involved in similar difficulties with this aspect of his life. He is down in history as somewhat of a privateer (a state-sanctioned pirate). He also held, however, the post of the Master of the Tents, Toils, Halls and Pavilions, which meant he had a good post in the Elizabethan era keeping and supplying shelters and the trappings of catering for court activities like Hunting, Banquets and such. Where would the horses be sheltered when on Progress? Where would the Queen get changed/go to the toilet in the middle of the countryside etc.? Tents and marquees and the things for the hunt were Sir Henry´s way of work and he was knighted at the beginning of King James´ reign for this and for his privateering and other useful talents, no doubt.
At one stage he married Alice Bedingfeld, the recusant Sir Henry Bedingfeld´s daughter. But this association with both Spain and forbidden Catholicism was not to hurt him… for some reason. Sir Henry Bedingfeld was to be depicted in a Red Bull play not very flatteringly (If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody Part I), but there is no record of disapproval concerning his public drubbing and I doubt Henry Seckford was ever made the victim of drama.
The Tents position was very much associated with the building work involved at the Revels Office which, until c. 1607, was housed next door to the field-site where the Red Bull Playhouse was. That field next door was owned by Thomas Seckford, a Master of the Court of Requests, who was Sir Henry´s brother.
The Burbages would have known the Seckfords – of that we can be certain – in this extraordinarily trade-bound age. How they viewed one another I’ve no idea.
Scaffolds were important for many reasons. For building something, for putting something right, for staging something – plays and entertainments, yes, but also – executions.
King James´ son Charles I saw to it that there was a remarkable Rubens painting applied to the ceiling of the Banqueting House in Whitehall (still there), showing the glories of the Divinely-sanctioned Stuart court (´Divinely´ in that the Stuart family in England believed in the ´Divine Right of Kings´). Scaffolding was no-doubt used to access that ceiling. They were used at the Masques performed there too. And yet… finally… a scaffolding was built outside a Banqueting House window for King Charles access in order to meet his end in a beheading. The first and last public execution in England of a crowned monarch in Britain. Did the same Revels scaffolders make that stage, we wonder?
Such are the building blocks of Britain´s entertainment story. Peter Paul Rubens was Flemish; Henry Seckford’s interests were in Spain; King Charles troubled end had much to do with Catholic France. For his wife, Henrietta Maria, was a French princess who loved performance art. This British entertainment story is as much a European one, as one belonging to the U.K., as I hope this current and future research will show.