"Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely," said the unblushing knave; "let me speak to him; I am sure he will satisfy you in this matter."
Consent was given, and Haines, putting his head in at the carriage-door, hastily informed the good Simon Patrick that "here were two Romanists inclined to become Protestants, but with yet some scruples of conscience."
"My friends," said the eager prelate to them, "if you will presently come to my house, I will satisfy you in this matter!" The scrupulous gentlemen were well content; but when an explanation ensued, the vexed bishop paid the money out of very shame, and Joe and the bailiffs spread the story. They who remembered how Haines played Lord Plausible, in the "Plain Dealer," were not at all surprised at his deceiving a bishop and a brace of bailiffs.
Sometimes his wit was of a nicer quality. When Jeremy Collier's book against the stage was occupying the public mind, a critic expressed his surprise, seeing that the stage was a mender of morals. "True," answered Joe, "but Collier is a mender of morals, too; and two of a trade, you know, never agree!"
Haines was the best comic actor, in his peculiar line of comedy, during nearly thirty years that he was one of "their majesties' servants." He died at his house in Hart Street, Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality, on the 4th of April 1701, and was buried in the gloomy churchyard of the parish, which has nothing to render it bright but the memory of the poets, artists, and actors whose bodies are there buried in peace.
Let us now consider the men in Davenant's, or the Duke's Company, who acted occasionally in Dorset Gardens, but mostly in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of these, the greatest actor was good Thomas Betterton,--and his merits claim a chapter to himself.
[27] Should be Intrigo, which Lacy really played.
[28] Other accounts say that he commenced his theatrical life early, at the "Nursery."
[Illustration: THEATRE ROYAL, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS]
The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is "Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation, remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene on the south side of the "Fields," when "Hamlet," with Betterton, as now, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all "round the square." They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison. As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine.