[Footnote 156: I suspect that the theatre gave greater offense to More himself than it did to any one else, for it adjoined his home, and the audience made use of the private passage which led from Water Lane to his mansion. Unquestionably he suffered worse than any one else both from the noise and the crowds.]
In the autumn of 1580 he saw an opportunity to break the lease and close the playhouse. Farrant made the mistake of letting "two parcels thereof to two severall persons" without first gaining the written consent of More, and at once More "charged him with forfeiture of his lease." But before More could "take remedy against him" Farrant died, November 30, 1580. More, however, "entered upon the house, and refused to receive any rent but conditionally."
By his will, proved March 1, 1581, Farrant left the lease of the Blackfriars to his widow, Anne Farrant. But she had no authority over the royal choristers, nor was she qualified to manage a company of actors, even if she had had the time to do so after caring for her "ten little ones." What use, if any, was made of the playhouse during the succeeding winter we do not know. The widow writes that she, "being a sole woman, unable of herself to use the said rooms to such purpose as her said husband late used them, nor having any need or occasion to occupy them to such commodity as would discharge the rents due for the said rooms in the bill alledged, nor being able to sustain, repair, and amend the said rooms," etc.;[157] the natural inference from which is that for a time the playhouse stood unused. The widow, of course, was anxious to sublet the building to some one who could make use of it as a playhouse; and on December 25, 1580, she addressed a letter to Sir William More asking his written permission to make such a disposal of the lease. The letter has a pathetic interest that justifies its insertion here:
_To the right worshipful Sir William More, Knight, at his house near Guilford, give these with speed._
After my humble commendations, and my duty also remembered--where it hath pleased your worship to grant unto my husband in his life time one lease of your house within the Blackfriars, for the term of twenty-one years, with a proviso in the end thereof that he cannot neither let nor set the same without your worship's consent under your hand in writing. And now for that it hath pleased God to call my said husband unto His mercy, having left behind him the charge of ten small children upon my hand, and my husband besides greatly indebted, not having the revenue of one groat any way coming in, but by making the best I may of such things as he hath left behind him, to relieve my little ones. May it therefore please your worship, of your abundant clemency and accustomed goodness, to consider a poor widow's distressed estate, and for God's cause to comfort her with your worship's warrant under your hand to let and set the same to my best comodity during the term of years in the said lease contained, not doing any waste. In all which doing, I shall evermore most abundantly pray unto God for the preservation of your worship's long continuance. From Grenwich, the twenty-fifth of December,