The Civil War concluded, and the cause of King Charles wholly lost, the actors were at their wits' end to earn bread. Certain of them resolved to defy the law, and to give theatrical performances in spite of the Parliament. Out of the wreck of the companies of the different theatres they made up a tolerable troop, and ventured to present some few plays, with as much caution and privacy as possible, at the Cockpit, in Drury Lane. This was in the winter of 1648. Doubtless there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to encourage the poor players. Playgoing had now become as a vice or a misdemeanour, to be prosecuted in secret--like dram-drinking. The Cockpit representations lasted but a few days. During a performance of Fletcher's tragedy of "Rollo, Duke of Normandy," in which such excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes and dismissed. "Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of dramatic events has left upon record, "they used to act privately, three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there, sometimes in noblemen's houses--in particular Holland House, at Kensington--where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad-piece or the like." The widow of the Earl of Holland who was beheaded in March, 1649, occupied Holland House at this time. She was the granddaughter of Sir Walter Cope, and a stout-hearted lady, who doubtless took pride in encouraging the entertainments her late lord's foes had tried so hard to suppress. Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars," acted as "Jackal" on the occasion of these furtive performances. He had made himself known to the persons of quality who patronised plays, and gave them notice of the time when and the place where the next representation would "come off." A stage-play, indeed, in those days was much what a prize-fight has been in later times--absolutely illegal, and yet assured of many persistent supporters. Goffe was probably a slim, innocent-looking youth, who was enabled to baffle the vigilance of the Puritan functionaries, and to pass freely and unsuspected between the players and their patrons. At Christmas-time and during the few days devoted to Bartholomew Fair, the actors, by dint of bribing the officer in command of the guard at Whitehall, and securing in such wise his connivance, were enabled to present performances at the Red Bull in St. John Street. Sometimes the Puritan troopers were mean enough to accept the hard-earned money of these poor players, and, nevertheless, to interrupt their performance, carrying them off to be imprisoned and punished for their breach of the law.