The suppression of the theatres by the Puritans reduced all the players to the condition of strollers of the lowest class. Legally their occupation was gone altogether. Stringent measures were taken to abolish stage-plays and interludes, and by an Act passed in 1647, all actors of plays for the time to come were declared rogues within the meaning of the Act of Elizabeth, and upon conviction were to be publicly whipped for the first offence, and for the second to be deemed incorrigible rogues, and dealt with accordingly; all stage galleries, seats, and boxes were to be pulled down by warrant of two justices of the peace; all money collected from the spectators was to be appropriated to the poor of the parish; and all spectators of plays, for every offence, fined five shillings. Assuredly these were very hard times for players, playhouses, and playgoers. Still the theatre was hard to kill. In 1648, a provost-marshal was nominated to stimulate the vigilance and activity of the lord mayor, justices, and sheriffs, and among other duties, "to seize all ballad-singers and sellers of malignant pamphlets, and to send them to the several militias, and to suppress stage-plays." Yet, all this notwithstanding, some little show of life stirred now and then in the seeming corpse of the drama. A few players met furtively, assembled a select audience, and gave a clandestine performance, more or less complete, in some obscure quarter. Secret Royalists and but half-hearted Puritans abounded, and these did not scruple to abet a breach of the law, and to be entertained now and then in the old time-honoured way.