[Footnote 332: On December 29, 1601, Sir Dudley Carleton wrote to his friend John Chamberlain: "The Queen dined this day privately at My Lord Chamberlain's. I came even now from the Blackfriars, where I saw her at the play with all her _candidae auditrices_." From this it has been generally assumed that Elizabeth visited the playhouse in Blackfriars to see the Children act there; and Mr. Wallace, in his _The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars_, pp. 26, 87, 95-97, lays great emphasis upon it to show that the Queen was directly responsible for establishing and managing the Children at Blackfriars. But the assumption that the Queen attended a performance at the Blackfriars Playhouse is, I think, unwarranted. The Lord Chamberlain at this time was Lord Hunsdon, who lived "in the Blackfriars." No doubt on this Christmas occasion he entertained the Queen with a great dinner, and after the dinner with a play given, not in a playhouse, but in his mansion. (Lord Cobham, who was formerly Lord Chamberlain, and who also lived in Blackfriars, had similarly entertained the Queen with plays "in Blackfriars"; cf. also The Malone Society's _Collections_, II, 52.) Furthermore, the actors on this occasion were probably not the Children of the Chapel, as Mr. Wallace thinks, but Lord Hunsdon's own troupe. Possibly one of Shakespeare's new plays (_Hamlet_?) was then presented before the Queen for the first time.] Shortly after this, however, the Star Chamber passed on Clifton's complaint. The decree itself is lost, but the following reference to it is made in a subsequent lawsuit: "The said Evans ... was censured by the right honorable Court of Star Chamber for his unorderly carriage and behaviour in taking up of gentlemen's children against their wills and to employ them for players, and for other misdemeanors in the said Decree contained; and further that all assurances made to the said Evans concerning the said house or plays or interludes should be utterly void, and to be delivered up to be canceled."[333] Doubtless the decree fell with equal force upon Giles and the others connected with the enterprise, for after the Star Chamber decree Giles and Robinson disappear from the management of the playhouse. Evans was forbidden to have any connection with plays there; and for a time, no doubt, the building was closed. [Footnote 333: Fleay, _op. cit._, p. 248.]