The following year the Children gave much more serious offense by acting _Eastward Hoe_, a comedy in which Marston, Chapman, and Jonson collaborated. Not only did the play ridicule the Scots in general, and King James's creation of innumerable knights in particular, but one of the little actors was actually made, it seems, to mimic the royal brogue: "I ken the man weel; he is one of my thirty pound Knights." Marston escaped by timely flight, but Jonson and Chapman were arrested and lodged in jail, and were for a time in some danger of having their nostrils slit and their ears cropped. Both Chapman and Jonson asserted that they were wholly innocent, and Chapman openly put the blame of the offensive passages on Marston.[342] Marston, however, was beyond the reach of the King's wrath, so His Majesty punished instead the men in control of Blackfriars. It was discovered that the manager, Kirkham, had presented the play without securing the Lord Chamberlain's allowance. As a result, he and the others in charge of the Children were prohibited from any further connection with the playhouse. This doubtless explains the fact that Kirkham shortly after appears as one of the managers of Paul's Boys.[343] It explains, also, the following statement made by Evans in the course of one of the later legal documents: "After the King's most excellent Majesty, upon some misdemeanors committed in or about the plays there, _and specially upon the defendant's_ [Kirkham's] _acts and doings there_, had prohibited that no plays should be more used there," etc.[344] Not only was Kirkham driven from the management of the troupe and the playhouse closed for a time, but the Children were denied the Queen's patronage. No longer were they allowed to use the high-sounding title "The Children of the Queen's Majesty's Revels"; instead, we find them described merely as "The Children of the Revels," or as "The Children of Blackfriars."[345] [Footnote 342: See Dobell, "Newly Discovered Documents," in _The Athenaeum_, March 30, 1901.] [Footnote 343: Cunningham, _Revels_, p. xxxviii.] [Footnote 344: Fleay, _op. cit._, p. 221.] [Footnote 345: Except carelessly, as when sometimes called "The Children of the Chapel."] For a time, no doubt, affairs at the playhouse were at a standstill. Evans again sought to surrender his lease to Burbage, but without success.[346] Marston, having escaped the wrath of the King by flight, decided to end his career as a playwright and turn country parson. It was shortly after this, in all probability, that he sold his share in the Blackfriars organization to one Robert Keysar, a goldsmith of London, for the sum of L100.[347] [Footnote 346: Wallace, _Shakespeare and his London Associates_, p. 82.] [Footnote 347: _Ibid._, pp. 81, 86, 89, 93.]