At the period of the Restoration the Red Bull was among the first playhouses to reopen. John Downes, in his _Roscius Anglicanus_, writes: "The scattered remnant of several of these houses, upon King Charles' Restoration, framed a company, who acted again at the Bull."[516] Apparently the company was brought together by the famous old Elizabethan actor, Anthony Turner. From the _Middlesex County Records_ (III, 279) we learn that at first the players were interrupted by the authorities: 12 May, 1659.--Recognizances, taken before Ra: Hall, esq. J.P., of William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, both of Clerkenwell, gentlemen, in the sum of fifty pounds each; "Upon condition that Antony Turner shall personally appear at the next Quarter Sessions of the Peace to be holden at Hicks Hall for the said County of Middlesex; for the unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street, which house he affirms that they hire of the parishioners of Clerkenwell at the rate of twenty shillings a day over and above what they have agreed to pay towards the relief of their poor and repairing their highways, and in the meantime to be of good behaviour and not to depart the Court without license.--Ra: Hall." Also similar Recognizances, taken on the same day, before the same J.P., of the same William Wintershall and Henry Eaton, gentlemen, in the same sum of fifty pounds each; for the appearance of Edward Shatterall at the next. Q.S.P. for Middlesex at Hicks Hall, "to answer for the unlawful maintaining of stage-plays and interludes at the Red Bull in St. John's Street &c." S.P.R., 17, May, 1659. [Footnote 516: Cf. Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, p. 412; and for the general history of the actors at the Red Bull during this period see the Herbert records in Halliwell-Phillipps, _A Collection of Ancient Documents_.] Later, it seems, they secured a license from the authorities, and thenceforth acted without interruption. Samuel Pepys made plans "to go to the Red Bull Playhouse" with Mrs. Pierce and her husband on August 3, 1660, but was prevented by business. An account of his visit there on March 23, 1661, is thus given in his _Diary_: