The novelty of the scheme and the great size of the proposed building must have alarmed the owners of playhouses. That the established theatrical proprietors were hostile is clearly indicated by the attitude of Richard Heton, one of the Sewers of the Chamber to Queen Henrietta, and at the time manager of the Salisbury Court Playhouse. In September, 1639, he wrote out a document entitled "Instructions for my Patent," in which he advanced reasons why he should receive the sole power to elect the members of the Queen's Company of Players. He observes that under the existing arrangement the company was free to leave the Salisbury Court Playhouse at their pleasure, "as in one year and a half of their being here they have many times threatened"; and he concludes by adding: "and one now of the chief fellows [i.e., sharers of the company], an agent for one [William Davenant] that hath got a grant from the King for the building of a new playhouse which was intended to be in Fleet Street, which no man can judge that a fellow of our Company, and a well-wisher to those that own the house, would ever be an actor in."[716] Doubtless the owners of other houses had the same sentiments, and exercised what influence they possessed against the scheme. But the most serious opposition in all probability came from the citizens and merchants living in the neighborhood. We know how bitterly they complained about the coaches that brought playgoers to the small Blackfriars Theatre, and how strenuously from year to year they sought the expulsion of the King's Men from the precinct.[717] They certainly would not have regarded with complacency the erection in their midst of a still larger theatre. [Footnote 716: Cunningham, _The Whitefriars Theatre_, in _The Shakespeare Society's Papers_, IV, 96.] [Footnote 717: See the chapter on the Second Blackfriars.] Whatever the opposition, it was so powerful that on October 2 Davenant was compelled to make an indenture by which he virtually renounced[718] for himself and his heirs for ever the right to build a theatre in Fleet Street, or in any other place "in or near the cities, or suburbs of the cities, of London or Westminster," without further and special permission granted. This document, first printed by Chalmers in his _Supplemental Apology_, is as follows: