The Bankside, as the preceding chapter indicates, offered unusual attractions to the actors. It had, indeed, long been associated with the drama: in 1545 King Henry VIII, in a proclamation against vagabonds, players,[195] etc., noted their "fashions commonly used at the Bank, and such like naughty places, where they much haunt"; and in 1547 the Bishop of Winchester made complaint that at a time when he intended to have a dirge and mass for the late King, the actors in Southwark planned to exhibit "a solemn play, to try who shall have the most resort, they in game or I in earnest."[196] The players, therefore, were no strangers to "the Bank." And when later in the century the hostility of the Common Council drove them to seek homes in localities not under the jurisdiction of the city, the suburb across the river offered them a suitable refuge. For, although a large portion of Southwark was under the jurisdiction of London, certain parts were not, notably the Liberty of the Clink and the Manor of Paris Garden, two sections bordering the river's edge, and the district of Newington lying farther back to the southwest. In these places the actors could erect their houses and entertain the public without fear of the ordinances of the Corporation, and without danger of interruption by puritanical Lord Mayors. [Footnote 195: It is just possible--but, I think, improbable--that the term "common players" as used in this proclamation referred to gamblers. The term is regularly used in law to designate actors.] [Footnote 196: _The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1547_, February 5, p. 1; cf. Tytler's _Edward VI and Mary_, I, 20.] Yet, as we have seen, the first public playhouses were erected not on the Bankside--a "naughty" place,--but near Finsbury Field to the north of the city; and the reasons which led to the selection of such a quiet and respectable district have been pointed out.[197] It was inevitable, however, that sooner or later a playhouse should make its appearance in the region to the south of the city. And at an early date--how early it is impossible to say, but probably not long after the erection of the Theatre and the Curtain--there appeared in Southwark a building specially devoted to the use of players. Whether it was a new structure modeled after the theatres of Shoreditch, or merely an old building converted into a playhouse, we cannot say. It seems to have been something more than an inn-yard fitted up for dramatic purposes, and yet something less than the "sumptuous theatre houses" erected "on purpose" for plays to the north of the city. [Footnote 197: See page 29.]