From 1562 on, however, theatrical conditions were various and shifting, and not always easily discernible by the modern student. While miracles were still performed after the old popular fashion, the traveling professional companies were growing in importance and tending to monopolize the acting of interludes. Amateur actors, however, at court, school, university, inns of court, or, indeed, among the Bottoms and mechanics of the villages, still contended with the professional for the control and maintenance of the drama. So far as tragedy is concerned, it will be convenient to keep in mind at least four distinct kinds of performance. First, the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, who throughout the Elizabethan period showed themselves liberal patrons of the drama, occasionally gave plays, usually in connection with special festivities. Second, there were performances at the schools and universities which continued to exert an important dramatic influence, as they had for the preceding sixty years. Plays at the universities were generally in Latin, but there were English plays at both schools and universities, and companies from the Merchant Tailors and Westminster schools acted at court; these last performances falling properly in the third group. Third, companies of children were trained for performance at court; and these were in the course of time restricted to the choir boys of St. Paul's and of the Queen's chapel. Fourth, the traveling professional companies, numerous at the beginning of the period, acted in the inn-yards of London, at court, in the halls of noblemen, on the village greens, in the guild halls, even in the churches of the towns, or wherever else they could obtain an opportunity, until the most important of them found homes in the London theatres. On all four of these classes of actors the influence of the court was considerable, for it was the highest gratification of either amateur or professional to be engaged in a court performance, and performances at court were subject to greater preparation than those in public.