[40] See the story in _Camden Miscellany_, III (1854). [41] Sir Richard Baker, in his _Chronicle of the Kings of England_. [42] Fuller's _Worthies_, as cited by Dyce, I, x, xi. [43] The materials as furnished by Dyce, _B. and F._, I, xiv-xv, from Birch's _Mem. of Elizabeth_, and the Bacon Papers in the Lambeth Library are confirmed by _Cal. St. Papers_ (_Dom._), June 1596, July 9, 1597, _etc._ [44] As her monument in Canterbury would indicate. Hasted, _Hist. Kent_, XI, 397. [45] For the Bakers and their connections, see Hasted, _Hist. Kent_, III, 77; IV, 374, _et seq._; VII, 100-101; for the Sackvilles.--Hasted, III, 73-82; for the Lennards,--Hasted, III, 108-116; the _Peerages_ of Collins, Burke, etc., and the articles in _D. N. B._ See also, below, Appendix, Table E. CHAPTER VI SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF FLETCHER Beaumont and Fletcher may have been friends by 1603 or 1604,--in all likelihood, as early as 1605 when, as we have seen, Drayton and other "southern Shepherds" were by way of visiting the Beaumonts at Grace-Dieu. In that year Jonson's _Volpone_ was acted for the first time; and one may divine from the familiar and affectionate terms in which our two young dramatists address the author upon the publication of the play in 1607 that they had been acquainted not only with Jonson but with one another for the two years past. We have no satisfactory proof of their cooperation in play-writing before 1606 or 1607. According to Dryden,--whose statements of fact are occasionally to be taken with a grain of salt, but who, in this instance, though writing almost sixty years after the event, is basing his assertion upon first-hand authority,--"the first play that brought 'them' in esteem was their _Philaster_," but "before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully." _Philaster_, as I shall presently show, was, in all probability, first acted between December 7, 1609 and July 12, 1610. Before 1609, however, each had written dramas independently, Beaumont _The Woman-Hater_ and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_; Fletcher, _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, and maybe one or two other plays. Our first evidence of their association in dramatic activity is the presence of Fletcher's hand, apparently as a reviser, in three scenes of _The Woman-Hater_, which was licensed for publication May 20, 1607, as "lately acted by the Children of Paul's." From contemporary evidence we know, as did Dryden, that two of these plays, _The Knight_ and _Faithfull Shepheardesse_ were ungraciously received; and Richard Brome, about fourteen years after Fletcher's death, suggests that perhaps _Monsieur Thomas_ shared "the common fate."