his manager.  Powell, the actor, even suffered imprisonment on this account, although it was thought as well, after a day or two, to abandon the proceedings that had been taken against him.  “Upon this occasion,” says Cibber, with a mysterious air, and in very involved terms, “behind the scenes at Drury Lane, a person of great quality, in my hearing, inquiring of Powell into the nature of his offence ... told him, that if he had patience, or spirit enough to have stayed in his confinement till he had given him notice of it, he would have found him a handsomer way of coming out of it!” Of the same actor, Powell, it is recorded that he once, at Will’s Coffee House, “in a dispute about playhouse affairs, struck a gentleman whose family had been some time masters of it.”  A complaint of the actor’s violence was lodged at the Chamberlain’s office, and Powell having a part in the play announced for performance upon the following day, an order was sent to silence the whole company, and to close the theatre, although it was admitted that the managers had been without cognisance of their actor’s misconduct!  “However,” Cibber narrates, “this order was obeyed, and remained in force for two or three days, till the same authority was pleased, or advised, to revoke it.  From the measures this injured gentleman took for his redress, it may be judged how far it was taken for granted that a Lord Chamberlain had an absolute power over the theatre.”  An attempt, however, upon the authority of the Chamberlain to imprison Dogget, the actor, for breach of his engagement with the patentees of Drury Lane Theatre, met with signal discomfiture.  Dogget forthwith applied to the Lord Chief Justice Holt for his discharge under the Habeas Corpus Act, and readily obtained it, with, it may be gathered, liberal compensation for the violence to which he had been subjected.

The proceedings of the Lord Chamberlain had, indeed, become most oppressive.  Early in 1720, the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain, took upon himself to close Drury Lane Theatre.  Steele, then one of the patentees, addressed the public upon the subject.  He had lived in friendship with the duke; he owed his seat in Parliament to the duke’s influence.  He commenced with saying:  “The injury which I have received, great as it is, has nothing in it so painful as that it comes from whence it does.  When I complained of it in a private letter to the Chamberlain, he was pleased to send his secretary to me with a message to forbid me writing, speaking, corresponding, or applying to him in any manner whatsoever.  Since he has been pleased to send an English gentleman a banishment from his person and counsels in a style thus royal, I doubt not but that the reader will justify me in the method I take to explain this matter to the town.”  Steele could obtain no redress, however.  He was virtually dispossessed of his rights as patentee.  He estimated his loss at nine thousand eight hundred pounds, and concluded