Acting, as a distinct profession, seems to have been known in England at least as far back as the reign of Henry VI.  There had been theatrical exhibitions in abundance, however, at a much earlier period.  Stow, in his “Survey of London,” in 1599, translates from the “Life of Thomas a Becket,” by Fitzstephen, who wrote about 1182, mention of “the shews upon theatres and comical pastimes” of London, “its holy playes, representations of miracles which holy confessors have wrought, or representations of tormentes wherein the constancie of martirs appeared.”  As Mr. Payne Collier observes, “no country in Europe, since the revival of letters, has been able to produce any notice of theatrical performances of so early a date as England.”  But our primitive stage was a chapel-of-ease, as it were, to the Church.  The plays were founded upon the lives of the saints, or upon the events of the Old and New Testaments, and were contrived and performed by the clergy, who borrowed horses, harness, properties, and hallowed vestments from the monasteries, and did not hesitate even to paint and disguise their faces, in order to give due effect to their exhibitions, which were presented not only in the cathedrals, churches, and cemeteries, but also “on highways or greens,” as might be most convenient.  In 1511, for instance, the miracle-play of “St. George of Cappadocia” was acted in a croft, or field, at Basingborne, one shilling being paid for the hire of the land.  The clergy, however, were by no means unanimous as to the propriety and policy of these dramatic representations.  They were bitterly attacked in an Anglo-French poem, the “Manuel de Peche,” written about the middle of the thirteenth century, and ascribed to Robert Grossetete, who became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235.  Gradually the kind of histrionic monopoly which the Church had long enjoyed was invaded.  Education spread, and many probably found themselves as competent to act as the clergy.  Still, the ecclesiastical performers for some time resisted all attempts to interfere with what they viewed as their especial privileges and vested interests.  In 1378 the scholars or choristers of St. Paul’s petitioned Richard II. to prohibit certain ignorant and inexperienced persons from acting the history of the Old Testament, to the prejudice of the clergy of the Church, who had expended large sums in preparing plays founded upon the same subject.  But some few years later the parish clerks of London, who had been incorporated by Henry III., performed at Skinner’s Well, near Smithfield, in the presence of the king, queen, and nobles of the realm, a play which occupied three days in representation.  As Warton remarks, however, in his “History of English Poetry,” the parish clerks of that time might fairly be regarded as a “literary society,” if they did not precisely come under the denomination of a religious fraternity.