Event Comment: Benefit for the Fund, established for the Relief of those Performers who, through Infirmity, shall be obliged to retire from the Stage. State of the Theatrical Fund, instituted at Covent Garden in the year 1765, and confirmed by Act of Parliament, 1776. This Institution, calculated to provide for, and relieve aged and infirm Performers and their Families, has not been successful enough during the course of 33 years, to acquire any particular Patronage, but has been raised and supported (some few private Donations and Bequests excepted) merely through the liberal Contributions of its Members. Several aged Persons are now, and have been for many years, oeconomically maintained by it, although the Interest arising from the general Sum already amassed is not equal to one half of the Claims of its Annuitants. The other Portion is entirely supplied from the weekly Contributions of the Performers. Applications to the Public in behalf of this salutary Institution have rarely been made, and sometimes very ineffectually. On these Considerations therefore the Lovers of Dramatic Entertainments are respectfully addressed for their Encouragement at This Evening's Performance. (See Genest, VII, 365-66.) Receipts: #131 7s. (122.13; 1.16; tickets: 6.18)

Event Comment: Luttrell, A Brief Relation, II, 313, 17 Dec. 1691: Last Tewsday [i.e., Wednesday] a great disorder at the playhouse, where the lord Grey of Ruthin and viscount Longueville were knockt downe, and 2 other lords puncht with the butt ends of muskets; they complained of the affront to his majestie, who referred them to the house of lords, where they made their application yesterday; and the lords thereon desired his majestie would be pleased to command the suspending acting of playes till further order. Newdigate newsletters, 17 Dec. 1691: Last night the Kings play House was shut up upon complaints given in to the King by the Lord Grey Viscount Longville and other Lords that they had received severall Affronts from and were badly used by ye door keepers, and 'tis said the future Acting is suspended till further order (Wilson, Theatre Notes from the Newdigate Newsletters, p. 82). See also HMC, 13th Report, Appendix Five, pp. 464-65

Event Comment: Edition of 1661: By the Worshipful Company of Grocers. Evelyn, Diary: I saw the Lord Major passe in his Water Triumph to Westminster being the first solemnity of this nature after 20 years. Pepys, Diary: I was (after office was done) ready to go to my Lord Mayor's feast, as we are all invited; but the Sir Williams were both loth to go, because of the crowd, and so none of us went....This Lord Mayor, it seems, brings up again the custom of Lord Mayors going the day of their instalment to Paul's, and walking round about the Cross, and offering something at the altar

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: By coach to White Hall, thinking to have met at a Committee of Tangier, but nobody being there but my Lord Rutherford, he would needs carry me and another Scotch Lord to a play, and so we saw, coming late, part of The Generall, my Lord Orrery's (Broghill) second play; but, Lord! to see how no more either in words, sense, or design, it is to his Harry the 5th is not imaginable, and so poorly acted, though in finer clothes, is strange. And here I must confess breach of a vowe in appearance, but I not desiring it, but against my will, and my oathe being to go neither at my own charge nor at another's, as I had done by becoming liable to give them another, as I am to Sir W. Pen and Mr Creed; but here I neither know which of them paid for me, nor, If I did, am I obliged ever to return the like