ances of the peace of which theatres were the centres will require attention in the next chapter, while law-court and other records preserve the memory of both grave crimes and minor misdemeanours of which they were the scenes. Like the bawdy-houses, they appear to have been at the mercy of the traditional rowdiness of the prentices on Shrove Tuesday. 2
             No one will rashly impugn the great authority of Sir Edmund Chambers. I am not concerned with what, in general, he knows and believes but with what this particular passage seems to express. It lodges us still, I should say, amidst a "broode of Hell-bred creatures." And it gives us the right to inquire whether it is the legitimate outgrowth of the "independent evidence" mentioned in the text and supplied in the footnotes or whether such evidence will not always be forthcoming by which a preconception may be "fairly well supported." 3 Have Crosse and his kindred labored entirely in vain? Would Chambers have composed this passage had not ancient invectives supplied a mould which time has ne
             ...