THIS PAPER WILL consist of two parts. The first part will survey the records the REED North-East (REED N-E) project has uncovered documenting the touring practices in the North Riding of Yorkshire of professional companies based, for the most part, outside the county and protected from judicial and administrative interference by the patronage of a member of the gentry or aristocracy, whether local or London-based. The second part will consider the records which document the practices of local touring companies based within the North Riding, operating for the most part without formal gentry patronage. In other counties, REED research has shown that touring companies relied on two sorts of destination: gentry houses, in which a great hall would provide a suitable playing space, and civic administrations, which would be able to provide access to a town hall or guildhall. The North Riding is unique in preserving extensive records of local recusant players who operated without the formal protection of a gentry patron; these players, who included the Simpson company from the village of Egton, were doubly vulnerable, contravening both the recusancy laws and the statute for the control of “rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.”

The towns of the North Riding did not, for the most part, provide an attractive destination for players, whether indigenous or extraneous. In part, these differences reflect the differences in urban structure between the North Riding and other counties. The North Riding had only two boroughs, Richmond in the northwest, and Scarborough in the southeast. The third important centre of population, Whitby, did not have borough status, but held its liberties and privileges from the abbot of St. Mary's Abbey until the Dissolution, and then remained without a formal civic government until the nineteenth century. It is also unfortunate that neither of the boroughs, Richmond and Scarborough, has preserved more than a small proportion of its civic records, and very little in the way of civic accounts.

For the “come from away” players from London and elsewhere, the principal sources lie in household account books. Since these performers were under the licensed patronage of gentry, often based a considerable distance from the North Riding, we can I think conclude that (unlike the Simpsons of Egton) these travelling players were Protestant at least on the surface, and that their orthodoxy and their licence meant that the North Riding's legal authorities took little interest in their comings and goings.