Matthew Brend
In order to provide for his wife and five children, including his infant son and heir, Matthew, in his final days Nicholas Brend entered into legal agreements with his half brother, John Bodley of Streatham, his uncle, John Collet, and his friend, Sir Matthew Browne of Betchworth Castle, Surrey, under which Collet and Browne would act as his trustees, and under which Bodley would pay Brend's debts, taking in return a mortgage on Brend's properties in Bread Street and Southwark, including the Globe Theatre.
In his will, which he drew up on 10 October, Brend authorized Bodley and Browne to sell certain of his properties, including his house at St. Peter's Hill, London.
[14][15] According to the terms of the lease, the lessees were required to rebuild,[16] but before they undertook the considerable expense of rebuilding, Cuthbert Burbage, Richard Burbage, John Heminges and Henry Condell of the King's Men put their case to the then effective owner of the property, John Bodley, and on 26 October 1613 Bodley granted the lessees a 6-year extension of the lease,[17] an extension which was later ratified by the Court of Wards.
Brend signed the document, and his signature was witnessed by his mother, Margaret Zinzan, his uncle, Henry Strelley, and John Atkins.
[24] However this settlement was almost immediately revised in September of that year when Sir Matthew Brend was required to provide a jointure for his bride to be, Frances Smith.
[28] After reaching the age of majority in 1621, Brend had never confirmed the 15-year extension of the lease granted by him to the Burbage brothers, Heminges and Condell in February 1614, while he was still a minor, and in about 1631, when the original lease had expired and the 6-year extension granted to them by John Bodley on 26 October 1613 had only four years still to run, the remaining lessees again requested Brend to ratify the document he had signed in February 1614.
[30] Faced with the possibility of dispossession from the Globe, on 28 January 1632, through their lawyer, Richard Lane,[31][32] the remaining original lessee, Cuthbert Burbage, and the representatives of the other original lessees, who at the time were Richard Robinson and Winifred Robinson (d.1642), his wife, William Heminges, John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, filed a bill of complaint against Brend in the Court of Requests.
[33][34] In the midst of this lawsuit, in June 1633 Sir Matthew Brend augmented his wife Frances' jointure so that she became owner of the properties comprised in it, including the Globe, not merely for life, but forever.
[35] As Berry points out, it was Sir Matthew Brend who managed the property, and it was his alleged agreement to an extension in February 1614 which was the nub of the lawsuit.
[40] However, before that date the English Civil War intervened, and in 1642 the playhouses were closed, rendering the final two years of the new lease moot.
It has been claimed, on the basis of a document at the Folger Shakespeare Library, that immediately upon the expiration of the lease on Lady Day 1644, i.e. 25 March 1644, Sir Matthew Brend took possession of the Globe and had it pulled down.
