The Master of the Choristers at England’s Chapel Royal had the legal right to travel the land in search of the most talented young men and take them away to London to sing at the monarch’s religious services. This was, of course, a situation ripe for abuse, and in the days of Elizabeth I, Master Nathaniel Giles would conscript boys for his pal Henry Evans’s acting company at the Blackfriars Theatre — or they’d split the bribes from parents desperate to keep their families together. Then, one day in 1600, they chose the wrong target. – JSTOR Daily