The Cockpit representations lasted but a few days.

During a performance of Fletcher's tragedy of "Rollo, Duke of Normandy," in which such excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes and dismissed.

"Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of dramatic events has left upon record, "they used to act privately, three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there, sometimes in noblemen's houses--in particular Holland House, at Kensington--where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad-piece or the like." The widow of the Earl of Holland who was beheaded in March, 1649, occupied Holland House at this time.

She was the granddaughter of Sir Walter Cope, and a stout-hearted lady, who doubtless took pride in encouraging the entertainments her late lord's foes had tried so hard to suppress.

Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars," acted as "Jackal" on the occasion of these furtive performances.