Another critic, one Thomas Brande, in a private letter discovered by Mr.Payne Collier in the library of Lambeth Palace, and probably addressed to Laud while Bishop of London, writes of the just offence to all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town "given by the vagrant French players who had been expelled from their own country," and adds: "Glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted" (pippin-pelted is a good phrase) "from the stage, so as I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Mr.Brande was further of opinion that the Master of the Revels should have been called to account for permitting such performances.

Failing at Blackfriars, the French company subsequently appeared at the Fortune and Red Bull Theatres, but with a similar result, insomuch that the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert, who had duly sanctioned their performance, records in his accounts that, "in respect of their ill luck," he had returned some portion of the fees they had paid him for permission to play.
Whether these French "women-actors" failed because of their sex or because of their nationality, cannot now be shown.

They were the first actresses that had ever been seen in this country.

But then they were not of English origin, and they appeared, of course, in a foreign drama.

Still, of English actresses antecedent to the Desdemona of the Vere Street Theatre, certain traces have been discovered.