secure on this point that he privately encouraged the desertion of his
own forces. He made one exception, however, by stipulating that Cibber
should remain at Drury Lane. Colley was too experienced, too versatile
a man to be lost with impunity; he could do everything in a theatre,
from acting to writing good plays and bad poetry, and while the wily
Rich chiefly depended upon his singers and dancers, he said "it would
be necessary to keep some one tolerable actor with him, that might
enable him to set those machines a going."

It so happened that Cibber was one of the men that Swiney needed most,
and, while the new manager of the Haymarket apparently acquiesced in
the exception insisted on by Rich, it was not long before he showed
his hand. It was a better hand than that of his whilom associate, who
had been foolish enough to think that he held the trump card in the
game. The card in question was a little matter of two hundred pounds
owing from Swiney to Rich, and the latter fondly believed that this
loan would bind the debtor to him as with hooks of steel. But we
do not love men the more because they chance to be our creditors;
sometimes, indeed, we love them the less for it, and so these two
hundred pounds did not prevent the Celt from breaking over the traces
of the Englishman. Let Cibber continue the story:

* * * * *

"The first word I heard of this transaction was by a letter from
Swiney, inviting me to make one in the Hay-Market Company. whom he
hop'd I could not but now think the stronger party. But I confess I
was not a little alarm'd at this revolution. For I considered that
I knew of no visible fund to support these actors but their own
industry; that all his recruits from Drury Lane would want new