Nicholas Brend (c. 1560 – 12 October 1601) was an English landowner who inherited from his father the land on which the Globe Theatre was built, and on 21 February 1599 leased it to Cuthbert Burbage, Richard Burbage, William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe. He died two years later, leaving the property on which the Globe was built to his infant son, Matthew Brend, who did not come of age until 6 February 1621.
Family
Nicholas Brend, born between 22 September 1560 and 21 September 1561, was a younger son of Thomas Brend (c. 1516 – 21 September 1598) of West Molesey, Surrey, a London scrivener. Thomas Brend's social standing was initially modest; however in 1591 he had been granted a coat of arms.
Nicholas Brend was the son of his father's first marriage to a woman named Margery (d. 2 June 1564), whose surname is unknown. After his first wife's death, Thomas Brend married Mercy Collet (d. 13 April 1597), widow of Francis Bodley (d.1566) of Streatham, and daughter of Humphrey Collet.
Nicholas Brend had nine siblings of the whole blood by his father's first marriage, as well as eight siblings of the half blood by his father's second marriage. However, when Thomas Brend made his will on 15 June 1597, Nicholas's only surviving siblings were his five sisters: Mary, who married Rowland Maylard and was widowed by 1601; Katherine, who married George Sayers or Seares; Anne and Judith, who died unmarried; and Mercy, who married Peter Frobisher, son of Sir Martin Frobisher.
Career
When Thomas Brend died on 21 September 1598 at the age of eighty-one, Nicholas Brend inherited a substantial estate which included the manor of West Molesey, Surrey; a house called the Star and other properties in Bread Street, London; a house at St Peter's Hill in London, and several properties in Southwark, including the site of the Globe.
Shortly after his father's death, Nicholas Brend leased part of his father's Southwark property for 31 years at a yearly rent of £14 10s to Cuthbert Burbage, Richard Burbage, William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe. The lease agreement took effect at Christmas 1598, although it was not signed until 21 February 1599, and ran until 25 December 1629. According to Berry:
Once the players had taken up their lease there, the Brends' property in Southwark seems to have been worth at least £90 a year clear, of which the players paid £14. 10s. 0d (16%). Their lease comprised two pieces of land separated by a lane, four gardens and various structures on one piece and three gardens and various structures on the other. Adjoining these pieces of land on both east and west were the other parts of the Brends' property, on which were numerous buildings during the whole history of the Globe. The whole property in 1601, two years after the Globe opened, comprised "small & ruinous howses" in thirty tenants' hands (two of whom represented the Globe), according to a man in whose interest it was to disparage them. In that year the whole property was described twice in legal documents as "All those messuages tenements howses edifices buildings chambers roomes playhowse gardens orchards void grounds and other lands and heredytaments Whatsoever." The tenants of these places were given as four gentlemen (including Richard Burbage and Shakespeare), two tanners, two watermen, two beerbrewers, and a dyer, armorer, baker, porter, draper, tailor, saddler, and one person whose work was unidentified.
Nicholas Brend's two unmarried sisters, Anne and Judith, both died in 1599, Judith having made her last will at the house of her uncle, John Collet, on 20 April of that year. Shortly after Thomas Brend's death, by an agreement dated 17 November 1598, Nicholas Brend purchased for £1150 the properties which Thomas Brend had left Anne and Judith in his will, including Judith's properties called the Pomegranate in Bridge Street and the Peacock in Candlewick Street. As Berry notes, this purchase put a strain on Nicholas Brend's finances.
By October 1601, when he fell mortally ill, Nicholas Brend was considerably in debt. At the time he estimated that he owed £1478. In fact his debts eventually amounted to £1715, and considering that several of his properties required repairs, the shortfall was in reality closer to £2150. To meet current expenses he had borrowed £105 from his sister, Mary Maylard, and had sold a small property in West Molesey for £340 to one of the Queen's Ladies of the Privy Chamber, Dorothy Edmonds.