Eliard Swanston - Aftermath

Aftermath

After the theatres closed in 1642 at the start of the English Civil War, Swanston became a jeweller and also a Presbyterian. Unusually for a professional actor, he was a supporter of the Parliamentary cause. (Since the Puritans were hostile to the theatre, most men of the theatre tended to be hostile to them in return.) Swanston did not sever all his connections with his former occupation, however: he was one of the ten King's Men who signed the dedication of the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio in 1647 (he was the third to sign, after Taylor and Lowin).

Swanston lived in the parish of St. Mary's Aldermanbury; he married in 1619, and fathered ten children.