George Buck - Competition For Position

Competition For Position

In the mid-to-late 1590s Buck was in competition with playwright John Lyly for the reversion of the office of the Master of the Revels, then held by Buck's relation Sir Edmund Tilney ("reversion" meaning that the candidate would obtain the office when the present office-holder vacated it — usually by death). Many sources, depending on the Dictionary of National Biography, identify Tilney and Buck as uncle and nephew, but their true familial relationship seems to have been more distant.

Lyly was vocal in his distress at facing competition for an office he thought he'd been promised; his letters of protest and supplication to Queen Elizabeth and to Cecil are still extant. Heartfelt thought they may have been, Lyly's complaints had no effect. Sometime in this period, Buck also obtained the office of Esquire of the Body (likely an honorary distinction for him); it was an office he held when Elizabeth died in 1603.

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