Harris vs Harris: A Restoration Actor at the Court of Arches

Henry Harris was one of Restoration London's leading actors and theater managers, as well as a long-serving yeoman of the revels at court, engraver at the Royal Mint, and friend to Samuel Pepys. Recently discovered records at Lambeth Palace Library of the former Court of Arches shed new light on Harris's trade background as a maker of scales and seals, on his financial situation in the theater, and in particular on his troubled marriage to a woman now identified as Anne Johnson. The case of Harris v. Harris ran for four years and surfaced claims and counterclaims of abuse, coercion, drunkenness, adultery, and violence. Ultimately, Harris's social connections and poise counted in his favor. Contributing a previously unknown exemplar to the scholarship of marriage in the late seventeenth century, the case also problematizes existing narratives concerning the social status of actors in Restoration London.