He was treasurer at Covent Garden .
He attended his daughters wedding.
CHAPTER 11 : MANAGEMENT OF COVENT GARDEN
On Saturday 22nd September 1759 the Drury Lane prompter, Richard Cross, preparing for the
new season, noted in his diary: “Mr Beard is gone to Covent Garden, ‘tis said to be
Manager”.1
He was right. John Rich had not only persuaded Beard to leave Drury Lane after
an uninterrupted period there of eleven years, but he had given him a managerial role for an
extra annual salary of £150.
The reason for this is not hard to grasp. Rich was old and ailing. He had a wife and four
daughters to leave the business to. But now there was a popular performer who had joined the
family as a son-in-law. This was someone he liked, respected, and trusted. He knew the
theatre business through and through. In the will that he drew up around this time Beard was
named as joint manager with Mrs Priscilla Rich in the event of his death. Priscilla – so long as
she remained his widow – had the right to dispose of the Theatre and the Letters Patent by
which it had been established. If she remarried she was to be replaced by her brother Edward
Wilford, who worked in the theatre’s Treasury. If she died, the co-managers were to seek the
‘concurrence and approbation’ of his four daughters in the running of the theatre.
