 Twenty five years after its construction, in 1769, Tate Wilkinson paid £500 for a Royal Patent, and, accordingly, it was renamed the Theatre Royal.Wilkinson ran a company that included theatres in Hull, Leeds, Pontefract, Wakefield and other Yorkshire towns.His company was reckoned to be the leading provincial company, and he attracted many of the finest actors of the period, including John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons, Dorothea Jordan and Elizabeth Farren, to act in York.