She took the consequential step of joining Henry Fielding in the Haymarket in 1736. For him she appeared as Lord Place, a parody of her father, Colley Cibber, in Fielding's "Pasquin" of 1736. The play was a powerful attack on Robert Walpole and his government, and Colley Cibber was satirised for his fawning attachment to Walpole and his undeserving occupation of the place of poet laureate. Walpole led Parliament into passing the Licensing Act of 1737, which closed all non-patent theatres and forbid the acting of any play that had not passed official censors. Charlotte Charke's famously antagonistic relationship with both of London's government-recognized patent theatres meant that she would have great difficulty finding legitimate employment as an actress. For his part, her husband Richard, who had remained at Drury Lane, had already become estranged from Charlotte through his constant and costly affairs. He fled his heavy gambling debts by moving to Jamaica, where he soon died. Charlotte was suddenly without either occupation or husband, alienated from her powerful father, and herself a single mother, all at the age of twenty-four. It was at this point that Charlotte Charke began wearing male clothes with frequency even off the stage.