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The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book:
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND
PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ISSUES
by
Pamela Palmer Jones
A paper submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
in
Piano Performance
School of Music
The University of Utah
May 2009
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Copyright Pamela Palmer Jones 2009
All Rights Reserved
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1
THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL
of a thesis submitted by
Pamela Palmer Jones
This thesis has been read by each member of the following
supervisory committee and by majority vote has been found to be
satisfactory. ____________________
__________________________________________ Chair: Susan H.
Duehlmeier ____________________
__________________________________________ Margaret Rorke
____________________ __________________________________________
Susan Neiymoyer ____________________
__________________________________________ Ning Lu
____________________ __________________________________________
Eric Hinderaker
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THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS
FINAL READING APPROVAL
To the Graduate Council of the University of Utah: I have read
the thesis of ____________Pamela Palmer Jones __________in its
final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and
bibliographic style are consistent and acceptable; (2) its
illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in
place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the
supervisory committee and is ready for submission to The Graduate
School. _________________________
__________________________________________ Date Susan H. Duehlmeier
Chair: Supervisory Committee Approved for the Major Department
__________________________________ Robert Walzel Chair/Dean
Approved for the Graduate Council
__________________________________ Raymond Tymas-Jones
Dean, College of Fine Arts
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ABSTRACT OF THE PAPER
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book:
Historical Background and
Performance Practice Issues
by
Pamela Palmer Jones Doctor of Musical Arts
The University of Utah, 2009 Professor Susan H. Duehlmeier,
Chair
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in England in the late
sixteenth-early
seventeenth centuries, very repressive anti-Catholic laws were
enacted by Parliament.
Catholicism then became the illegal underground religion of the
gentry, sustained
primarily by a web of intricate family alliances. The aims of
this paper include: (1) a
discussion of how the anti-Catholic laws passed by Parliament
during the 1570s and
1580s severely affected the Tregian family, specifically Francis
Tregian Sr. and Francis
Tregian Jr.; (2) an in-depth exploration of the Tregian familys
relationships with other
aristocratic Catholic recusant families and musicians within the
larger context of late
sixteenth-century Tudor England; and (3) a detailed examination
of the facsimile of the
manuscript of The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as an aid in
creating a more accurate
modern performing edition of four pieces from this anthology
that have not been re-
edited since the first printing by Breitkopf und Hrtel in
1899.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 The History of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
................................................ 1
Description and Ownership
...........................................................................................
1
Political History of Tudor England in the Late Sixteenth and
Early Seventeenth Centuries
.....................................................................................................................
10
History of the Tregian Family: Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis
Tregian Jr. ............. 14
Three Other Tregian Manuscripts
...........................................................................
28
Francis Tregian Jr. as Copyist - Legend or Fact?
....................................................... 29
Chapter 2 A New Examination of the FVB Manuscript
............................................... 39
Chapter 3 The Tregian Circle: Composers, Family, Friends, and
Patrons .................... 51
Composers Represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
......................................... 51
William Byrd (1539/431623)
..............................................................................
51
Dr. John Bull (ca. 1559-1628)
..............................................................................
53
Peter Philips (ca. 1560-1628)
................................................................................
55
Giles Farnaby (ca. 1563-1640)
.............................................................................
56
Family, Friends, and Patrons
......................................................................................
57
Chapter 4 Performance Practice Issues
..........................................................................
63
The Edition of the FVB Published by Dover Publications
......................................... 63
Ornamentation
.............................................................................................................
64
Tempo
.........................................................................................................................
66
Fingering
.....................................................................................................................
67
Creating a New Performing Edition of Four Pieces from the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
............................................................................................................................
69
Conclusion
........................................................................................................................
84
Bibliography
.....................................................................................................................
85
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank my DMA committee members for their guidance and support,
especially
Dr. Susan Duehlmeier and Dr. Margaret Rorke. I am extremely
grateful for the
unwavering love of my dear husband Alan and my three sons
Andrus, Adam and
Richard, all of whom had to put up with having a
partially-absentee wife and mother for
the past two years. I am also very thankful for my wonderful
parents, Richard and
Carolyn M. Palmer, who provided emotional and financial help
throughout this endeavor.
And finally, I give thanks to my best friend Jean Varney who so
kindly offered invaluable
help with the research for and editing of this D.M.A.
document.
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CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORY OF THE FITZWILLIAM VIRGINAL BOOK
Sometime between 1614 and 1617, a man from a very prominent
English Catholic
recusant family named Francis Tregian Jr. was imprisoned in
Londons Fleet Prison.
During his confinement, he transcribed nearly 300 keyboard
pieces into an anthology that
today bears the name of Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Several other
collections of music
have subsequently been attributed to him as well, including a
mammoth collection of
over 1,200 madrigals and instrumental works known today as the
Egerton 3665
manuscript.
This chapter traces the history and ownership of the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book
from its present-day location in the Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge back through time
to Francis Tregian Jr. and the Fleet Prison. The political and
social climate of
Elizabethan England will also be discussed, as well as the
severe persecutions inflicted
upon Tregians devoutly Catholic family trying to survive in an
extremely anti-Catholic
atmosphere.
Description and Ownership The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is by
far the largest of several manuscripts of
harpsichord music that were compiled in the late sixteenth and
early seventeenth
centuries, during the late Tudor and early Stuart eras in
England. For a time, it was
thought that the collection had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth
I, as it was formerly
known as Queen Elizabeths Virginal Book. Further research has
proven, however,
that the manuscript never belonged to Elizabeth I, and
subsequently this collection was
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2
named after its final owner, Viscount Fitzwilliam. Currently, it
is housed in the
Fitzwilliam Museum located in Cambridge, England.
The manuscript is contained in a small volume, which consists of
220 leaves, with
music filling 209 pages. The music is written on six-line staves
with inner lines of each
stave ruled by hand. The manuscript measures 33 9/10 centimeters
by 22 centimeters
(approximately 13 inches high and 9 inches wide).1 The red
morocco gilt leather cover is
enriched with gold tooling, the sides being sprinkled with
fleurs-de-lis. 2 The paper most
likely came from Basel, as the crozier-case watermark also
appears in the arms of that
town.3 The manuscript had been cut in places by the binder, but
the style of the work
shows that the binding dates from approximately the same time
period as the
handwriting.
The book was compiled by Francis Tregian Jr., the oldest son of
a wealthy
Catholic family from Truro in Cornwall. Tradition has it that
Tregian copied the
manuscript sometime between 1611 and 1619, while he was serving
time in the Fleet
Prison in London for violation of English recusancy laws and
failure to pay his debts.4
More recent scholarship from the 1990s has revised the dates of
Francis Tregian Jr.s
1 J.A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire, eds., The
Fitzwilliam Virginal
Book, vol. I, rev. ed. Blanche Winogron (New York: Dover
Publications, 1979), iii.
2 Morocco leather, usually made from goatskin, is dyed red on
the grain side to produce a birds-eye effect. It is valued
especially for bookbindings and purses. Definition from The
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, s.v. Morocco leather,
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0834070.html (accessed July
28, 2008).
3 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.
4 Anne Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger: Musician, Collector
and Humanist? trans. Adrienne Burrows, Music and Letters 76 (1995):
401.
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imprisonment to 1614-1617, and his death to 1617.5 It is also
possible that Tregian began
the process of compiling his keyboard anthology, along with his
huge collection of vocal
music, even earlier, during the late 1590s, while he was living
on the Continent. After his
death in 1617, the warden of the Fleet Prison claimed that
Tregian owed him 200 for
room and board. It appears that the warden recognized that
Tregians numerous books
and manuscripts were valuable, particularly the one book of
gilt, as he attempted to
claim possession of them in payment of the debt. Tregians
sisters also recognized the
importance of the virginal book and had a difficult time
obtaining possession of it from
the warden.6
It is likely that Tregians vast collection of music stayed
within the protection of
the extended Tregian family over the next century, although
there are no surviving
records of this. By 1740, the keyboard anthology had fallen into
the possession of Dr.
John Christopher Pepusch, a German composer and theorist living
in London. Pepusch
came to England in 1711 to work for the first Duke of Chandos,
who was a direct
descendent of the Tregian family.7 Pepusch worked extensively in
operatic/theatrical
circles in London and wrote the overture and several airs for
John Gays immensely
popular The Beggars Opera. Pepusch was also a founding member of
the Academy of
Ancient Music (1726) and was known as one of the most learned
antiquarians of his day.8
5 Raymond Francis Trudgian, Francis Tregian - 1548-1608 -
Elizabethan
recusant - A Truly Catholic Cornishman (Brighton: The Alpha
Press, 1998), 41.
6 Ibid.
7 Elizabeth Cole, Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal
Book. An Interim Report, Proceedings of the Royal Musical
Association 79 (1952-53): 64, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed
December 30, 2007).
8 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. Pepusch,
Johann Christoph (by Malcolm Boyd, Graydon Beeks and D.F. Cook),
http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed October 19, 2008).
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The particulars of how Pepusch came into possession of this
collection are
unknown. It seems that the knowledge or tradition of Francis
Tregian Jr. as compiler of
these manuscripts seems to have been lost at this point in time.
Apparently Pepusch had
shown his music collection to a man named John Ward, author of a
book written in 1740
entitled Lives of the Gresham Professors. In his book, Ward made
reference to Dr. John
Bulls compositions that were found in Pepuschs keyboard
collection, and also gave a
physical description of the keyboard anthology, stating that it
was a large folio neatly
written, bound in red Turkey leather and gilt. 9 Other
contemporary books also mention
this keyboard anthology, which was now associated with Tudor
England and Queen
Elizabeth I. In his History of Music (1776), Sir John Hawkins
relates a story of
Pepuschs wife, the opera star and amateur harpsichordist
Margherita de lEpine, who
was unable to master the difficulties of the first piece in this
keyboard collection, John
Bulls variations on Walsingham. The erroneous connection between
Tregians keyboard
anthology and Queen Elizabeth seems to have originated in
Hawkinss book, where he
stated that it once belonged to her.10 This same idea was also
alluded to in Charles
Burneys History of Music, which was also published in 1776. In
it, he relates an account
from Sir James Melvils Memoirs of Queen Elizabeths performance
on the virginals,
adding that if Her Majesty was ever able to execute any of the
pieces that are preserved
in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeths Virginal
Book, she must have
been a very great player.11
9 Edwin Naylor, An Elizabethan Virginal Book, rev.ed (1905;
repr., New York:
Da Capo Press, 1970), 9.
10 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.
11 Ibid, v.
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By 1762, the keyboard collection had been purchased from the
estate of Pepusch
by a man named Robert Bremmer, and in 1783 it passed into the
possession of Richard
Fitzwilliam, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion and
Thorncastle. Over the course
of his lifetime, Fitzwilliam amassed a spectacular collection of
works of art, antiquities,
books, and music. His collection of music included Tregians
keyboard manuscript
(which would be known as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book after his
death), Lord Herbert
of Cherburys Lutebook, fifteen volumes of G.F. Handel music
manuscripts, and large
quantities of prints and manuscripts of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.12 At his
death in February of 1816, Fitzwilliam bequeathed his entire
collection to the University
of Cambridge, together with the dividends from 100,000 of South
Sea Islands annuities
to pay for the construction of a museum to house the
collection.13
The bulk of Fitzwilliams collection was housed in the family
mansion in
Richmond. It was there in Richmond that Mr. James Bartleman
prepared an index of the
music of Fitzwilliams collection.14 Known as an incomparable
bass singer,15
12 Philip Olleson and Fiona M. Palmer, Publishing Music from the
Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge: The Work of Vincent Novello and Samuel Wesley
in the 1820s, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 130 (2005):
40, http://www.jstor.org (accessed June 30, 2008).
13 Ibid.
14 Charles Cudworth, A Cambridge Anniversary: 2, The Musical
Times 107 (1966): 209, http://www.jstor.org (accessed June 30,
2008).
15The Georgian Era: Memoires of the Most Eminent Persons, who
have Flourished in Great Britain, from the Accession of George the
First to the Demise of George the Fourth (London: Vizetelly,
Branston & Co., 1834), 4: 537.
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Bartleman owed much of the grandeur of his style to his profound
knowledge of the
most sublime compositions of every age and country.16
The index was compiled in March of 1816, only a month after
Fitzwilliams death
and before the entire collection was permanently moved to
Cambridge. An account of
the contents of the collection reads:
A catalogue of [Fitzwilliams] music was prepared by the
well-known bass singer James Bartleman . . . . From it we can
derive a very good estimate of the richness and range of his
Lordships music collection.
The greater part was by Italian composers, ranging from
Palestrina and Marenzio via Stradella and the Scarlattis to
Steffani and Clari, Leo and Pergolesi and Paradies, and the other
eminent Italians of Fitzwilliams own day. But there were Frenchmen
there as well; Lully and Rameau, of course, and others such as
Lalande and Couperin, Colasse, Charpentier, and even Mlle. Jacquet
de la Guerre. And there were many English composers, too, ranging
from the great names of the Golden Age, Morley and Byrd in
particular, and of course the famous Virginal Book composers,
through the eminent men of the 17th century, Blow and Purcell, to
the Georgian composers of the mid-18th. Not many German names,
though, unless you count Pepusch and Handel and Hasse, who were
less German than English or Italian. There was a great deal of
harpsichord music, for it seems that his Lordship had been no mean
keyboard player, and indeed even left some books which according to
Bartleman were filled with Fitzwilliams own compositions for
harpsichord and organ.17
A copy of Bartlemans index, which listed the contents of the
Virginal Book,
was written down by Mr. Henry Smith in the back of the
manuscript. At the end of the
index is the following postscript: Henry Smith, Richmond,
Scripsit / from a M.S. Index
in the Possession of Mr. Bartleman / 24 March 1816. 18
When Fitzwilliams massive collection arrived in Cambridge in the
spring of
1816, a supervisory committee was set up to oversee the task of
cataloguing and
16 George Hogarth, Musical History, Biography, and Criticism:
Being a General
Survey of Music from the Earliest Period to the Present Time
(London: John W. Parker, 1835), 423, http://books.google.com/books
(accessed 26 June 2008).
17 Cudworth, Cambridge Anniversary, 209.
18 Francis Tregian Jr., Fitzwilliam Virginal Book [manuscript],
i.
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managing this enormous bequest. William Shield was put in charge
of cataloguing the
music in the collection, and the task was completed by August
16, 1816, only six months
after the death of Fitzwilliam.
At this point, nothing further was done with Fitzwilliams music
collection for
eight years, until 1824, when the Senate of Cambridge University
decided that parts of
the collection should be made available for editing or
publication. This decision resulted
in the issuing of Vincent Novellos five-volume set, The
Fitzwilliam Music (1825-27),
which contained Roman Catholic church music by Italian composers
of the sixteenth
through the eighteenth centuries. There was also an edition by
Samuel Wesley of three
hymn tunes by Handel set to words by his father, Charles Wesley.
An edition of motets
from William Byrds Gradualia was also planned, but, because of
financial difficulties,
this project never materialized.19 None of the keyboard works
from Fitzwilliams
collection were published at this time, although it was known
that these works existed
and were housed at Cambridge. For example, William Chappell
makes reference to the
Elizabethan virginal manuscripts in a book he wrote in 1859.
In spite of the knowledge of its existence, the manuscript
remained in obscurity
until 1887, when it was rediscovered in the archives during the
continuing process of
cataloguing Fitzwilliams collection. In 1894, a huge
transcription and editing project
was undertaken by J.A. Fuller Maitland, the distinguished music
critic of the London
Times, and his brother-in-law William Barclay Squire, editor and
music librarian of the
British Museum in London.20 The task was finished in 1899 and
was soon afterwards
published as The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB) by Breitkopf
und Hrtel.
19 Olleson and Palmer, Publishing Music, 73.
20 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.
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The 297 compositions in the FVB were mostly written by native
Englishmen.
Those composers featured most prominently in the collection are
William Byrd, John
Bull, Giles Farnaby, and Peter Philips. The amount of music
written by these four men
represents about two thirds of the total music in the entire
collection. In fact, the FVB
contains all of the known keyboard music written by Giles
Farnaby except for two pieces.
Other English keyboard composers represented are William
Blithman, Richard Farnaby,
Orlando Gibbons, James Harding, William Inglot, Edward Johnson,
Robert Johnson,
Thomas Morley, John Munday, Robert Persons, Martin Peerson,
Ferdinando Richardson,
Nicholas Strogers, Thomas Tallis, William Tisdall, Thomas
Tomkins, Francis Tregian Jr.,
and Thomas Warrock. A few of these composers, such as Tallis and
Gibbons, are well-
known, but most of the others remain obscure even today.
In spite of the preponderance of English works, the FVB also
contains a number
of Italian compositions, with an occasional German and French
piece and intabulations of
Italian madrigals thrown into the mix. Names such as Caccini,
Galeazzo, Lasso,
Marenzio, Pichi, Striggio are found in the collection along with
Marchant and
Oystermayre. Several pieces by the great Netherlandish organist
and composer Jan
Pieterszoon Sweelinck also appear in the FVB. From the
multi-national flavor of the
compositions represented in the FVB, it seems that the original
collector was someone
who was quite familiar with both English and continental
European musical styles. This
description perfectly fits Francis Tregian Jr., as he had spent
many years of his life on the
Continent, receiving his education in France, and working in
Rome and the Spanish
Netherlands.
The FVB also contains a wide variety of genres:
134 dances (pavans, galliards, almans, corantos, gigges, maskes,
toyes, lavoltas, rounds, spagniolettas, brauls, moriscos, and
muscadins)
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17 organ pieces, such as settings of plainchants, In nomines,
etc.
46 arrangements of 40 different popular songs
9 arrangements of madrigals
22 fantasias and ricercares
7 fancies
19 preludes
6 compositions based on the hexachord
In his book entitled An Elizabethan Virginal Book (1905), Edwin
Naylor says:
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book can tell us more about the state
of music in Elizabeths days than many of us have ever known about
our own times. . . .
It is not going too far to say that if all other remains of the
period were
destroyed, it would be possible to rewrite the History of Music
from 1550 to 1620 on the material which we have in the Fitzwilliam
Book alone.21
The important historical position of the FVB in relation to
other Elizabethan
keyboard repertoire is significant. The most important of these
anthologies include:
My Ladye Nevells Booke (1590) contains 40 pieces by William
Byrd. This magnificent book was copied by a professional scribe
named John Baldwin, under the supervision of Byrd himself. It is
currently housed at Eridge Castle as the personal property of the
Abergavenny family. First published in 1926 by J. Curwen and Sons,
London, it is now available through a Dover reprint.
Benjamin Cosyns Virginal Book (1600), housed in Buckingham
Palace, contains 98 virginal pieces. Composers represented include
Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Nicholas
Strogers, Thomas Weelkes, and Elway Bevin.
Will Fosters Virginal Book, also located in Buckingham Palace,
contains 70 pieces by the above-named composers, plus Thomas Morley
and John Ward.
Parthenia (1611) has the distinction of being the first music
for the virginals ever to be printed. It contains 21 works by Bull,
Byrd, and Gibbons. 22
21 Naylor, Elizabethan Virginal Book, 4.
22 Ibid., 1-3.
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Although all of these anthologies are very important, they are
eclipsed by the sheer size
of the FVB. With 297 compositions in all, it is much larger than
the other Elizabethan
compilations and contains the greater part of the repertoire of
the English virginal school.
Political History of Tudor England in the Late Sixteenth and
Early Seventeenth Centuries
In order to fully understand the significance of the music that
was chosen by
Francis Tregian Jr. for inclusion in his keyboard anthology, it
is necessary to know
something of the tumultuous religious and political history of
England throughout the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
In 1485, the War of the Roses between the Houses of York and
Lancaster finally
came to an end. Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster claimed
victory over Richard III
and thus became Henry VII, King of England by right of conquest.
His tenuous claim
to the throne was strengthened through the bloodline of his
mother, Margaret Beaufort, a
descendant of Edward III. Henry later solidified his claim by
marrying Elizabeth of
York, the eldest child of the late King Edward IV, thereby
uniting the two factions.
Henry VII was a successful king in restoring faith and strength
in the monarchy.
He managed to establish a new dynasty after thirty years of
struggle, strengthened the
judicial system, built up the treasury, and successfully denied
all other claimants to the
throne. At his death, he left a fairly secure and wealthy
monarchy. His oldest son,
Arthur, was expected to become the next king. Arthur and
Catherine of Aragon
(daughter of famed Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella) were
betrothed as young
children as part of an alliance between England and Spain.
Unfortunately, Arthur died of
tuberculosis after only a few months of marriage to Catherine.
It was then arranged that
the next son, Henry, should marry Catherine when he became of
age. According to the
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11
book of Leviticus, marriage to a dead brothers wife was
prohibited, although Catherine
insisted throughout her life that her marriage to Arthur had not
been consummated. It
was for this reason that a papal dispensation was sought and
obtained, so that the
legitimacy of the new marriage between Henry and Catherine would
be recognized by all
parties.
At the death of his father, Henry VIII became king in 1509 and
soon thereafter
married Catherine of Aragon. Catherine bore him several
children, but only Mary would
survive. In pursuit of a male heir, Henry later sought a divorce
from Catherine. After
failing to obtain papal approval for this divorce, Henry broke
all ties with Rome and with
Catholicism, and set out to create a state church. The Church of
England now became the
official religion of the country, and anti-Catholic or recusancy
laws were then enacted
and put into practice. Henry went on to marry five more wives,
divorcing several and
executing two.
When he died in 1547, Henry VIII had only three surviving
legitimate children:
Edward VI (son of third wife, Jane Seymour), Mary (daughter of
first wife, Catherine of
Aragon), and Elizabeth (daughter of second wife, Anne Boleyn).
At the age of nine,
Prince Edward was too young to rule. Instead, he would be guided
through a council
of regency. The first leader of the council was Edwards maternal
uncle, Edward
Seymour, First Duke of Somerset, who was appointed to serve as
Lord Protector of the
Realm and Governor of the Kings Person from 1547-49. A series of
internal rebellions
coupled with steep inflation caused great social unrest in
England during this time, and,
when France formally declared war on England in 1549, Somerset
was soon deposed by
the council. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he
was later executed in
the early 1550s.
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The council was then led by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, 1st
Duke of
Northumberland, from 1549 to Edwards death in 1553. The rise to
power of the Duke of
Northumberland also led to an increase in the persecution of
Catholics in England.
Under his leadership all official editions of the Bible were
replaced with those with anti-
Catholic annotations. Mobs were encouraged to desecrate Catholic
symbols in churches.
The Ordinal of 1550 replaced the divine ordination of priests
with a system in which the
government appointed priests instead. Parliament also passed the
Act of Uniformity of
1552, which replaced the Book of Common Prayer (1549) with a
newer and more
Protestant version. This book was the only authorized one for
church services, and
anyone who did not attend a service where this liturgy was used
faced imprisonment
ranging from six months to life.
Edward became ill with tuberculosis in early 1553, and it soon
became clear that
he was dying. According to Henry VIIIs will, his daughters Mary
and Elizabeth were
next in line for the throne, followed by his niece, Lady Frances
Brandon, daughter of his
younger sister Mary, the Duchess of Suffolk. The Duke of
Northumberland did not find
any of these three women to his liking, so he devised a plan to
retain his power by
altering the line of succession. Part of his plan included
marrying his son, Guilford
Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, the daughter of Lady Frances Brandon,
who was a first
cousin to Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. After the marriage took
place, two different
versions of Edwards will that contained the Device to Alter the
Succession were written
in Edwards own hand. The first excluded Mary, Elizabeth, the
Duchess of Suffolk, and
Lady Jane Grey from the line of succession, with the crown being
left only to Lady Jane
Greys male heirs. When it became clear that Edward would die
before Lady Jane Grey
could produce a male heir, Edwards second draft of the Device to
Alter the Succession
stipulated that the crown would be left to Lady Jane and her
male heirs. Edward finally
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13
died on July 6, 1553 at the age of fifteen, and a power struggle
immediately ensued.
Although some supported Lady Janes claim to the throne, most
people maintained that
Mary was the rightful heir, based on Henry VIIIs Act of
Succession (1543), which
stipulated that Mary, then Elizabeth, would follow Edward in the
line of succession.
Lady Janes reign was brief, lasting only nine days, after which
Mary Tudor was
proclaimed the rightful queen. The Duke of Northumberland was
executed soon
afterwards. Lady Jane, her husband, and her father would
eventually share that same
fate.
As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Mary was
devoutly loyal to
the memory of her mother, Catherine, to her half-Spanish
heritage, and to Catholicism.
Mary and her cousin, papal legate Cardinal Pole, promptly set
out to restore Catholicism
in England. Although her reign of five years proved to be a
brief respite from
persecution for her Catholic subjects, Marys unwise decision to
marry Phillip II of Spain
cost her most of the initial popularity that she had enjoyed
with the English public.
Eventually, she became known as Bloody Mary because of the
persecution and killing
of hundreds of Protestant dissenters during her five-year
reign.
After her death in 1558, Marys younger half-sister, Elizabeth
Tudor, became
queen. Although it has been said that Elizabeth was personally
ambivalent towards
religion, as the monarch she chose to continue with the process
that her father, Henry
VIII, had begun many years before: nationalizing Englands state
religion.23 In
Elizabeths realm, to be a Catholic was to be an unnatural
Englishman. This attitude
stemmed from a perceived threat of enemies from within (the
English Catholic seminary
23 Alice Hogge, Gods Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeths Forbidden
Priests and
the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2005), 9.
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14
priests and Jesuits who were illegally reentering the country
after receiving their training
on the Continent) and without (France, the Pope, and Spain).
During Elizabeths reign, severe persecutions against English
Catholics would
reach an all-time high, especially from the early 1570s until
the mid 1590s, as numerous
pieces of legislation were passed aimed directly against
Catholics. Much of the
legislation involved exorbitant fines, but the most severe of
the laws included death by
drawing and quartering of any Catholic priest or Jesuit who was
caught on English soil,
and for those who harbored any such priests, praemunire, the
complete loss of lands and
wealth coupled with imprisonment for life.
It is this volatile political society and intolerant religious
climate of Elizabethan
England which provides the backdrop and context to both the
Tregian family saga and the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
History of the Tregian Family: Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis
Tregian Jr.
In his book entitled Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the
Olden Time
(1859), William Chappell proposed the idea that the Elizabethan
manuscript might
have been made for or by an English resident of the Netherlands
and that Dr. Pepusch
probably obtained it in that country. This conjecture was based
on the fact that the name
Tregian was the only name that occurred frequently in
abbreviated form throughout the
manuscript. Additionally, a sonnet signed Fr. Tregian prefaced
Richard Verstegans
Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, which was published in 1605
in Antwerp.24
Verstegan was an expatriate Catholic Englishman living in the
Netherlands. His
24 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vii.
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15
occupation was publisher of Catholic devotional books and
anti-Elizabethan political
tracts, but he was also the corresponding agent for Cardinal
Allen in Rome and for the
Jesuits.25
Maitland and Squire also noticed that references to the name
Tregian were
found in several places scattered throughout the FVB:
No. 60, Treg Ground by William Byrd (vol. I, p. 226 of Dover
Edition)
No. 80, Pavana Doloros. Treg by Peter Philips (vol. I, p.
321)
No. 93, Pavana Ph. Tr. by William Byrd (vol. I, p. 367)
No. 181, A Gigg. by William Byrd (vol. II, p. 237) In the margin
of this piece are the letters F. Tr.
No. 214, Pavana Chromatica. Mrs Katherin Tregians Paven by
William Tisdall (vol. II, p. 278)
No. 105, Heaven and Earth by Fre [thought to be an abbreviation
for Francis Tregian]
No. 160, Rowland by William Byrd (vol. II, p. 190). There is a
marginal note which reads 300 to S.T. by Tom. This is probably a
reference to Sybil Tregian, sister of Francis Tregian Jr.26
Maitland and Squire continued to research the name Tregian and
found that the
Tregians had been a rich and powerful Catholic family living in
Truro in Cornwall. For a
time, John Tregian, the grandfather of Francis Tregian Sr.,
served as an officer in the
royal court, as Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII, Steward of
the Chamber, and
Gentleman Sewer of the Kings Chamber.27 In recognition of a job
well done, in 1514 he
25 The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Richard Verstegan (by J. H.
Pollen),
http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/v/
verstegan,richard.html (accessed 7/13/08).
26 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vi.
27 P.A. Boyan and G.R. Lamb, Francis Tregian: Cornish Recusant
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 20.
-
16
was granted a lifetime monopoly in the exporting of cowhides out
of Cornwall.28 He
became very wealthy and accumulated much property. The wealth
and prestige of the
Tregian family increased even further when his son, John Tregian
Jr., married Katherin
Arundell, thus creating an alliance between two of the most
powerful families in
Cornwall. This marriage greatly chagrined another powerful
Cornish family, the
Protestant Greenvilles, led by Sir Richard Grenville. Sir
Richard had attempted to marry
his daughter to John Tregian Jr., but his efforts went
unrewarded. As a future sheriff of
Cornwall, Grenvilles grandson, Richard, would later be one of
the prime instigators
against the Tregian family.
Like the Tregian family, the Arundell family was staunchly
Catholic. In 1549,
during King Edwards reign, an Arundell was one of the leaders in
the ill-fated
Rebellion of the West, in which an army of Cornish Catholic
insurgents had planned to
march on London in an effort to restore the old religion. John
Tregian Jr.s father-in-
law, Sir John Arundell, and his brother, Thomas Arundell, were
arrested as part of this
uprising, and both were imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Thomas Arundell was later
beheaded for conspiring against the Duke of Northumberland, the
de facto ruler of
England during this time. Sir John was luckier than his brother;
when Mary came to the
throne in 1553, he was released from prison and returned to
Cornwall as the newly
appointed sheriff.29
John Tregian Jr. and Katherin Arundell were the parents of
Francis Tregian Sr.,
who was born around the time of the Cornish Rebellion (1549). At
the age of twenty-
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., 23
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17
one, Francis married Mary Stourton, also linked to the Arundell
family.30 The exact date
of the marriage is unknown, although it was probably around
1570.
During the 1560s, the policies toward Catholic citizens in
England were those of
deprivation rather than of persecution. Many former Catholic
priests (including the so-
called Marian priests who were ordained during Marys reign) now
chose to serve as
priests in the English Church. It was common during this time
for a bishop to turn a
blind eye to the superficial conformity of these ex-Marian
clergy, allowing them great
freedom in officiating the services.31 Many of the gentry in
England during this decade
were still Catholic, and it was common for a Catholic
aristocratic family to have its own
priest on the estate, living in disguise. It was also common for
these aristocrats to send
their sons over to the Continent to further their religious
education. There was a
tremendous shortage of qualified Catholic clergy and teachers
and no Catholic schools or
universities in England during this time, since these were all
illegal.
Soon after his marriage, Francis Tregian Sr. went abroad,
presumably to further
his religious studies. This would have been sometime between
1570 and 1572.32 Many
of his fellow Catholics had also been leaving the country for
the same reason, so in 1571
Parliament passed an act which made it an offence for any of the
Queens subjects to
leave the country without an official license and not return
within six months. The
penalty for disobeying this law was the loss of lands and
material goods for life. Francis
came back to England before his six months were up, returning to
his wife and family.
30 Francis Plunkett, Heroum speculum de vita D.D. Francisci
Tregeon (Lisbon,
1655), repr. with English translation, no city, date), 12.
31 Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (Totowa:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 40.
32 Boyan and Lamb, Cornish Recusant, 24.
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18
He then decided to go to London and live at Elizabeths court for
a time. His primary
motivation for doing this was to plead the Catholic cause before
the Queen. From all
accounts it seems that Francis was a very charming and
successful courtier, and
eventually he did get the attention of the Queen, although
certainly not in a way that he
had intended. It seems that Elizabeth was enamored of Francis
Tregian, and she
proposed to make him a viscount, an offer which Tregian quickly
refused. He explained
to the Queen that the main purpose behind his appearance at
court was to plead for the
rights of Catholics in England.33 Rather than having him
arrested and imprisoned for this
seemingly treasonous behavior, Elizabeth allowed him to remain
at court. An account of
what happened next was written by Franciss grandson, Father
Francis Plunkett:
The friendship of Elizabeth for Francis developed into passion,
and she desired to keep him as near to her person as she felt him
near to her heart. As the attraction waxed stronger, Elizabeth
offered to make Francis a Viscount, but he, in his modesty, shrank
from the burden and courteously declined the honour, lest, as he
said, this premature mark of royal favour should detract from his
merits by being attributed solely to affection. To me, he added, it
would be quite enough, if the Faith, for the sake of which I came
to Court, should breathe more freely and recover strength. But
because violent passion exceeds all bounds and knows no law, it
came to pass shortly afterwards that the Queen, late at night, sent
. . . one of those ladies who are called Maids of Honour. She
earnestly begged him to go and see the Queen without delay . . . .
She added that he had captivated the Queen, that nothing more
agreeable could be imagined than that their intercourse, with
increasing familiarity, should ripen into intimate friendship, and
that Francis ought to realize what immense advantages would accrue
to him from the favours of royalty.34
Francis was greatly upset by this royal proposition, as he
wished to honor his
marriage vows, yet he also saw that he and his family would be
in danger if he refused
the Queen. He told the lady-in-waiting that he was very ill and
that he must be excused
for not complying with Her Majestys wishes. A short time later
Queen Elizabeth herself
33 Ibid., 27.
34 Plunkett, Heroum speculum, 12.
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19
came to Tregians room to assess the situation. She again offered
to make him a
viscount. Again, Tregian refused her offer, expressing his great
unworthiness at such a
high honor, but this time he offered the Queen his entire
fortune and all of his
possessions. She could have everything that was his except for
his conscience.
His refusal of her amorous advances greatly enraged Elizabeth,
and she was
deeply offended and insulted. After she stormed out of the room,
Francis Tregian packed
his bags in a hurry and left in the middle of the night for
Cornwall. The account by
Plunkett continues:
When Elizabeth heard of Tregians departure, thinking herself
deceived by him, she flew into a most unroyal rage. With an oath
she asserted that the traitor had left to plot some crime against
her royal person; called him a perfidious criminal, and declared
that being a Catholic, nothing but evil could be expected of him.
She ordered the laws enacted against Catholics to be published
without delay, and further commanded the Knight Marshal to proceed
against the said Francis, his family, and dependents with all
rigour, and promised their property and goods to him for his pains.
35
The Knight Marshal was Sir George Carey, a cousin to Queen
Elizabeth. He was
the grandson son of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyns
sister. As Knight
Marshal, Carey was in charge of one of the most notorious
prisons in England, the
Marshalsea. Carey immediately got in touch with Richard
Grenville, who was by then
the appointed sheriff in Cornwall, to enlist his help in framing
Francis Tregian.
Grenville, who had no love for the Tregian or Arundell families,
was more than happy to
assist with this task.
A plan was hatched with the intent of ruining the Tregian family
by enforcing the
anti-Catholic recusancy laws. In June of 1577, Richard Grenville
appeared at the door of
35 Ibid., 15. Because Francis Plunkett is the only source for
this account, its
authenticity has been questioned by historians. On the other
hand, he heard it directly from his mother, Philippa Tregian, and
it might only be family members who knew the true story.
-
20
the Tregian mansion, accompanied by eight or nine justices of
the peace and one hundred
armed men, and demanded to search the premises under the false
pretense of looking for
an escaped prisoner. Grenville had no search warrant, so, when
Tregian refused him
entrance, he and his armed men barged in and ransacked the
house, looking for evidence.
Grenville and his men found Cuthbert Mayne, the Catholic
seminary priest for the
Tregian household, who lived on the Tregian estate disguised as
the steward. Francis
Tregian and Cuthbert Mayne would be the first nobleman and
priest to be prosecuted
under the full penalty of recusancy laws.
For two years, Francis Tregian was confined illegally without a
hearing or fair
trial in some of the worst prisons in England and under the
vilest of conditions.
Eventually, he was convicted of recusancy in 1579 and was then
deprived of all of his
property, money, and possessions and sentenced to life in
prison. Soon afterwards his
wife and three little children were thrown out of their house in
the dead of winter with
only the clothes on their back, when Carey took over the Tregian
estate. Mary Tregian
was eight months pregnant at the time. As for the priest,
Cuthbert Mayne (who had
studied for the priesthood at Dr. William Allens English College
in Douai and had then
come back to England illegally as an ordained Catholic priest),
his fate was even more
horrific than Tregians. Mayne was convicted of high treason and
sentenced to death.
His sentence read as follows:
That you be taken to the place from whence you came, and from
thence be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you
shall be hanged by the neck, not till you are dead; that you be
taken down, while yet alive, and your bowels be taken out and burnt
before your face. That your head be then cut off and your body cut
in four quarters to be at the [Queens] disposal. And God Almighty
have mercy on your soul.36
36 Boyan and Lamb, Cornish Recusant, 56.
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21
Mayne was the first seminary priest from the English College in
Douai to be
executed for high treason; about one third of the graduates of
this seminary would
eventually suffer the same fate. Nearly four centuries later, in
1970, Cuthbert Mayne was
canonized as a martyr in the Catholic faith, and Francis Tregian
as a confessor.37
It was thought that punishing both Francis Tregian and Cuthbert
Mayne to the full
extent of the law would discourage other Catholic aristocrats
from having their own
priests on their estates. In reality, however, it did little to
stop the English aristocrats
from practicing Catholicism. It seems that many times the degree
of punishment of
recusants depended on the whims of the monarch. For example,
Francis Tregians father-
in-law, Sir John Arundell, did not suffer the loss of all his
money and property, as did his
son-in-law, even though he also spent time in prison and was
fined repeatedly for
recusancy. It seems likely that the severity of Tregians
punishment was based on the
fact that he had personally offended the Queen in a very
embarrassing way.
Prison life was nearly fatal for Francis Tregian, and he
suffered terribly. He was
confined in two of the most horrendous prisons in England, the
Marshalsea Prison and
later in Launceston Prison. He was almost murdered several times
by other inmates, and
finally he became very ill due to unsanitary living conditions.
His captors also tried
starving him to death in an effort to break his spirits.
Amazingly enough, Mary Tregian
chose to join her husband in captivity in the Launceston Prison.
She also suffered
terribly. She gave birth to two children in these filthy
conditions, and neither child
survived. She was finally forced to leave her husband for a time
and stay with her mother
in an effort to regain her health.
37 The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Blessed Cuthbert Maine (by
John
Wainewright), http://www.newadvent.org/ (accessed 28 July
2008).
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22
The Tregian and Arundell families still had some royal
connections, and so in
1580 Francis Tregian was transferred from the Launceston Prison
to the Fleet Prison,
where his living conditions greatly improved. Francis and Mary
Tregian were the parents
of twelve children, eight of which were born while he was a
prisoner at the Fleet.38
The fact that Francis Tregian Sr. was able to father so many
children while
confined to prison or that later his son, Francis Tregian Jr.,
would be able to amass such a
large and valuable collection of books while he was also a
prisoner in the Fleet requires
some explanation. Unlike the Marshalsea and Launceston Prisons,
which existed for the
sole purposes of torturing inmates or holding hardened
criminals, the Fleet Prison was a
money-making enterprise, which was populated primarily by
upper-class debtors and
political dissidents. It seems that Francis Tregian and later
his son, Francis Tregian Jr.,
lived in relative comfort in a private room in the Fleet because
they had been wealthy and
still had rich relatives who could help pay for their room and
board. According to
Annika Jokinen:
All prisoners had to pay fees for their lodgings and for
favorable treatment. The wardens of the Fleet were notorious for
charging exorbitantly high sums and abusing their posts. Prisoners,
for a certain sum, could reside within the Liberties of the Fleet,
or mansion houses near the prison. Here too, money could buy a
certain amount of freedom; alas, for the debtors, such
possibilities were few.39
Soon after he arrived at the Fleet, Francis Tregian Sr. was
moved from the
Common Ward into a private suite, which included a study. Here
he was able to write
poetry, study foreign languages, and conduct a busy social life
in the prison, along with
other intellectual recusants. It was also widely known that for
a certain price a prisoner
38 Trudgeon, Francis Tregian, 42-43.
39 Luminarium, s.v. Fleet Prison (by Anniina Jokinen),
www.luminarium.org/ encyclopedia/fleetprison.htm (accessed February
14, 2008).
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23
could leave under surveillance, and unaccompanied for an even
higher price. This would
explain how his son, Francis Tregian Jr., would later have the
chance to travel, continue
to collect music, and attend to the copying of the manuscripts
that he had presumably
accumulated on his travels.40
Mary Tregian was again allowed to live with her husband. She was
free to move
about as she pleased and was even allowed to attend court, where
she unsuccessfully
attempted many times to entreat Queen Elizabeth to release
Francis from prison.
Apparently Mary Tregian was well-acquainted with William Byrds
brother, John, and so
it is likely that William Byrd also knew the Tregian family,
especially since the surname
Tregian appears in titles of several of his keyboard works found
in the FVB.41
After spending twenty-four years in confinement, Francis Tregian
was granted
parole in 1601.42 Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and in 1605 the
new monarch, James I,
banished him. Tregian left England in July of 1606 and
subsequently immigrated to
Spain, visiting the colleges of Douai and Brussels en route.
There is no record of his wife
accompanying him. In Spain he was given a heros welcome by King
Philip III, who also
granted him a pension. Tregian eventually retired to Lisbon,
where he died on September
25, 1608 at the age of sixty. Seventeen years later he was
re-buried standing up, facing
England, an honor which signified that he had stood up to the
Queen for his beliefs. Over
time his burial place has become a pilgrimage site for
Catholics.
40 Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 402. 40 Naylor,
Elizabethan Virginal Book, 9. 41 The New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians, s.v. Tregian, Francis (by
O.W. Neighbour), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February
14, 2008).
42 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Tregian,
Francis (by Raymond Francis Trudgian), http://www.oxforddnb.com/
(accessed June 30, 2008).
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24
Francis Tregian Jr. was the oldest son of Francis and Mary
Tregian and the
presumed compiler and scribe of the FVB. He was born in 1574 at
Golden Manor, the
Tregian family seat in Cornwall. Francis Jr. and his younger
brother, Charles, were both
educated abroad at Eu and at the English College at Douai that
was later moved to
Rheims. It should be remembered that, according to English
recusancy law, the practice
of sending Catholic children away from England to be educated
was strictly prohibited.
The English College in Douai was founded in 1568 by Dr. William
Allen, one of the ex-
Oxford Catholic professors who fled England after Elizabeth I
came to power. Many of
these exiled professors had congregated into a colony in Douai.
The main objective of
Allens college was to train young Englishmen to be Catholic
priests in the hope that
someday Catholicism would be restored to England. Dr. Allen left
Rheims for reasons of
health, and was afterwards summoned to Rome to help with the
English College there.
He was promoted to Cardinal in 1587 and remained in Rome for the
rest of his life. It is
possible that Francis Jr. was later able to secure employment as
a personal secretary to
Cardinal Allen in 1592 because of his success as an outstanding
student and orator at the
English College in Douai.43
Cardinal Allen sincerely believed that it was in Englands best
interest to return
to the old religion, and he was engaged in activities against
Queen Elizabeth to help
facilitate this return. Cardinal Allen had in fact helped plan
the Spanish Armadas
invasion of England, and, if that plan had succeeded, Allen
would have been appointed
both Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Allen also
encouraged Pope Pius V
to issue the Papal Bull Regnet in Excelsis, which excommunicated
Elizabeth I and
declared her deposed. After this bull was issued in 1570,
Elizabeth chose not to continue
43 Pamela Willetts, Oportet Meliora Tempora Non Expectare Sed
Facere. The Arduous Life of Francis Tregian, The Younger, Recusant
History 28:3 (2007): 380.
-
25
her policy of religious tolerance and instead began actively
persecuting her religious
opponents.44 Therefore, rather than helping the situation of his
fellow Catholics back
home, the effect of Allens Counter-Reformation activities abroad
resulted in making life
even more difficult for Roman Catholics in England.
In Cardinal Allens papers, Francis Tregian Jr. is described as
of great nobility, a
secular person [not an ordained priest], twenty years old,
layman, exceptional
intelligence, versed in philosophy, in music, and in the Latin
language.45 Cardinal Allen
died in 1594, and it was Francis Tregian Jr. who delivered the
eulogy at Allens funeral.
There is also a record of Francis Tregian Jr. returning to
England in 1594 to visit his
parents. After Allens death, he went to work for Albert,
Archduke of the Spanish
Netherlands, where he came in contact with the English composer
Peter Philips. It is
likely that when Francis Tregian Sr. left England in July 1606
on his way to Spain, he
also visited his son, Francis Jr., in Brussels, where he
presumably gave him instructions
to return to England as head of the Tregian family to reclaim
the properties and titles that
had been confiscated by the Crown.46 By December of 1606,
Francis Jr. was back in
England and had begun the task of reclaiming possession of his
familys estate, which
had been given to George Carey (Lord Hundson) by Queen
Elizabeth. In 1614, he was
convicted of recusancy and debt and sentenced to the Fleet
Prison, just as his father had
been before him.47 The fact that he had worked for Archduke
Albert, an enemy to Queen
44 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Allen, William
(15321594)
(by Eamon Duffy), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/391
(accessed July 29, 2008).
45 Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 403: molto nobile, di 20
anni, secolare, di ingenio felicissimo, dotto in filosofia, in
musica, et nella lingua Latina.
46 Willetts, Arduous Life of Francis Tregian, The Younger 382,
fn. 42.
47 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vii.
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26
Elizabeth, was a factor in his sentencing. Tregian was known to
have been working on a
very important book for two years while he was confined in the
Fleet, which scholars
now believe was the FVB. Francis Tregian Jr. died in the Fleet
Prison in 1617 at the age
of forty-three.48
In the 1899 publication of the FVB, Barclay and Squire listed
incorrectly the date
of Francis Tregian Jr.s imprisonment as 1609 and his death as
1619. They wrote:
From a statement drawn up by the Warden of the Fleet prison
(apparently about 1622), it seems that at his death he owed over
200 for meat, drink and lodging, though in his rooms there were
many hundreds of books, the ownership of which formed a matter of
dispute between his sisters and the Warden. It may be conjectured
with much plausibility that the present collection of music was
written by the younger Tregian to wile away his time in
prison.49
This fragmentary passage about Francis Tregian Jr. formulated by
Barclay and Squire
became the basis of the story of Tregian and his keyboard
manuscript, which would
remain unchanged for many years.
Over fifty years later, in 1952, Elizabeth Cole wrote an article
entitled Seven
Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. This oft-quoted
article is considered to be
one of the most authoritative even today, in spite of the fact
that many of her conclusions
are now thought to be incomplete or somewhat inaccurate. Cole
was able to locate a
signature of Francis Tregian Jr. on a legal document, along with
other writings
purportedly in his hand. As the handwriting style of the legal
documents seemed to
match that of the FVB, this appeared to be the long-awaited
proof that Tregian Jr. was
indeed the copyist of the Fitzwilliam manuscript.
48 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Tregian,
Francis.
49 Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: viii.
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27
Cole was of the opinion that the FVB was a musical
representation of Tregians
friends, many of them living underground lives in the face of
political and religious
turmoil. She wrote:
As for the question of who made [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book],
Squire noticed a set of initials in some of the titles like Pavana
Treg: at one point the name appears in full as Tregian. This led
him to surmise that the book was written for or by one of the
Tregian family, the two heads of which spent a total of thirty-four
years in prison for Catholic recusancy. . . . Now going directly to
the MS. we find . . . that no less than seventeen other names (both
in full and in abbreviation) appear in exactly the same
circumstances as the name of Tregianthat is, in the titles of the
pieces and in the margins. . . . Between the lines of music cluster
these little groups of men and women and they mean nothing to us.
But they must surely have meant something to the composers and to
the maker of the book. . . . To find out who they are and what they
are doing there we must reverse the usual process of reading
history backwards and go ourselves to the scene of action. Let us
then go back for a few moments to the London of the first
Elizabethan age, forgetting the musical statistics, and using the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as a map of fifty years in the most
troubled period of our history. The first stop is Tower Hill, a
familiar piece by Giles Farnaby, and a place with two special
features. From Stowes Survey of London, we learn that Upon this
hill is alwayes prepared . . . a large Scaffolde and Gallowes for
the execution of such Traytors as are delivered out of the Tower.
Along one side of it runs the wall and entrance to Lord Lumleys
House. Now Lord Lumley, introduced by Bull as the first of
[Tregians] friends pictured within the Book, came from a long line
of Catholic conspirators. He was deeply implicated in the Ridolfi
plot, to marry his brother-in-law to Mary Queen of Scots. For
twenty years he was in and out of various prisons, and died in his
house on Tower Hill in 1609. The Elizabethan age was an
uncomfortable time for the old diehards; an age of violent
contrast, of feminine inconsistency, and of fear which radiated
downwards from the Queen herself, for one tends to forget that for
fifty years she went in fear for her very life.50
Cole then goes on to talk about several other references to
Catholicism which
Tregian wrote in the margins of the manuscript. According to
Cole, the Pagget for
whom Peter Philips wrote the Pavana and Galiarda was a Charles
Pagget, Catholic spy
50 Cole, Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book,
52-53.
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28
and agent of the Spanish king.51 William Byrds Lady Montegles
Paven was dedicated
to Lady Montegle but written for her husband, who helped
dispatch an envoy to Spain
with an invitation for King Philip to invade England. The
anonymous composition
entitled Lady Rich refers to a warm-hearted Catholic-sympathizer
cousin of the Tregian
family. Ph Tr and S.T. refer to sisters of Francis Tregian Jr.,
Philippa and Sybil.52
Three Other Tregian Manuscripts Around 1950, the British Museum
acquired a manuscript that contained about
1,200 villanellas, madrigals, and instrumental pieces primarily
written by English and
Italian composers. Identified as Egerton 3665, this huge
anthology became of interest
almost immediately because the handwriting in the manuscript
appeared to be the same
as the handwriting found in the FVB. In 1951, Bertram Schofield
and Thurston Dart
wrote an article for Music and Letters. In it they said the
following:
Whoever wrote the famous Fitzwilliam Book also wrote Egerton
3665. The two hands are identical, even down to minute details of
erasure, pagination, correction of mistakes and numbering of the
contents of the books; there can be no doubt that the British
Museum now owns a companion volume to the Fitzwilliam manuscript,
written by the same man at the same time. Though there is still no
final proof that this man was in fact the younger Francis Tregian,
the probability that he compiled both books is further strengthened
by the presence of new items in the Egerton manuscript signed F.
and F.T. and an Allemanda Tr. set by P[eter] P[hilips]. . . .
The contents of Egerton MS 3665 . . . have been copied mainly
from
Italian and English printed books, some of the former being now
exceedingly rare. Moreover the volume contains annotations in
Italian. If, as seems probable, the writer was English he must have
been someone like Tregian who had spent long enough in Italy for
Italian to have become a second language. It has been suggested
that Tregian wrote the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in prison.
Certainly
51 It is more likely that the Pagget mentioned in the FVB was
his eldest brother,
Thomas Lord Pagget, an expatriate English recusant aristocrat
who was also Philips employer.
52 Ibid., 54.
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29
the vast amount of work involved in the compilation of so large
a collection as Egerton 3665 could scarcely have been undertaken by
anyone who was not forced to be idle, and the hundreds of books in
Tregians lodging in the Fleet when he died may well have included
the many collections of music from which the manuscript was
copied.53
Discovery of the Egerton manuscript also led scholars to
reevaluate a manuscript
that had been housed in the New York Public Library since the
early twentieth century,
known as the Sambrook Manuscript. This smaller compilation also
included motets
and madrigals by English and Italian composers and by its
contents seemed to be a
continuation of the Egerton anthology. The Sambrook manuscript
also looked like it was
written in the same hand as Egerton MS 3665 and the FVB.
Also in the early 1950s, yet another manuscript thought to be
notated by Tregian
was discovered in the archives of Oxfords Christ Church Library.
Now known as
Tregians Part-Books, this collection contained transcriptions of
five-part Italian
madrigals, that were presumably copied from contemporary printed
or other manuscript
sources. Several of those sources are now considered to be
extremely rare.
Francis Tregian Jr. as Copyist - Legend or Fact? Up until the
mid 1990s, the most widely accepted accounts of Francis Tregian
Jr.
portrayed him as the obedient eldest son of a Catholic refugee
and a highly educated
young man who served as an aide to Cardinal Allen. Upon hearing
of his fathers death,
Tregian Jr. faithfully returned to reclaim his familys
confiscated properties and was
eventually convicted of recusancy and sentenced to the Fleet
because he was a devout
Catholic. Here he passed the last years of his life collecting
valuable books and creating
music manuscripts.
53 Bertrand Schofield and Thurston Dart, Tregians Anthologies,
Music and Letters 32 (1951): 206-07, http://jstor.org/journals
(accessed February 22, 2008).
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30
In 1995, this account was challenged by Anne Cuneo, who wrote
the article
questioning some of the basic assumptions in the Tregian
narrative:
I began to feel somewhat skeptical about current theories
concerning Francis Tregian when I first saw the imposing Tregians
Anthology in the British Library. It had seemed extraordinary
enough that a man shut up in prison could have collected the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, with its great range and variety.
Confronted by the unbelievable quantity of pieces in the Tregian
collections as a whole, it became incredible: counting as well
those in London and New York and those discovered in the 1950s at
Oxford, there are close on 2,000. Approaching the question with an
open mind, to speak of a poor copyist transcribing the pieces to
wile away his time in prison becomes absurd. The writing out of
2,000 pieces was more than just a copying job: rather, it was
surely the outcome of a life devoted to scholarship and the daily
labour of research, and to study and reflection. Above all, it
implies not only great open-mindedness but also freedom of movement
and a degree of financial independence.54
Cuneo also challenged the like father, like son notion,
especially with regard to
the fathers very conservative brand of Catholicism. Unlike
Elizabeth Cole, who had
found a strong Catholic religious flavor inherent in the
selections of music that Francis Jr.
chose for insertion in his manuscript, Cuneo argues that the
sureness of taste and the
humanist spirit that his anthologies demonstrate should be
counted as well.55 She
remarks that, after taking the historical context into account,
the question of religion in
music was not the collectors main concern, as both Catholic and
Protestant composers
were well-represented in the collection. She later states:
As one studies Elizabethan England, it soon becomes clear that
this society was not quite as black and white as it has
subsequently been depicted. The era was full of turmoil, as were
the people. The two camps, Catholic and Protestant, each of them
further split into moderates and extremists, sometimes mingled with
each other, and for many the divide between the two religions was
blurred. The gray area was extensive, and in private Elizabeth I
herself was ambivalent. The choices [of the music in Tregians
anthology] . . . reflect this social reality.56
54 Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 399.
55 Ibid., 398.
56 Ibid., 401.
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31
Cuneo also provides a different date for Tregians confinement in
the Fleet.
Previously, it had been thought that he began his sentence in
1609, but Cuneo supplied
evidence showing that the summons for Tregian was not issued
until July 27, 1611. She
claimed that it was possible that he was at liberty as late as
1616, as in Truro, Cornwall
there have been found numerous contracts and business papers
written or signed by
Tregian between 1613 and 1616.
Cuneo argues that the main reason Tregian was imprisoned was for
his debts
rather than his Catholicism, and that was the primary reason
that he was imprisoned in
the Fleet. In an age when an average family could live very well
on a yearly income
between 10-20, Tregian had amassed a huge debt of 3000 which he
was unable to
repay.
Cuneo also relates a family legend regarding Tregians supposed
death in 1619, as
told by Mr. Thomas Tomkin, who was a descendant of Francis
Tregian Sr.s sister, Jane:
Mr. [Francis] Tregian resolving to do the best that he could,
received some money by compounding with various parties to confirm
their titles, and thus embarked for Spain, where, as it is said, he
was very well received on account of his own fathers sufferings for
religion, and . . . he was made a grandee of that kingdom; and . .
. his posterity still flourish there with the title of Marquis of
St. Angelo. Whether this be true or not I cannot affirm, having it
only by tradition.57
The family tradition held that Francis Tregian Jr. was still
alive in 1630.
Still another musicologist questioned the notion of Tregian
being the copyist at
all. In 2001, Ruby Reid Thompson published an article in Music
& Letters that
challenged Elizabeth Coles 1951 supposition that the music
script in any of the four so-
called Tregian manuscripts was really in the hand of Francis
Tregian Jr. She argues:
57 Davies Gilbert and Thomas Tomkin, The Parochial History of
Cornwall
(London, 1838), 361, quoted in Cuneo, Francis Tregian the
Younger, 402.
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32
[Cole] discovered two legal deeds signed by him [Francis Tregian
Jr.] which she believed to be entirely in his hand. For she decided
that the script was identical with the text script in FVB, a
judgment endorsed, perhaps a little cautiously, by [Bertram]
Schofield. Cole reported that Schofield, having compared
photographs of the documents and several variations of the
signature closely with the Egerton manuscript, saw no reason to
doubt but that Tregian was indeed the scribe of Egerton 3665 and,
therefore, of the Fitzwilliam Book. He remarked upon the distinct
traces of Italianism in Tregians script, and the individually
characteristic way in which he formed the letters F, T, M, the
small v or u, and, above all, the most unusually shaped small t. .
. . Many early seventeenth-century English scripts contain a
mixture of italic and secretary letter shapes which create an
impression of similarity between them. The separation of the two
styles was already breaking down before the end of the sixteenth
century, so that for several generations mixed hands combining
features of both styles were common. . . . [I]t is hard to know
which one [of the styles] Schofield may have found especially
characteristic or close to those in the Egerton scripts.58
Thompson also presents other arguments against Tregian being the
copyist. She
points out that it is not entirely clear from the signatures on
several of the Tregian family
legal documents that the signatory (Tregian) was also the scribe
of the legal text. She
conjectures that another relative of Francis Jr., Thomas
Tregian, may have written the
text for Francis to sign.59 Thompsons main argument, however,
deals with the type of
paper used in the FVB manuscript, paper considered to be very
expensive, unique, and
difficult to obtain:
The 220 folios of FVB consist entirely of a single type of
high-quality Swiss paper. The watermark is a simple crosier of
Basle, with a letter D and the three-ring insignia of the
manufacturers, the Dring family of Basle . . . . It is likely that
all the paper was produced from three companion moulds, indicating
that it has remained together since manufacture. . . . The paper is
arranged in 36 perfect gatherings: 34 are made up of three bifolios
each, and two of four bifolios each. . . . The great regularity of
the paper content indicates that no leaves are missing and
58 Ruby Reid Thompson, Francis Tregian the Younger as Music
Copyist: A
Legend and an Alternative View, Music & Letters 82 (2001):
6, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed February 17, 2008).
59 Ibid., 9.
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33
that no paper was spoilt during copying. The manuscript appears
to have been planned professionally as a unified project.60
Thompson argues that the so-called Tregian manuscripts were not
copied by
Francis Tregian Jr., but rather were compiled by more than one
scribe in a scriptorium
and that there was a conscious effort among the different
scribes to preserve a uniform
style of writing. Because she was able to find some surviving
court documents that use
the same expensive Dring paper of the same origin as the FVB,
Thompson puts forward
the theory that these manuscripts may have been prepared by a
group of professional
scribes working for aristocratic patrons who may have been
connected with the court.61
In an article of 2002, David J. Smith refutes Thompsons views,
especially with
regard to the Dring paper. He writes:
In order to make a connection between the manuscripts and the
court, there needs to be proof that the paper was obtained
exclusively for use at court. Thompson does not show this was the
case: a large batch of paper might have been imported and sold to
anyone who could have afforded it. Although it could be argued that
Tregian was not in a position where he could afford such luxurious
paper, by all accounts it was an extravagant lifestyle coupled with
a dogged persistence in his religious beliefs that had landed him
in trouble in the first place. Tregian was precisely the sort of
man who would purchase expensive paper for copying music regardless
of the cost.62
I also find Thompsons theory about the employment of
professional scribes in
copying the Tregian manuscripts hard to believe. I have studied
facsimile manuscript
pages from both the FVB and the Egerton 3665 manuscript, and I
have compared the
writing styles from those two collections with that of My Ladye
Nevelles Booke. To me,
the scribal work of the FVB and Egerton 3665 seems be in the
same hand. For example,
60 Ibid., 16-18.
61 Ibid., 2, 5.
62 David J. Smith, A Legend? Francis Tregian the Younger as
Music Copyist, The Musical Times 143 (2002): 12.
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34
certain notational elements such as clefs and custodes (Exs. 1
and 2) appear to be
identical in the FVB and Egerton 3665 manuscripts. Neither of
these manuscripts
appears to be as professional in appearance as the stunningly
beautiful handwriting found
in My Ladye Nevelles Booke, which was copied by John Baldwin, a
professional scribe at
Windsor Castle and a member of the Chapel Royal.
Ex. 1. Egerton MS 3665, La Pecha by Peter Philips.
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35
Ex. 2. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Walsingham by John
Bull.
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36
Ex. 3. My Ladye Nevelles Virginal Book, Will yow walke the
woodes soe wylde by
William Byrd.
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37
Additionally, I believe there is compelling visual evidence to
support the idea that
the handwriting in the FVB, Egerton 3665, and Francis Tregian
Jr.s signature in a legal
document all belong to the same person. Example 4 below is a
facsimile of a deed signed
(and presumably written) by Francis Tregian Jr. If one compares
the handwriting of this
legal document with samples of writing from The Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book and Egerton
3665, they all appear to be in the same hand. For example, the
large case letters L,
N, G, M, B, U, and A are all very similar, as are other letters
with
idiosyncratic curves and long stems, T, P, h, and d (see exs.
5A, 5B and 5C).
Ex. 4. Facsimile of a legal document signed by Francis Tregian
Jr.
Ex. 5A - Legal Document Ex. 5B - FVB Ex. 5C - Egerton 3665
L
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38
N
G
M
B
T and h
P
U
A
d I believe that these handwriting samples from three different
documents show that
the same person was the scribe for both. Since the legal
document was signed by Francis
Tregian Jr. himself, it therefore seems logical to assume that
he was also the
transcriber/copyist for the FVB.
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39
CHAPTER 2
A NEW EXAMINATION OF THE FVB MANUSCRIPT
It was an invaluable experience to be able to immerse myself in
looking at each
page of the microfilm of the manuscript. Over the course of a
few weeks, I became very
familiar with Tregians handwriting. I noticed that the size of
the handwriting on the first
page is slightly larger and wider than in the rest of the
manuscript. By the middle of the
second page, the handwriting settles down to a smaller size that
remains consistent
throughout the rest of the anthology. I also observed that the
notes, stems and words on
MSS pages 1-176 of the manuscript are wider in appearance than
those on MSS. pages
181-419; it looked as if the copyist was using a finer-point
writing implement for those
pages.
Tregian consecutively numbered each page of his keyboard
anthology beginning
with 1 and ending with 419. The page numbers are located in the
upper left and right
edges. The manuscript naturally falls into the following
subsections:
First section of manuscript, pages 1-176 (Pieces 1 through
95)
Four blank unruled pages, pages 177-180
Second section of manuscript, pages 181-419 (Pieces 96 through
297)
Three unnumbered ruled blank pages are found at the end
An index of pieces contained in the FVB was created by Richard
Bartleman and copied by a Mr. Harry Smith in 1816 after the death
of Lord Fitzwilliam, who had bequeathed the manuscript to Cambridge
University. It was inserted into the manuscript after the three
unnumbered ruled blank pages.
In addition to listing the titles of the pieces in the first
section of the manuscript,
Tregian also consecutively numbered each piece, 1 through 95.
When studying the
manuscript, I also noticed a secondary numbering system in which
Tregian assigned
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40
another number to select pieces, thus linking a particular piece
to a specific composer as
part of a collection of works by that person. For example, 82.
Amarilli di Julio
Romano. 13 by Peter Philips indicates that this is the
eighty-second piece in the
manuscript, but the thirteenth piece in a group of works by that
composer. This was an
interesting feature that the original transcribers, Maitland and
Squire, may have missed,
misinterpreted, or ignored. For example, a ii in the manuscript
(meaning the second
piece in a composer set, was transcribed as a nonsensical 11 in
the original 1899
Breitkopf und Hrtel edition, later reprinted by Dover. In fact,
of all of the literature
written about the FVB that I have read, I only found mention of
this interesting
organizational system in one other source. In 2002, David J.
Smith wrote:
The scribe [of the FVB] numbers pieces by each individual
composer as they occur throughout the manuscript, but in the first
layer (nos. 1-95) there is also a consecutive numeration. Judging
from the position of the number for Byrds Pazzamezzo Pavan (no. 56,
p. 102), the consecutive numeration was added later, post-dating
entry of the titles and pagination.63
Following piece No. 95, there are four blank pages in the
manuscript. Tregian
abandoned the chronological numbering of pieces in the second
section of his anthology;
however, he did continue with the secondary numbering system of
linking individual
pieces to composer sets. Smith postulates:
The numeration of the contents ceases in the remainder of the
manuscript: the scribe finished the first layer as a unit, then
inserted the numbers; presumably he would have continued the
numeration had the manuscript been completed. The presence of
empty, but ruled, folios at the end of the volume suggests that FVB
was a work in progress.64
In 1988, a facsimile of the Egerton 3665 manuscript was
published with a preface
written by Frank DAccone. In his preface, DAccone created a
chart which shows how
63 Smith, A Legend? Francis Tregian the Youngest as Music
Copyist, 11.
64 Ibid.
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41
Tregian organized his huge madrigal and instrumental collection
of over 1,100
compositions, using several different numbering systems. Using
DAccones Egerton
3665 diagram as a model, I have constructed a chart of the FBV
that shows how Tregian
used two different numbering systems to organize his keyboard
anthology. The chart
lists the 297 pieces contained in the FVB in order of their
appearance in the manuscript.
Spellings of proper names have been modernized. Column 1 shows
the chronological
numbers (Chr. #) of the 297 pieces in the FVB. Column 2 (Tr.1)
lists Tregians
arrangement of numbering pieces 1 through 95; after Piece No. 95
this column ends.
Column 3 (Tr.2) shows Tregians secondary numbering system, which
linked pieces
together into composer sets.
Contents of Tregians Keyboard Anthology Outlining his two types
of numbering systems
Chr. # Tr.1 Tr.2 Title_________________________________________
1. 1. Walsingham by John Bull 2. 2. Fantasia by John Munday 3. 3.
Fantasia by John Munday (Faire Wether) 4. 4. Pavana by Ferdinando
Richardson 5. 5. Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson 6. 6. Galiarda
by Ferdinando Richardson 7. 7. Variation by Ferdinando Richardson
8. 8. Fantasia by William Byrd 9. 9. Goe from my window by Thomas
Morley 10. 10. Jhon come kisse me now by William Byrd 11. 11.
Galliarda to my L. Lumleys Paven pag. 76 by John Bull 12. 12.
Nancie by Thomas Morley 13. 13. Pavana by John Bull 14. 14. Alman
by anonymous 15. 15. Robin by John Munday 16. 16. Pavana by M.S.
(seems to say M.S. in the manuscript) 17. 17. Galiarda by John Bull
18. 18. Barafostus Dreame by anonymous 19. 19. Muscadin by
anonymous 20. 20. Alman by anonymous 21. 21. Galiarda by anonymous
22. 22. Praeludium by anonymous
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42
23. 23. Praludium El. Kidermister by anonymous 24. 24.
Praeludium by anonymous 25. 25. Praeludium by anonymous 26. 26. The
Irishe Ho-Hoane by anonymous 27. 27. Pavane by Fernando Richardson
28. 28. Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson 29. 29. Galiarda by
Ferdinando Richardson 30. 30. Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson 31.
31. The Quadran Pavan by John Bull 32. 32. Variation of the Quadran
Pavan by John Bull 33. 33. Galiard to the Quadran Pavan by John
Bull 34. 34. Pavana by John Bull 35. 35. Galiard to the Pavan by
John Bull 36. 36. St. Thomas Wake by John Bull 37. 37. In Nomine by
John Bull 38. 38. (no tit