3 - The gittern trade

Summary

A roll listing the presents offered to Elizabeth I on New Year's Day in 1559 may reveal a professional maker of gitterns in Tudor England. We have already encountered the gift – a case of three gitterns – but not the name of the giver, who appears towards the end of the strictly hierarchical list. Long hidden from view by the slip of a nineteenth-century editor, he is the celebrated instrument maker of London, John Rose senior. Rose was already at work in 1552 when he repaired lutes, made viols and provided strings for Sir Thomas Chaloner the elder, but when he offered his present to Elizabeth he was rapidly approaching the height of his fame (not that it counted for much to the clerks of the Jewel House who inventoried his gift in 1559). Two years later, he is handsomely praised in the Court Book of Bridewell Hospital for a most notable talent ‘geven of God in the makyng of instruments even soche a gift as his fame is spred through a great part of christendome … ’. In recognition of this ability, Rose was granted rooms in the former Presence Chamber of the original Bridewell Palace, on the banks of the Fleet, with accommodation above the Great Chamber; the order for his tenancy was signed by leading lights of the city, all members of the most illustrious companies.

The gifts offered by other gentlemen on the same occasion reflected the best productions of their professions, but not necessarily their own handiwork. William Treasurer, maker of keyboard instruments, presented a pair of virginals, while the printer Richard Jugge offered a Ptolemaic map with text in Italian.3 Rose may either have given the fruit of his own labours, which was probably the case with William Treasurer's offering, or some especially fine wares in his own line obtained from abroad, probably the case with Richard Jugge's map. One might imagine that the Queen bestowed no more or less attention upon the gitterns than upon any other present she received that day, but that was not the case; the entry on the roll records that the instruments were currently ‘with theQuene by Mr. Lichfild’, whichmeans that one of the royal lutenists, well known from court and other records, had conveyed the case of gitterns to the Queen's presence so that she could examine them, and perhaps even play them.