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Pious Pleasures in Early Stuart London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Pinto
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Abstract

Christ Church, Oxford, Mus 739–43, 750–3 and 1074–7 are interconnected manuscript vocal partbooks of contrafacta from London of the 1620s that employ Puritan texts. The chief compiler was John Browne, Clerk of the Parliaments (1608–91) whose instrumental music has been much discussed. His family background gives clues for identifying another copyist in these sets as his guardian uncle, and for giving them a context in an era with little other documentation for musical family piety of radical sorts.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 41 , 2008 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2008

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References

1 Labelled A-D below: set A: Mus. 739/741/743; set B: Mus. 740/742; set C: Mus. 750–3; and set D: Mus.1074–7; see Appendix 2.Google Scholar

2 Fragments like B 10 occur untexted; B 22 is textless but was seemingly complete (the Bassus book for both these is missing). Casual tags from models head two items: one an incipit of a printed translation, one a title of an instrumental duo (B 30, C 2: each in only one partbook). Reworkings can be reminiscent by incipit or phraseology. Many identifications, especially of English printed sources, were first published in G.E.P. Arkwright, Catalogue of Music in the Library of Christ Church Oxford, vol. 1 (London, 1915): vol. 2 (London, 1923) has anonyma and musico-verbal incipits. Listing of concordances here is indebted especially to Harry B. Lincoln, The Italian Madrigal and Related Repertories (New Haven and London, 1988). A full analysis of the constitution of the sets under discussion, including past and present binding and shelfmarks, foliation, and their history in the library, is in Christ Church Library Music Catalogue, ed. John Milsom: ongoing, on-line at <http://www2chch.ox.uk/library/music/>. This gives earlier and exacter confirmation of contents of the Aldrich bequest than available from Malchair's listings. Dr Milsom has independently suggested the presence of the hand of John Browne (ii) in the sets, in findings posted May-June 2005. They overlap with those suggested here, while possibly differing in detail and in interpretations advanced: I am grateful to him for comment on their import. Andrew Ashbee has kindly discussed and given the benefit of his knowledge of these topics over a long period of time, which is a pleasure to acknowledge..+This+gives+earlier+and+exacter+confirmation+of+contents+of+the+Aldrich+bequest+than+available+from+Malchair's+listings.+Dr+Milsom+has+independently+suggested+the+presence+of+the+hand+of+John+Browne+(ii)+in+the+sets,+in+findings+posted+May-June+2005.+They+overlap+with+those+suggested+here,+while+possibly+differing+in+detail+and+in+interpretations+advanced:+I+am+grateful+to+him+for+comment+on+their+import.+Andrew+Ashbee+has+kindly+discussed+and+given+the+benefit+of+his+knowledge+of+these+topics+over+a+long+period+of+time,+which+is+a+pleasure+to+acknowledge.>Google Scholar

3 John Jenkins Consort Music for Viols in Six Parts, ed. Richard Nicholson and Andrew Ashbee (London, 1976), xii; Andrew Ashbee, ‘Instrumental Music from the Library of John Browne (1608–91), Clerk of the Parliaments’, Music & Letters, 58 (1977), 43–59. See also footnotes 22–3 for further identifications of instrumental music.Google Scholar

4 David Pinto, ‘The Music of the Hattons’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 23 (1990), 79–108; see also Jonathan P. Wainwright, Musical Patronage in Seventeenth Century England: Christopher, First Baron Hatton (1605–1670) (Aldershot, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 David Pinto, ‘William Lawes’ Music for Viol Consort’, Early Music, 6 (1978), 12–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Their paired signatures occur on an indenture between Sir Thomas Hayes alderman, with Dame Martha his wife, and Sir Baptiste Hickes: the demise of a messuage in the parish of Saint Andrew Undershaft, to the east side of Saint Mary Axe, for the use of Anthony Balbany, merchant stranger, for 29 years: London, Guildhall Library MS 1843. Dated 29th September 1605, it was witnessed the following 4th April 1606 by John Browne (i), Richard Fishbourne, and Richard Bovey. ‘Giul Micotti’ is the signature of Balbany's attorney, also noted as ‘Mr Juliano Micotti’. As Nathaniel Shute mentioned (see below and fn 15), Fishbourne had abandoned a courtier's life earlier in his career to find employment in the mercer's business with court outlets belonging to Hickes (whose brother Sir Michael, formerly secretary to Lord Burleigh, remained an associate of his son Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury).Google Scholar

7 British Library, Add. MS 30982, reversed ff. 124–3, ‘An epitaph on Mr Fishborne the great London benefactor & his executor’: ‘What are thy gaines o death if on[e] man ly’. The current attribution derives from The Poetical Works of William Strode, ed. Bertram Dobell (London, 1907). Dobell transcribed from Strode's commonplace book, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 325 ff. 92v–3; this could be a non-personal component. For related sources see Beal, Peter, Index of English Literary Manuscripts II/2 1625–1700 ([London], 1993). Both poems mention the interdependence of Fishbourne and Browne: as the second termed it (lines 13–15), ‘Hee leaues his heart, the selfe same heart behind | Scarce Man and wife so much one flesh are found | As these one soule’.Google Scholar

8 British Library, Lansdowne MS 777, ‘An epiced on Mr Fishborne’: ‘As some, too far inquisitive, would fain’. Fishbourne's entry (for the first time) in the Oxford New Dictionary of National Biography states that he and John Browne (i) were brothers-in-law; which is open to modification.Google Scholar

9 Nathaniel Shute, Corona Charitatis. THE CROWNE OF CHARITIE: A Sermon Preacht in Mercers Chappell, May 10 1625. at the solemne Funerals of his euer-renowned Friend, of precious memory, the Mirroir of Charitie, Mr RICHARD FISHBURNE, Merchant, And now consecrated as an Anniversary to his FAME (W. Stansby for Samuel Man, dwelling at the Swanne in Pauls churchyard; London, 1626). In its commemorative published form it may well also be a commission by John Browne (i).Google Scholar

10 Sir John Watney, An Account of the Mistery of Mercers of the City of London Otherwise the Mercers' Company (London, 1914).Google Scholar

11 Paul S. Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships The Politics of Religious Dissent 1560–1662 (Stanford CA, 1970).Google Scholar

12 30th March 1625, proved 14th May: London, Kew, Public Record Office, Probate 1625 f. 461 (Clarke 57).Google Scholar

13 Entry dated 28th April 1629 (34 Ridley). Joan, mother of John (ii), was buried 10th November 1626 at St Alphege, London Wall, where her husband Thomas had been buried 23rd January 1620/1. John (ii) had a joint tomb for Fishbourne and his ‘adoptive father’ erected in Mercers' Chapel in 1634, but bomb-damage in the Second World War spared only Fishbourne's part. This discussion is indebted to unpublished genealogical findings by Miss Mary Edmond in the House of Lords Record Office.Google Scholar

14 Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Administrations 1627 f. 184, 12th December. Gardiner stood surety for William Browne the poet at the Inner Temple, March 1611/12. Knighted by Charles 1, 25th November 1641, he was Recorder of the City of London in 1635, but discharged in 1643 for his attendance on the Oxford court.Google Scholar

15 Legend had it that Fishbourne was a river foundling, like Moses. Shute's ‘countess’ may have been Jane nee Ogle (d. December 1625); listed with her husband, Edward Talbot, 8th Earl of Shrewsbury, amongst client debtors of Fishbourne's next employer, the massively wealthy Baptist Hickes (created Viscount Campden). This earl was son of the dedicatee of Musica Transalpina I (1588): Gilbert, Lord Talbot (later 7th Earl).Google Scholar

16 See Ashbee, ‘Instrumental Music from the Library of John Browne’. ‘Thomas Turner of London grocer’ is an endpaper note in the Browne Lyra and Bandora Book (London, Royal Academy of Music, MS 600; Robert Spencer collection), giving the name and trade of the master to whom Thomas Browne, father of John (ii), was apprenticed, 1584–91.Google Scholar

17 See Appendix 2 for sources of a misascription to Alfonso I. The piece is parodied in Morley, Madrigalles (1594), ix-x, the enchanting four-part ‘Now is the gentle season / The fields abroad’ (not present in Browne partbooks).Google Scholar

18 Proof that Francis Tregian II was copyist-owner is circumstantial, but rumours of its demise are exaggerated: David J. Smith, ‘Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist: a Legend?‘, Musical Times, 143 (Summer, 2002), 7–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Morley does not otherwise figure in known music of the Brownes in manuscript or printed form; nor does the printed collection at Christ Church give many significant matches with publications that they used (see Appendix 2).Google Scholar

20 However, the first of these by date, 158612, is Venetian; published by Scotto. Both Anerio and Soriano were members of the Compagnia dei Musici di Roma (founded 1584), the later Accademia di Santa Cecilia.Google Scholar

21 Historical Gazeteer of London before the Great Fire at <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=4620#sl-58> (accessed 25 March 2008).+(accessed+25+March+2008).>Google Scholar

22 For copies of these owned by Browne, see Charles Colman The Four-Part Airs, ed. David Pinto (London, 1998); Charles Colman Three-Part Suites, I, ed. David Pinto (Saint Albans, 2003); Musica Britannica, vol. 61.Google Scholar

23 Even without marks of ownership, the link is enough to suggest that these were Browne's: see the identification by Dr Christopher D.S. Field and source-discussion in Musica Britannica, vol. 81. Christ Church has two copies of Hilton's Ayres, RISM H5311. One is part of the set Mus. 449–54 (through Aldrich), the other Mus. 1112 (Bassus only): John Hilton Ayres, or Fa La's for Three Voyces (1627), Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance 137, ed. John Morehen (Middleton WI, 2004).Google Scholar

24 Graham Parry, ‘The Devotional Flames of William Austin’, Early Modern Literary Studies, Special Issue 7 (May, 2001). Margaret Crum found one of Austin's meditations reused by Traherne: Thomas Traherne Poems, Centuries and Three Thanksgivings, ed. Anne Ridler (London, 1966), xv.Google Scholar

25 Listed in Kathryn Smith, ‘“To Glorify Your Choir”: The Context of Jenkins's Sacred Music’, John Jenkins and his Time Studies in English Consort Music, ed. Andrew Ashbee and Peter Holman (Oxford, 1996), 171–88. The source was first assessed, presence of continuo indications overlooked, by Vincent Duckies ‘John Jenkins’ Settings of Lyrics by George Herbert’, Musical Quarterly, 48 (1962), 461–75.Google Scholar

26 See Lyrics from the Song-books of the Elizabethan Age, ed. A.H. Bullen (London, 1887) and More Lyrics (1888; revised selection 1889); The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse, ed. H.J.C. Grierson and G. Bullough (Oxford, 1934), no. 308. The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1950, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, 1972) retains this poem as no. 278, still with a suggestive placement following Herbert; see also The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509–1659, intr. David Norbrook, ed. H.R. Woudhuysen (Harmondsworth, 1992), no. 287. It is significant that sets of parts for verse anthems survive among MSS assignable to Hatton, not Browne, whose sets have only atypical vocal reworkings of instrumental originals: Ferrabosco's ‘Hear me O God’ (his Pavan on Five Notes) and one unusual In Nomine by John Milton (i) with a (later-) texted cantus firmus, ‘If that a siner[s] sig[h]es sent from a soule oprest’. Probably the high-church contexts of verse anthems were suspect.Google Scholar

27 Otherwise, all in this line to survive by Jenkins is ‘Mercy dear Lord, o saviour dear’ a3, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Mus. f. 17–19, ff. 25v (the Hamond Partbooks), not the piece with a similar verbal incipit in Christ Church, Mus. 736–8; and three items in the later York Minster, MS M.5.S (alongside other unica by Ford, Ives, William Lawes): ‘Blessed be the God of Love’, ‘Lord of my light’, ‘Welcome pure thoughts’. Ford's partsongs are also late-added to Henrician partbooks of chansons at Winchester College.Google Scholar

28 The Elizabethan Madrigal A Comparative Study (New York, 1962), American Musicological Society Studies and Documents 4: especially 158–9.Google Scholar

29 Full listings for this source, including the ‘madrigalette’, in Bertram Schofield and Thurston Dart, Tregian's Anthology’, Music & Letters, 32 (1951), 205–16. David Pinto, ‘Italian Influence on Seventeenth-Century English Music’, in A Viola Da Gamba Miscellanea, ed. Susan Orlando (Limoges, 2005), 95–127, relists them (at 118–19) with suggestions of textual sources specific to Ferrabosco's reuse.Google Scholar

30 Mus. 379–81, nos. 22–3 (Exx. 7–8), Viola da Gamba Society Thematic Index, Anonymous 926–7: the first with a final section in triple counterpoint. The companion set for four-part dance is Mus. 367–70: Ashbee, ‘Instrumental Music from the Library of John Browne’. Both sets are listed and further discussed in David Pinto, ‘New Lamps for Old: The Versions of the Royall Consort’, William Lawes 1602–1645: Essays on his Life Times and Work, ed. Andrew Ashbee (Aldershot, 1998), 251–81.Google Scholar

31 No.7 ‘Modo veniet Dominus’ = ‘When wilt thou o Lord’, Mus. 61–7 (om. 65), f. 55; no. 30 ‘Quae est ista quae processit sicut sol’ = ‘O sweet Jesus’, ibid., ff. 55v; no. 24 ‘Ave verum corpus’ = ‘Hear my prayer O Lord, when I pour’, ibid., ff. 56 (19v in Mus. 67): British Library, K.7.a.7 (no copy at Christ Church). Cf. no. 34 ‘Gaude Maria virgo / Virgo prudentissima’, in New York Public Library Drexel MS 4302, no. 16; the same, untexted, attr. Morley, British Library, MS RM 24.d.2: Lionel Pike, ‘“Gaude Maria Virgo”: Morley or Philips?’ Music & Letters, 50 (1969), 127–35; also ‘Bow downe thine eare’, Mus. 56–60 = ‘Cantai mentre’, Madrigali a6 I (1596): 1604 edition (RTSMP1992) Mus. 586–91.Google Scholar