Discontent with the existing terminology, narratives and concepts of reform is widely felt among medievalists, although most of the discussion has been focused on the period from c. 800 until 1150 or, at the latest, 1200. In contrast, reform in thirteenth-century England is still generally treated as a stable conceptual category, a predominantly insular phenomenon, and as a popular activity among both laity and clergy, who, it would appear, spent much of their time either pursuing or resisting something called reform. Renewed interest in the relationships between secular and ecclesiastical reformers seems to have resulted in the convergence of previously distinct historiographies of reform: those of the kingdom's governance and of the implementation of the constitutions of Lateran IV. Since both have long been established in their separate spheres as significant instances of reform, and the terminology has not been revisited, ‘reform’ has become even more capacious and inexact in its meaning. The term reformatio is certainly present in the documents, although not necessarily with the frequency or wide scope of meaning with which it appears in translations and interpretations of those documents. Magna Carta spoke of an emendatio, not reformatio, of the kingdom, while the documents produced by the baronial ‘reformers’ used a mixture of terms to describe what ought to be done: ordino, rectifico, correctio and reformatio, and, in the vernacular, refurmement, amendement and releuement. Among ecclesiastical ‘reformers’, the use of the term was closely connected to the wording of the constitutions of Lateran IV, which spoke of reform solely as an ‘office of correction and reform’ that belonged to prelates, abbots and their assistants, who should scrutinise morals, especially those of the clergy and religious: ‘otherwise the blood of such persons will be required at their hands’. The Franciscan, Adam Marsh, usually described as a reformer, hardly used the word himself and when he did, it was in the same very restricted sense, interchangeable with emendatio, of correcting individuals. It seems likely that people who are not viewed as reformers also used this conventional language of scrutiny, discipline and improvement in a range of contexts.

Uncertainty might be an inescapable element of the human condition, but it is susceptible to exploration in historical terms, its forms being constructed by culture, which both generates uncertainty and supplies means to manage and mitigate its effects. The powerful presence of uncertainty in the Middle Ages is suggested by widespread invocations of fickle fortune, mutability and instability, these often serving as means to lift the reader's gaze up from a world in flux to another, better one that was still and sure. It is revealed in other, very different circumstances, such as the interest paid to prophecy and prognostication, whether mundane or apocalyptic in form. And its existence is implied by structures – pastoral and sacramental, familial and political – that supplied practical support and psychological scaffolding to lives full of fragility. No collection of proceedings can possibly aspire even to adumbrate so sprawling and open-ended a subject. Rather what appears in this volume is a collection of essays, aligned to varying degrees with the theme, that touch on aspects of it, more especially in the arenas of Christian life and thought, politics and law. What remains in this introduction is a few words about salient points and connections pertaining to the common theme.

Four essays treat topics intersecting religious and intellectual history. In the first, Amanda Power makes a case study of the letters of Adam Marsh a means to illuminate the thought of his circle. She places uncertainty in a cosmic and spiritual context. Certainty ultimately was to be found outside mortal life, beyond the broken world, save for brief revelatory flashes – biblical, prophetic, miraculous – when it was encountered in terrestrial time and space. It was the ambition of the reformer to extract from these scintillations means – rules and practices – that might be of use to believers in the perilous search for salvation, such that elements of certainty might be ‘institutionalised’ in the life of the church. This enterprise might be heartfelt on the part of those engaged in it – undertaken in a world that they felt was slipping into disorder and in need of regeneration. It was also, necessarily, a means to power, but one achieved through utterances about right belief and practice that appealed to many who sought authoritative assurances.

On 15 September 1275, Godfrey le Steadman killed Robert Field with an axe and then fled. Maud, the daughter of Alice of Herne, found Robert's dead body, and so ‘raised the hue and cry (levavit hutesium)’. Shortly thereafter, ‘Hugh of Stapleford [the sheriff] was ordered to arrest Godfrey, William and John’, three men suspected of the killing. Later, at the county court, when Robert's sister, Cecily, appealed Godfrey for Robert's death (as well as the two other men for their part in the killing), Cecily was also said to have ‘immediately raised the hue and cry (recenter levavit hutesium)’. This entry from a Bedfordshire coroner's roll raises interesting questions: why did Cecily raise a hue and cry after Maud had already raised one? Furthermore, why were both hue and cries recorded? The answers to these questions can be found by asking an even more significant question: what was expected of people when they witnessed crime or saw its consequences? The short – though also in most cases extended – answer is: raise the hue and cry. But what exactly was the hue and cry, and how was it raised?

Historians usually treat the hue and cry as serving mostly one purpose – the pursuit of criminals – since they deal with it only inasmuch as it pertains to their wider subject. Some, however, have demonstrated that the hue and cry could be raised for more than just the purpose of initiating a pursuit; it could be raised when people happened upon dead bodies, or wished to bring an appeal. In particular, John Hudson, R.F. Hunnisett and Henry Summerson have said that the hue and cry contained elements of both notification and pursuit. Yet the variety of reasons that necessitated different responses from those who raised and responded to hue and cries has never been fully investigated. This article examines the role of the hue and cry in thirteenth-century England's system of criminal justice. It explores what the hue and cry was, as well as how it was raised, by unpacking the complex set of legal obligations found in a selection of entries from thirteenth-century plea rolls and coroners’ rolls.

Cases of conscience are real or imagined moral dilemmas involving a choice between two non-ideal courses of action. Writings on cases of conscience – casuistry – were a feature of Catholic moral philosophy through the early modern period and into the nineteenth century, with a phase of particular notoriety in the mid seventeenth century. To historians of the Counter-Reformation, casuistry is a familiar concept because of the abundance of writings on practical ethics produced and because the subject of casuistry played a prominent role in religious polemic. When Martin Luther made a bonfire of books he believed to be dangerous to the Christian faith in 1520, he included a popular book of cases of conscience, the Summa Angelica. Blaise Pascal satirised the casuistry of the Jesuits in his Lettres Provinciales. In reformed England in the late sixteenth century, Jesuit evangelists were found to carry small treatises with advice on cases of conscience originating from the seminaries at Douai and Rheims, which were intended to provide moral guidance to Catholics negotiating a complicated path between dissimulation and recusancy. Although casuistry is thus most associated with the social and religious history of the sixteenth century, it was also a common feature of penitential writing in England and Europe in the thirteenth century. Earlier writings on moral cases have attracted much sparser recognition in modern scholarship than their early-modern counterparts, yet they were no less a feature of medieval pastoral treatises, and played just as crucial a role in medieval pastoral care.

These medieval moral dilemmas are the subject of this paper; it will argue that their appearance in English confessors’ manuals marked the beginning of a new genre of Catholic moral philosophy. There had, of course, been discussions about applied ethics before the thirteenth century, but this was the first time that there was a sustained interest in the subject, and that it was attached so closely to pastoral care and penitence. The combination of moral dilemmas and penitential advice would later also characterise the collections of cases of conscience in the sixteenth century.

‘Casuistry’ was not immediately recognised as such in the Middle Ages.

On Tuesday 27 June 1217, England's newly established regency government despatched a letter close to Gloucestershire's sheriff informing him that Geoffrey de Longchamp, a local knight, had now returned to ‘the faith and service of the Lord King’. The letter went on to authorise the full restoration of the former rebel's confiscated lands. Longchamp, who had been opposed to the crown since at least December 1215, was just one of the many hundreds if not thousands who had taken up arms against King John. Rebellion though, as Longchamp and his fellow rebels had discovered, was an inherently risky undertaking. Success was far from certain as many competing variables could quickly alter the course of a rebellion: the vagaries of battle, unexpected events or even personality clashes amongst its leadership were just some of the factors that could affect its eventual outcome. Moreover, if a rebellion ultimately proved ill-fated then its supporters would likely suffer some form of retribution. Thus the would-be rebel needed to give careful consideration to the likely consequences that would arise from his personal participation in the enterprise. Assessing the potential risks associated with rebellion and then weighing them against the possible benefits that might accrue from direct involvement constituted an important element in his deliberations. The prospective rebel would also reflect upon the various strategies that he could employ in order to minimise the known risks that attended any contemporary rebellious movement. My purpose here is to explore the four principal dilemmas that Longchamp and every other thirteenth-century rebel faced, examine the possible alternatives available to him and analyse his resultant decisions’ concomitant risks and benefits.

Rebellion in the Middle Ages encompassed many different forms of resistance within its scope. Communal mass movements, such as the Shepherds’ Crusade of 1251 or the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, directly challenged the existing hierarchical social structures in both the temporal and secular spheres respectively. Cathedral chapters frequently defied episcopal authority: at Lincoln during the early 1240s, for example, Bishop Grosseteste was locked in a bitter dispute with the dean and chapter concerning his controversial claim to visitation rights over them. Elsewhere, within the sheltered world of the cloister, monks or nuns often chafed against the restraints inherent in a life of continual obedience and openly resisted abbatial authority.

This paper stems from a project which aims at providing a general study of texts reflecting on power in England in a ‘long thirteenth century’. In particular, it examines the way commentators on Scripture considered themes such as political legitimacy and limits to temporal power, the kingdom and the idea of community, or the way power ought to be exercised. Although they probably expressed the majority view, the systematic questioning of Scripture led them to depart from available norms and discourses and progressively to construct new patterns of reference. In this context, the notion of uncertainty may help renew our understanding of political ideas in thirteenth-century England and in particular highlight the contribution of relatively neglected or lesser authors.

The life and works of Thomas Docking

Among these is Thomas Docking, a Franciscan of the Oxford convent. Thomas Docking, or Thomas Good, probably came from the village of Docking (Norfolk). He is mentioned for the first time in the correspondence of Adam Marsh, in a letter dated from 1251, in which Marsh asks the provincial minister, William of Nottingham, to assign to Thomas Docking the Bible that used to be in the possession of ‘P. of Worcester’, deceased. Marsh praises Docking for ‘his upright and most gracious life, the clarity and perspicacity of his intellect, his outstanding progress in learning, and his ready and eloquent speech’. At the beginning of the 1250s Docking may still have been a young brother; on the other hand the loan of a Bible was perhaps meant to facilitate his exegetical work. He is mentioned in later sources as a doctor in theology and became the seventh lector of the Oxford convent; he was probably active there in the mid 1260s, before moving to the convent of Norwich. But in 1269 he took part in the controversy between the Dominicans and the Franciscans in Oxford on the issue of the gifts made to the Franciscan convent. This is the last we hear about him and he may have died a short while later.

Docking established his reputation as an exegete. He is mentioned as the author of a biblical grammar and of commentaries on Job and on the Sentences, but these texts have not survived. The works that have come down to us are his commentaries on Isaiah, Deuteronomy, the Pauline epistles (incomplete) and Luke, as well as a quaestio on Job.

On 8 March 1291, Edward I sent out a writ under his privy seal addressed to Evesham abbey. Not all the text survives but what does is clear:

Edward I had thus ordered the abbot and monks of Evesham abbey to consult their historical archives to find evidence which touched ‘our kingdom and the governance of Scotland’. Whatever they found, they were to send back to the king, whose commissioners would examine the information to establish Edward's authority over Scotland. In the background was the need to prove the legality of Edward's lordship over the Scottish kingdom so as to establish him as judge over, rather than arbitrator of, the claims of the ‘competitors’ to the kingship of the Scots. The messenger who delivered this writ must have made the urgency clear; the monks managed to send a return back to Edward on 12 March 1291, although they complained of the brevitas temporis in which they had to complete the task. The urgency was understandable. On 10 May 1291, the Great Cause opened at Norham, apparently with some sort of statement detailing the historical evidence behind Edward I's claim to dominium over the kingdom of the Scots. Evidence was required fast and, accordingly, was received quickly.

Evesham was not the only monastic house to receive a writ of this kind. We have surviving copies of writs sent to Chester and Sawtry abbeys which demanded the collection of historical evidence. This endeavour is known as the ‘First Appeal to History’ and was novel in the conscious application of alreadyexisting historical accounts in the formulation of legal arguments. The enquiry was a large one. In addition to Chester, Evesham and Sawtry, we know that the monasteries and houses of regular canons of Bath, Battle, Bridlington, Carlisle, Colchester, Coggeshall, Crowland, Dover, Evesham, Faversham, Gloucester, Holy Trinity Aldgate, Huntingdon, Malmesbury, Newburgh, Norwich, Reading, Salisbury, Sawtry, St Albans (although its return does not survive), Tewkesbury, Waltham and Worcester all returned information.

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta in 2015 gave historians the opportunity and the impetus to reappraise thoroughly both the charter as a whole and many of its lesser-known clauses. One of these clauses, number 59, committed King John to dealing with the sisters of Alexander, king of Scots, and the hostages. These two young women – the older two of Alexander II's three sisters – are thus two of the only three women referred to specifically in the charter. But while the clause shows that their situation was a cause for serious concern, it does not make at all clear what their situation was. Focusing on the lives of these two young women, and of their younger sister, allows us to gain an insight into the uncertainties and ambiguities that could beset the lives of even the highest status women in this period.

The women in question were the three daughters of William, king of Scots, and his queen consort, Ermengarde de Beaumont: Margaret, Isabella and Margaret. The elder two were entrusted to King John in 1209 as a result of the Treaty of Norham, and all three would ultimately make English matches with Hubert de Burgh, Roger III Bigod and Gilbert Marshal respectively.

William and Ermengarde had married in 1186, the match having been promoted by Henry II. Ermengarde was only aged about twelve at the marriage – much younger than her husband – and it is likely that attempts at childbearing were delayed for a few years. We know that the older Margaret was born some time before 1195, because in that year William, by now a middle-aged man with no legitimate sons, began to think about the succession. Roger of Howden records that in 1195 William devised a scheme with Richard I of England that Margaret should be married to Richard's nephew, Otto of Brunswick, and that the royal couple should be made heirs to the kingship of Scotland. In his account, Roger refers to Margaret as ‘primogenita’, from which one could infer that there was also a younger daughter. However, the chronicler also records that the king of Scots backed away from the plan because of the pregnancy of his wife, Ermengarde.

This description of Simon de Montfort given by the Melrose chronicler highlighted the ambiguity that even contemporaries noted about his position. The earl of Leicester was a leading figure in baronial opposition to the king in which royal favour to foreigners came under significant criticism; yet he was also a man of French origins whose early career in England had been marked by royal favour. This essay seeks to address this uncertainty, and will endeavour to present a few thoughts on the earl of Leicester's identity within the political spectrum of ethnicity in the reign of Henry III. In order to outline the context for a discussion of the ethnic identity of Simon de Montfort, it is first necessary to provide a broader depiction of the political construction of ethnic identity at this time. Following this, the essay will survey how de Montfort's identity was perceived and presented, exploring the tensions between Anglicising narratives and the recognition of his continued engagement with his ‘alien’ origins. Exploring these often seemingly contrasting narratives, it is possible to suggest some ways in which these tensions could be negotiated to allow Simon to function as the Melrose chronicler described him – ‘the enemy and expeller of aliens’.

The political construction of ethnicity in thirteenth-century England

Any account of the political construction of ethnicity in the reign of Henry III, and the identity of Simon de Montfort in particular, must first engage with the ways in which the question of the aliens has already been considered and explored in scholarship. In many ways, the treatment of Simon de Montfort is largely in keeping with the wider trends in the literature on thirteenthcentury England. The invaluable work undertaken by David Carpenter and John Maddicott in particular has highlighted the uncertainty regarding Simon's ethnic identity, but has not tended to explore the category of ethnicity in itself.

Excommunication resulted in complete separation from the Christian community. This basic definition can be accepted without difficulty. To go further, however, is problematic. Excommunication's precise implications were far from clear. An excommunicate was to be shunned by all other Christians; he or she could not be buried in ecclesiastical ground and was unable to sue in court. Yet excommunication was also a spiritual sanction. A frequently cited canon from Gratian's Decretum defined anathema as ‘damnation of eternal death’. Nevertheless, in 1245, at the first Council of Lyons, Pope Innocent IV emphatically asserted, ‘Excommunication is medicine not death, discipline not annihilation.’ This decree, known as ‘Cum medicinalis’, added to an already significant body of canon law intended to ensure that clerics used excommunication justly, and sparingly. In the same period, theologians had reached a consensus that excommunication was not a curse and did not send a person to hell. Yet excommunication continued to be ‘burdened with great ambivalence’, as Elisabeth Vodola has observed. Despite the definition in ‘Cum medicinalis’ and the assurances of theologians, it was not uncommon throughout the Middle Ages for both churchmen and laymen to believe that excommunication resulted in ‘misfortune in this world and damnation in the next’.

This observation is hardly new. Martin Luther complained about the problem as early as 1518. The most full study of this tension is Alexander Murray's 1991 John Coffin Memorial Lecture, in which he explores the complexity of the issues at stake. Vodola and R.H. Helmholz have likewise carefully noted that excommunication remained linked to cursing long after the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, the years surrounding 1200 have been seen as a turning point. Thus for Vodola, by the early thirteenth century, ‘it was evident … that major excommunication concerned only the punishment that detained a soul in purgatory, not the guilt that consigned it to hell’. Helmholz has described a competition during the twelfth century between two conceptions of excommunication: judicial sanction versus powerful curse. He argues that the former had won a (qualified) victory by the end of the century. That the first writs ordering recalcitrant excommunicates to be detained by the secular arm date from the beginning of the thirteenth century further indicates a watershed in the development of excommunication around this time.

On the evening of 27 September 1655, Ambrose Mitton visited Steven Atkinson's alehouse in Slaidburn, Yorkshire with fellow local William Fletcher to discuss some “business”. The newcomers joined a company of drinkers already gathered. Two of the crew were traveling soldiers, and witness testimonies suggest Mitton knew of their presence before he ventured in. Almost immediately the company engaged in an aggressive conversation over religion. Hostile from the start, Mitton allegedly asked the soldier John Phillips whether he was “a Quaker, Anabaptist or an Independent”. Mitton's friend Fletcher claimed that it was the soldiers who demanded Mitton tell them his religion, stating that they “were Quakers and soe would live and dye”. Regardless of its origins, the heated discussion – charged with the effects of a few flagons of ale – quickly turned violent. Phillips threw a trencher at Mitton, who in turn launched himself at the soldier, calling him “rogue” and other “ill names”. Unable to watch his fellow soldier treated thusly, Matthew Ridley entered the scuffle, which shortly devolved into a wrestling bout on the floor. In the midst of the struggle, two of their fellow drinkers, Isabel Bernaud and Reginold Parkinson, snatched Ridley's sword to prevent any real harm. Bernaud later returned the sword to Ridley who used it to stab Mitton, causing a fatal wound. Ridley was ultimately indicted for murder, though he would escape before charged.

The clash between Ambrose Mitton and the soldiers, Phillips and Ridley, is an example of the tensions that developed between civilians and soldiers throughout civil war and interregnum England. The presence of soldiers in spaces of sociability presented people like Mitton with the opportunity to express frustration over unwelcome changes in their community to men who represented the excesses of the revolution in church and state. Depositions of the struggle at Steven Atkinson's home suggest that Mitton was hostile to the soldiers’ religious beliefs, and his classification of Ridley and Phillips as dangerous religious sectarians demonstrates one of the many ways in which civilians associated soldiers with undesirable consequences of new policies – in this case the toleration and proliferation of radicalism.

As Julianne Mortimore and Cristobel Towill traveled home to Exeter from Newton Abbott market in 1656, Towill took the opportunity afforded by the long journey to bluster about Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. As Mortimore tells it, Towill proudly proclaimed that she would join those eager to “cut” the Protector's throat should he ever descend on Exeter. Towill desired retribution – she held Cromwell personally responsible for the downfall and execution of King Charles I and his councilors, the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop William Laud. Mortimore chose to overlook her companion's seditious threat until she overheard an argument between Towill and her husband, William, three weeks later. During this relatively ordinary quarrel between husband and wife, William supposedly told Cristobel that if he “could not live quiet”, he would find himself a horse and “take upp Armes for my Lord Protector”. Horrified by her husband's profession of loyalty, Cristobel allegedly retorted that if William attempted it, she would “cut” his horse's “throate”.

Within this ordinary squabble we can see how the extraordinary transformations that accompanied the regicide of Charles I, the creation of a republic and the rise of the Cromwellian Protectorate infected relations between Julianne Mortimore and Cristobel Towill. Mortimore's account of Towill's fractious behavior echoes countless depositions against discordant women who, it was claimed, had a predilection for causing strife, but Towill's alleged treasonous exclamation placed intense pressure on her relationship with Mortimore. As wives of men in the cloth trade, Towill and Mortimore likely traveled to and from the market regularly. Indeed, Mortimore's ability to eavesdrop on the couple suggests that the two families interacted frequently. If Cristobel Towill truly uttered the violent threat against Cromwell's life, Mortimore faced the difficult choice of either upending relations between those who inhabited her everyday life or risking her own reputation and safety by failing to report the dangerous words of a known acquaintance – especially in “godly” Exeter. Conversely, if Mortimore wished to disrupt her association with the Towills or cause discord in Cristobel's family, the Protectorate's treason laws – combined with the divided loyalties of the Towills – provided Mortimore an ideal opportunity.

As dust settled over the marketplace at New Malton, Yorkshire, artisans and grocers began the usual practice of shutting up their shops and stalls while a group of boys gathered to play in the shadows of the market cross. The predictable hustle-and-bustle of the end of the day was interrupted when a group of four royalists allegedly stumbled – wanded bottle in hand – through the marketplace. As they approached the cross, the fellows – Christopher Nendike, Captain John Denton, Richard Montaigne and one unknown man – allegedly drank to the health of Charles Stuart, the son and heir of the executed Charles I. Following this bold utterance, the four elites proceeded to draw their swords and, according to witnesses, loudly proclaim Charles II “King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland”. Following this performance, the company of drinkers left the cross “singing” and ventured into John Williamson's tavern, where, swords still drawn, they supposedly called for more “wyne” and pestered other drinkers who refused to kiss a sword.

To appreciate the significance of this treasonous proclamation performed in New Malton's marketplace, we must consider the prior use of that cross for the Commonwealth's official declaration of the act forbidding the proclamation of any person as monarch. On the very same day that the axe fell on Charles I in January 1649, Parliament released an act that prohibited proclaiming any person king – particularly the elusive Prince Charles. Two months later in March, the Commons confirmed an act abolishing the monarchy, which they ordered to be ceremoniously read in the “Market Towns” throughout the nation. Despite these interdictions, the four gentlemen in New Malton chose to reject these acts through a performance that emulated the very same rites of power and legitimacy practiced by Commonwealth officials. Indeed, witness testimonies suggest that the official and illegal proclamations concerning the monarchy performed at the market cross were connected in the memory of a few deponents. While some witnesses claimed the four men gathered in the marketplace “two years” before in March 1649 – around the time of the official proclamation – many others claimed the scene occurred “a twelvemonth ago”, or around March 1650. Time, space and opinion were blurred in social memory, which suggests that the men's proclamation at New Malton's marketplace was intimately linked to the official proclamation abolishing the monarchy in the minds of many locals.

A medieval king was a man par excellence: to be a good ruler he had to be victorious in battle, just in judgment, displaying a sternness tempered occasionally by mercy, a good son of the church. Manliness, except that of monks, was distinguished by strong passions, but for a man to be completely subject to those passions, rather than keeping them in check where appropriate, was feminine; kings' passions were outsize, and when not controlled they could be especially destructive. Kings served as models, good or bad, for other secular men, and chroniclers who wrote about them often used them as exemplars.

In most medieval societies monarchy was a given; although there was plenty of discussion of how a king should behave, it was taken for granted that there should be a king. This paper examines three exceptions to the near ubiquity of kingship, and how ideal kingship was envisioned at these three kingless conjunctures, by looking comparatively at the treatment of the figure of King David. David was in many ways the ideal medieval man in both Jewish and Christian traditions. His bravery and prowess were shown in his defeat of Goliath as well as in many other battles. His loyalty appeared in his relations with Saul and Jonathan. His creative gifts appeared in his authorship of the Psalms and in his performance of musical instruments and dance. His just judgment appeared in his treatment of his subordinates and enemies, stern but merciful. His reproductive achievements were apparent from the many sons he had with his various wives. As men with strong passions were prone to do, David sinned, both sexually with Bathsheba and as a consequence in sending her husband Uriah to his death. The sexual sin was somewhat excusable, as was so often the case with elite men in the Middle Ages, but it also allowed David to be a prominent figure of repentance (hence the attribution to him of the penitential psalms). And, of course, he was singled out by God, as the ancestor of the Messiah, a prophecy which Christians held had been fulfilled and Jews still awaited.

❧ Cousser's Music Collection

DURING the early modern period, assembling a sizeable and functional music collection came at a significant cost in terms of writing materials, candles and personnel. For many professional musicians, then, a private collection represented a source of considerable capital, essential not only for establishing and maintaining artistic credibility and gaining future employment, but frequently also providing a form of life insurance for bereaved family members. In 1695, for instance, Cousser's recently-widowed mother, Maria Elisabetha Kusser, offered her late husband's music collection to Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Württemberg in return for a small annual pension. It seems likely that Ján Kusser's activity as a music collector provided a model for his son, who over the course of his career expended a great deal of time and effort assembling his own correspondingly large music collection. Yet unlike evidence provided by auction catalogues or inventories compiled after a death, Cousser's music collection cannot be documented at any one set point in time or place. Instead, we must rely on the disparate information concerning repertoire that Cousser included in his notebook, which contains a somewhat bewildering selection of more than 1,000 references to individual items of music. It is clear from this source that Cousser's library was extremely wide-ranging, in terms of both the composers and the genres represented, featuring printed and manuscript works by French, English, German and Italian authors and including arias, cantatas, serenatas, operas, madrigals, dances, ouverture suites, concertos and sonatas, mass settings, motets, folk song arrangements and much more besides.

By no means was the size or extent Cousser's collection unique, however. One of his contemporaries in London, his compatriot Johann Christoph Pepusch, has been described as one of the first in England to ‘take a scholarly and systematic approach to the acquisition of music and books about music’ and, in the process, was ‘responsible for the establishment and operation of no fewer than three important music libraries’. Similarly, when, in 1724, William Corbett's ‘choice Collection of Musick’ was advertised as being for sale, it apparently comprised ‘Several hundred of original manuscripts of Latin Psalms, Opera's, Cantata's, Solo's, and Concerto's, never heard or seen in England, all composed by the most eminent Masters’