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Royal image-making and textual interplay in Gilbert Banaster's O Maria et Elizabeth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Magnus Williamson
Magnus Williamson
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle
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Extract

This essay stems from the recent discovery of the cantus firmus of the motet O Maria et Elizabeth by Gilbert Banaster (d. 1487). The chant, which will be discussed in detail, is the respond Regnum mundi. Banaster's motet is known to the scholarly community on account of its unusual text, which concludes with a prayer for an unspecified king. It will be argued that Banaster chose Regnum mundi as his cantus firmus on account of its thematic relevance to the motet text, and that in so doing he collaborated in the appropriation of devotional means to serve dynastic ends.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 19 , October 2000 , pp. 237 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 This discovery was made independently by the author and by Dr Catherine Hocking (see Hocking, C., ‘Cantus Firmus Procedures in the Eton Choirbook’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1995), pp. 78–86)Google Scholar. Several other cantus firmi deployed in repertory of the Eton choirbook (Eton College Library MS 178 [= MS 178]) have recently been identified. Dr Hocking has suggested cantus firmi for the following motets: Robert Wylkynson, O virgo prudentissima (MS 178, openings el-e3, now incomplete), whose cantus firmus is Angelus autem Domini (psalm antiphon at Lauds, Easter Sunday: see Antiphonale Sarisburiense, ed. Frere, W. H. (Plainsong and Mediæval Music Society; London, 1901–1924Google Scholar; repr. Farnborough, 1966) [= AS], pl. 237); Richard Daw, O Domine celi terreque creator (MS 178, openings k4-k6) = Simon, dormis (antiphon to Benedictus at Lauds, Thursday in Week, Holy: AS, pl. 214)Google Scholar; and John Browne, O Maria salvatoris mater (MS 178, openings a2-a4), whose cantus firmus appears to be based rather loosely on Venit dilectus meus (psalm antiphon, Matins, on the feast of the Assumption: AS, pl. 495); see Hocking, ‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, pp. 64–73, 133–5 and 135–7. I have also been able to identify cantus firmi for the following compositions: John Hampton, Salve regina (MS 178, openings k2-k3) = Gaudeamus omnes (Mass introit on numerous feasts: see Graduate Sarisburiense, ed. Frere, W. H. (Plainsong and Mediæval Music Society; London, 1894; repr. Farnborough, 1966)Google Scholar, plates 142, s, 181, 191, 196, 199); and Richard Davy, Gaude flore virginali (MS 178, openings b6-b8, now incomplete) = O lux beata Trinitas (hymn, Vespers, Sundays from Corpus Christi until Advet) and Virgo flagellatur (respond at Matins, feast of St Catherine); see Williamson, M., ‘The Eton Choirbook: Its Institutional and Historical Background’ (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1997), pp. 322–4Google Scholar; Benham, H., Latin Church Music in England c.1460–1575 (London, 1977), p. 92Google Scholar.

2 See Selway, K. E., ‘The Place of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, in the Polity of the Lancastrian Monarchy’ (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1993), pp. 6, 22–3, 27 and 207–19Google Scholar.

3 See Williamson, ‘The Eton Choirbook’, pp. 81–138.

4 See The Eton Choirbook, ed. Harrison, F. LI., ii (Musica Britannica, 11; London, 1958), pp. 117–27 for an edition of this pieceGoogle Scholar.

5 On the feast of the Visitation and its belated incorporation into English liturgical kalendars, see Pfaff, R. W., New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 40–51Google Scholar.

6 In opening k4L, stave 1 (the Triplex part of Richard Davy's O Domine celi terreque creator).

7 Caldwell, J., ‘Banaster, Gilbert’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, S. (London, 1980), ii, p. 104Google Scholar. There is no record of Gilbert Banaster's boyhood membership of the royal household chapel, neither is there any contemporary documentation which unequivocally associates Gilbert with Henry Banaster. Henry Banaster was probably from Lancashire: on 20 December 1445 William Akenshawe, citizen and barber of London, gave all his goods to Robert Broune, saddler and citizen of London, Henry Banastre, ‘one of the yeomen of the crown’ and Thurstan Banastre of Lancashire, , ‘gentilman’(Calendar of the Close Rolls, Henry VI, iv: A.D. 1441–1447 (London, 1937), p. 294)Google Scholar. Although it is not stated explicitly, it would seem that Henry and Thurstan were related.

8 Caldwell, ‘Banaster’, p. 104; Early English Versions of the Tales of Guiscardo and Ghismonda and Titus and Gisippus from the Decameron, ed. Wright, H. (Early English Text Society [EETS], O.S. 205; London, 1937), p. xxiiiGoogle Scholar. In 1424 a Gilbert Banastre was indentured to serve John, Duke of Bedford, as a soldier in France (PRO E 101/71/2/820). This is unlikely to have been the composer, whose mother was still alive when he made his will in 1487.

9 See Early English Versions, ed. Wright, : ‘The Tale of Guiscardo and Ghismonda’, pp. 2–37Google Scholar.

10 In Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCXLI-MDCCCXLV (Trustees of the British Museum, 1850), Add. MS 12524 is dated to the end of the fourteenth century. But the style of the scribal hand suggests a later dating.

11 In his will (PRO, PROB 11/8, sig. 11, fol. 94), he left ‘to Alice my doughter my Wedding gowne that I was last weddid in’, suggesting that he had been married previously.

12 See below, n. 15.

13 Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VI, ii: A.D. 1429–1436 (London, 1907), p. 183Google Scholar: pardon to ‘Henry Banastre of Suthwerk, co. Surrey, gentilman’, 28 November 1431. Banaster's withdrawal from active duty in the royal household chapel in 1486 also suggests an earlier rather than a later birthdate (see below, n. 22).

14 PRO, PROB 11/8, sig. 11, fol. 93v

15 Baillie, H., ‘A London Gild of Musicians 1460–1530’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 83 (1956–1957), pp. 15–28, at p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See Caldwell, ‘Banaster’, p. 104; Charles, S. R., ‘The Provenance and Date of the Pepys MS 1236’, Musica disciplina, 16 (1962), pp. 57–71, at p. 63Google Scholar. See also Wathey, A., ‘Musicology, Archives and Historiography’, in Haggh, B., Daelemans, F. and Vaurie, A. (eds), Musicology and Archival Research (Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique, 46; Brussels, 1994), pp. 3–26, at pp. 13–14, n. 15Google Scholar.

17 PRO C 81/824/2748; I should like to thank Mr Jonathan Hall and Dr Andrew Wathey for this and other references to Banaster's royal grants.

18 Bowers, R., ‘Magdalene College, Pepys Library, MS 1236’, in Cambridge Music Manuscripts 900–1700, ed. Fenlon, I. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 111–14Google Scholar. The contents of Pepys 1236 are published in The Music of The Pepys MS 1236, ed. Charles, S. R. (Corpus mensurabilis musicae, 40; American Institute of Musicology, 1967)Google Scholar; this includes Banaster's threevoice alternatim setting of the hymn Exultet celum (pp. 18–19) and two-voice Alleluia: laudaie pueri (pp. 146−7).

19 Christ Church Cathedral MS 417 (see Early English Versions, ed. Wright, , pp. xviii–xxGoogle Scholar, and below, Appendix 1, for a transcription). The name ‘Gylbartus Banystre’ was added to Stone's manuscript in a different hand, which caused Wright to question Banaster's authorship (ibid., p. xx). There seems, however, no reason to doubt this attribution (perhaps based on a now-lost concordance) unless a more convincing attribution is posited.

20 See below, Appendix 2.

21 This is excepting the allocation of £26 13s. 4d. which was made to Banaster ‘for the exhibicion of the childryne of the chapelle’ and recorded in Edward V's book of household expenses compiled in May-June 1483 (Horrox, R. (ed.), ‘Financial Memoranda of the Reign of Edward V: Longleat Miscellaneous Manuscript Book II’, Camden Miscellany, 39 (Camden Society, 4th ser. 34; London, 1987), pp. 197–272, at p. 241)Google Scholar. This was not a grant as such, but an element in the audit of the royal household undertaken after the unexpected death of Edward IV; the financial allocation was, moreover, intended for the boys' upkeep and not as a personal reward to Banaster himself.

22 Ashbee, A., Records of English Court Music, vii (1485–1558) (Aldershot, 1993), p. 3Google Scholar: grant of 40s. annuity to Lawrence Squier as master of the children of the royal household chapel, dated 8 November 1486. Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, ed. Campbell, W., i (Rolls Series; London, 1873), p. 547Google Scholar: grant of corrodies in St Benet Hulme and Bardney Abbeys to Robert Colet on surrender by Gilbert Banaster, dated 22 August 1486. These surrenders suggest that Banaster relinquished his duties, probably on account of old age.

23 Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, Milles 11. See Smith, J. C. C., Index of Wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1383–1558 (London, 1893)Google Scholar. Probate was granted on 31 January 1488. This will is kalendared in Ashbee, A. and Lasocki, D. (eds), A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians 1485–1714, i (Aldershot, 1998), p. 62Google Scholar.

24 PRO, PROB 11/8, sig. 11, fols. 93v–94v. On property-holding among members of the royal household chapel, see Kisby, F., ‘Courtiers in the Community: The Musicians of the Royal Household Chapel in Early Tudor Westminster’, in The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Thompson, B. (Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 5; Stamford, 1995), pp. 229–60Google Scholar.

25 For a comprehensive critique of Lancastrian political literature, see Strohm, P., England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven and London, 1998)Google Scholar.

26 See McKenna, J. W., ‘Henry VI of England and the Dual Monarchy: Aspects of Royal Political Propaganda, 1422–1432’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 28 (1965), pp. 145–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Ibid., pp. 51–4.

28 McKenna, ‘Henry VI of England’, p. 162.

29 It is with gratitude that I acknowledge the generous help of Professor Jonathan Powell of the Classics Department of Newcastle University and Leofranc Holford-Strevens in unravelling the complexities of this text.

30 MS 178 has ‘omista’.

31 MS 178 has ‘quidam’.

32 Pfaff, , New Liturgical Feasts, p. 47Google Scholar.

33 See below, n. 36, regarding the recitation of prayers ab inimicis within the royal household.

34 The story of the Visitation is taken from Luke 1: 39–56.

35 See below, ‘Date of Composition’.

36 A less emphatic echo of this form can be found in the standard prayer for the king, Quesumus omnipotens Deus: ‘viciorum voraginem devitare et hostes superare’ (‘[may the king] destroy the pit of vices, overcome his enemies’, etc.) (Legg, J. Wickham, The Sarum Missal (Oxford, 1916), p. 397)Google Scholar. But in this context the nature of the enemies is less overtly military. A more analogous instance of a context-specific reference to the king's enemies in a polyphonic motet is Cooke's Alma proles regia/Christi miles inclite/Ab inimicis, which was apparently written during Henry V's wars in France (Harrison, F. LI., Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958), p. 246)Google Scholar. The tenor, Ab inimicis defende nos, Christi (‘Defend us from our enemies, O Christ’), was taken from the litany for Rogation Days in time of war (Ibid., p. 246 and Bukofzer, M., Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music(London, 1951), p. 68)Google Scholar. Ab inimicis was also sung during the processional litany in the royal household chapel, at which the king was sometimes present and from which the queen was seldom absent (Liber Regie Capelle: A Manuscript in the Biblioteca Publica, Evora, ed. Ullmann, W. (Henry Bradshaw Society, 92; London, 1961), pp. 17, 59–60)Google Scholar.

37 Strohm (in England's Empty Throne, pp. 173–95: ‘Advising the Lancastrian Prince’) draws attention to the avoidance of direct criticism of the king in earlier fifteenth-century literature, even in ostensibly admonitory texts.

38 Banaster's treatment of the cantus firmus is considered below. This piece and its cantus firmus are also discussed briefly in Hocking, ‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, pp. 78–87.

39 Harrison, , Music in Medieval Britain, p. 307Google Scholar.

40 Benham, , Latin Church Music, p. 76Google Scholar (where Benham posits the marriage as a likely date of composition, largely on the strength of this coincidence).

41 Antiphonale Sarisburiense, ed. Frere, , plates 666–7Google Scholar.

42 Processionale ad Usum Sarum (William Pynson, 1502), fols. 161v–162Google Scholar.

43 Yardley, A. B., ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Earth: A Late Medieval Source of the Consecratio virginum’, Current Musicology, 45–7 (1990), pp. 305–24, at pp. 311, 324Google Scholar. The melody was also used as a Benedicamus verse (Harrison, , Music in Medieval Britain, p. 75 and pl. VII)Google Scholar.

44 Rom. 8; Phil. 3:8; 1 John 2:15–16; see also 1 John 1:1, 1 Pet. 1:8 and Rev. 11:15.

45 See Long, M., ‘Symbol and Ritual in Josquin's Missa Di Dadi’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 42 (1989), pp. 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar for an analogous musical-textual-conceptual synthesis by Josquin.

46 See below, ‘Articulating the Text’.

47 Speculum Sacerdotale edited from British Museum MS. Additional 36791, ed. Weatherly, E. H. (EETS, O.S. 200; London, 1936), p. 168Google Scholar (sermon on the Nativity of St John the Baptist).

48 Harper, J., The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians (Oxford, 1991), pp. 244–5, 256–7Google Scholar. Psalm 45 (44) was the first psalm at second nocturns on the feasts of St Agnes (21 January), the Purification (2 February), the Annunciation (25 March), the Visitation (2 July), St Mary Magdalene (22 July), St Anne (26 July), St Catherine (25 November), and the Conception of the BVM (8 December); Breviarium ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Procter, F. and Wordsworth, C., iii (Cambridge, 1886), cols. 45, 89, 136, 237, 399, 518, 546, 1108)Google Scholar.

49 Missale ad Usum Insignis et Praeclarae Ecclesiae Sarum, ed. Dickinson, F. H. (Burntisland, 1861–1883)Google Scholar, cols. 668, 707, 793, 817, 825, 865, 895, 917 (as verse to Gaudeamus on feasts of the Conception, Visitation, Assumption, Presentation and Nativity of the BVM, Mary Magdalen, St Agatha and Anne, mother of Mary); cols. 710 and 890 (as verse to Dilexisti on feasts of St Scholastica and St Cuthberga). Various verses of Ps. 45 (44) were used in the Common of Virgins and other female saints (Missale, ed. Dickinson, cols. 718*-734*).

50 A commentary on Ps. 45 can be found in Kidner, D., Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary on Books I and II of the Psalms (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries; Leicester and Downers Grove, Ill., 1973), pp. 170–4Google Scholar.

51 The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments: New Revised Standard Version (New York and Oxford, 1989), pp. 570–1Google Scholar.

52 The following discussion of authorship is largely predicated upon the dating of the motet to 1486: see below, ‘Date of Composition’.

53 Dow, H. J., The Sculptural Decoration of The Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey (Durham, 1992), pp. 42–4Google Scholar; the funerary inscription has been dated 1512 (Ibid., p. 43). Skelton also wrote verses on the death of Edward IV in 1483.

54 Materials, ed. Campbell, , i, p. 203Google Scholar: grant to ‘Bernard Andrewe’ of a corrody in Crowland Abbey, Lincolnshire (8 December 1485).

55 Ibid., ii (1877), p. 62: grant of ten marks per annum to ‘Bernard Andrew … poet-laureate’ (24 November 1486); Historia Regis Henrici Septimi a Bernardo Andrea Tholosate conscripta, ed. Gairdner, J. (Rolls Series; London, 1858), pp. 3–75Google Scholar.

56 PRO, PROB 11/8, sig. 11, fol. 94v: ‘Item I bequethe to Johan Combe my prymer now of late bownden’.

57 Kisby, F., ‘A Courtier in the Community: New Light on the Biography of William Cornysh, Master of the Choristers in the English Chapel Royal 1509–1523’, Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 16 (1999), pp. 8–18Google Scholar; see also Streitberger, W. R., ‘William Cornish and the Players of the Chapel’, Medieval English Theatre, 7 (1985), pp. 83–100Google Scholar.

58 Sandon, N., ‘The Manuscript London, British Library Harley 1709’, in Rankin, S. and Hiley, D. (eds), Music in the Medieval English Liturgy: Plainsong and Medieeval Music Society Centennial Essays (Oxford, 1993), pp. 355–80, at p. 366Google Scholar.

59 A contemporary translation with which Banaster would almost certainly have been familiar, from the Brigittine Myroure ofoure Ladye, brings an even clearer authorial voice into the psalm verse: ‘Myne harte hathe shewed a good word. I telle my workes to the kynge’ (The Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. Blunt, J. H. (EETS, extra series 19; London, 1873), p. 298)Google Scholar. Hocking (‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, p. 83) suggests that bars 255−71 quote material from the respond itself (‘Regnum mundi et’ and ‘amorem Domini’). But the melodic allusion to the respond verse is clear, and makes more sense than the dislocated quotations which Dr Hocking posits: Banaster's reference, not only to the respond refrain, but also to the psalm from which the respond verse is taken, is central to our understanding of this piece's intertextuality.

60 See below, ‘Articulating the Text’.

61 Early English Versions, ed. Wright, , p. 36Google Scholar.

62 See below, Example 5.

63 Frequent use of homophony is also a characteristic of other early repertory in MS 178, for instance William Horwood's Gaude flore virginali (openings m6-m7). Horwood died in 1484, shortly before Banaster.

64 The penultimate structural cadence at bar 255 is particularly incongruous, exacerbated by a seemingly mistaken added accidental in the Contratenor.

65 For an extended discussion of successiveness and simultaneity in fifteenth-century polyphony, sec Blackburn, B. J., ‘On Compositional Process in the Fifteenth Century’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 40 (1987), pp. 210-84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bent, M., ‘The Transmission of English Music 1300–1500: Some Aspects of Repertory and Presentation’, in Eggebrecht, H. H. and Lütolf, M. (eds), Studien zur Tradition in der Musik: Kurt von Fischer zum 60. Geburtstag (Munich, 1973), pp. 65–83, at p. 68Google Scholar, for a consideration of a different (though analogous) form of textual interpenetration in a fourteenth-century motet to St Thomas of Canterbury (d. 1170) and St Thomas of Dover (d. 1295), in which the texts are ‘as much simultaneously (rather than successively) conceived as the musical lines to which they are attached’.

66 This setting was copied into openings o8 and pl; gatherings n, o and p are now missing. Like Banaster's motet, Dunstaple's Gaude flore had an overall compass of twenty-one notes. Concerning the attribution of this lost setting to Dunstaple, see Bent, I. and Bent, M., ‘Dufay, Dunstable, Plummer: A New Source’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 22 (1969), pp. 394–424CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 British Library Add. MS 5465, fols. 77v–82; published in Early Tudor Songs and Carols, ed. Stevens, John (Musica Britannica, 36; London, 1975), pp. 110–13Google Scholar.

68 These occur in bars 47 (Triplex/Tenor), 49 (Triplex/Medius), 54 (Triplex/Tenor), 58 (Triplex/Contratenor), 62 (Triplex/Medius), 63 (Tenor/Bassus), 73 (Triplex/Medius at unison; Medius/Contratenor simultaneously at fifth); 102 (Triplex/Medius); 149 (Medius/Tenor), 160−1 (Triplex/Tenor), 240 (Triplex/Tenor), 244 (Medius/ Contratenor), 254 (Medius/Contratenor), 261 (Triplex/Medius), 266 (Triplex/Contratenor), 273 (Triplex/Contratenor). Banaster's awareness of this problem is suggested by his awkward avoidance of consecutive intervals between Contratenor and Bass in bar 241 and Contratenor and Tenor in bar 246.

69 See below. Christopher Page (in ‘Marian Texts and Themes in an English Manuscript: A Miscellany in Two Parts’, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 5 (1996), pp. 23–44, at pp. 41–3Google Scholar) has drawn attention to the ‘affective appeal’ of the boy's voice, and the notions of ‘prepubescence and innocence’ which were configured around the unbroken voice.

70 On the development of the English choral ensemble in the fifteenth century see Bowers, R., ‘To Chorus from Quartet: The Performing Resource for English Church Polyphony, c. 1390–1559’, in Morehen, J. (ed.), English Choral Practice 1400–1600 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–47Google Scholar; idem, ‘Choral Institutions within the English Church: Their Constitution and Development, 1340–1500’ (Ph.D. diss., University of East Anglia, 1975), pp. 6026–90.

71 A further case of word-painting, but one which does not impinge on the dating of the motet, occurs in bars 239−47, when the chorus temporarily intrudes into an extended soloistic section of the motet (164–255). The chorus here represents the collective people (‘et pacem habeat populus, amore timeat Deum’). This prefigures John Browne's use of the chorus as turba in his six-part Stabat mater (see Benham, , Latin Church Music, p. 86)Google Scholar.

72 Hocking (‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, pp. 83 and 86) suggests that both literal and paraphrased quotations of motif 1 were used by Banaster to elide the unheard respond text, ‘Regnum mundi’, with royal references in the motet text, e.g. ‘tibi devotum athletam regem nostrum.N.’ (bars 169–75), ‘et post felices grandevi patris’ (bars 207−9) and ‘liberi regno in paterno’ (bars 214−19). This is a convincing hypothesis, especially with regard to the latter two quotations.

73 There are several instances of this figure in Regnum mundi (at ‘contempsi’, ‘dilexi’, ‘mearegi’ and at the end of the doxology: see above, Example 1).

74 By using the term ‘high’, I refer to written pitch, rather than any implied performing pitch.

75 In Eton College, MS 178, openings g2–g3: Horwood used C4 clef in his Bass part, rather than F4.

76 Hocking (‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, p. 83) suggests that motif I migrates to the Medius part in bar 51 (‘superplena’: C-D-E-F). This apparent (and very partial) quotation, however, bears less resemblance to motif 2 than a more literal quotation which appears in the same voice-part in bars 59−61 (‘reintegrantur, et quicquid’).

77 There is also, as Catherine Hocking has astutely observed, an elision of themes between the motet text in bars 234−42 (‘ac ecclesiam et regnum et fidem et pacem habeat populus amore timeat Deum’) and the respond text at this point (‘quern vidi, quem amavi, quern credidisti, quem dilexi’) (Hocking, ‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, p. 84).

78 Flood, W. H. Grattan, Early Tudor Composers (London, 1925), p. 15Google Scholar, and Benham, , Latin Church Music, p. 76Google Scholar (both suggest the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth of York); Harrison, (in Music in Medieval Britain, p. 309)Google Scholar suggests that the motet was written during Elizabeth's pregnancy.

79 Eton College Library, MS 178, openings m3–m5; Chester, Town Archive, MS CX/1, fol. 17v (see Curtis, G. and Wathey, A., ‘Fifteenth-Century English Liturgical Music: A List of the Surviving Repertory’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 27 (1994), pp. 1–69, at p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

80 The ceremony of betrothal took place at Rennes Cathedral (Brittany) on Christmas Day 1483.

81 See Anglo, S., ‘The Foundation of the Tudor Dynasty: The Coronation and Marriage of Henry VII’, Guildhall Miscellany, 2/i (1960), pp. 3–11Google Scholar.

82 See Chrimes, S. B., Henry VII (London, 1972), pp. 68–94Google Scholar.

83 This rebellion came to a head in June 1487, shortly before Banaster's death, at the battle of Stoke. This was the last pitched battle of the Wars of the Roses.

84 Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII, i: A.D. 1485–1494 (London, 1914), pp. 106 ffGoogle Scholar.: among the places visited by Henry VII were Cambridge, Ely, Lincoln, Nottingham, York, Worcester and Bristol. The king returned to Westminster in June and was there for the feast of the Visitation, which would have been celebrated on 3 July (2 July fell on a Sunday in 1486).

85 Pfaff, , New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 40–3Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., pp. 45–7, 59; in his statutes of 1480 for Magdalen College, Oxford, William, Waynflete described the feast of the Visitation as ‘de novo solennizatur’; Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford with Royal Patents of Foundation, Injunctions of Visitors, and Catalogues of Documents Relating to the University, Preserved in the Public Record Office, ed. Bond, E. A., ii (London, 1853), p. 67)Google Scholar.

87 Pfaff, (in New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 45 and 57)Google Scholar cites Syon Abbey (in 1419) and St Albans Abbey (in 1430).

88 Ibid., pp. 47–8; the octave coincided with the Translation of St Martin (4 July), the octave of Sts Peter and Paul (6 July) and the Translation of Thomas Becket (7 July).

89 Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, xiii/1: Papal Letters 1471–1484, ed. Twelmlow, J. A. (London, 1955), pp. 90–1Google Scholar.

90 Pfaff, , New Liturgical Feasts, p. 48Google Scholar; Underwood, M. G., ‘Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 38 (1987), pp. 39–52, at pp. 47–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kisby, F., ‘A Mirror of Monarchy: Music and Musicians in the Household of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Mother of Henry VII’, Early Music History, 16 (1997), pp. 203–34, at pp. 220–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar: among the liturgical items listed in Margaret Beaufort's post mortem inventory were. ‘.v. quaires of the Feest of the visitacon of our lady’ (Kisby, ‘A Mirror’, p. 220).

91 Underwood, ‘Politics and Piety’, p. 47; Pfaff, , New Liturgical Feasts, p. 48Google Scholar. This office, which includes the psalm Eructavit in second nocturns, can be found in Breviarium ad usum Sarum, cols. 391–408 (see also above, n. 87). Partly because of the delay in the feast's adoption in England, variant forms of the same office achieved circulation: a radically different rhyming office, ‘Accedunt laudes virginis’, was adopted in Hereford Use (The Hereford Breviary, ed. Frere, W. H. and Brown, L. E. G., ii (Henry Bradshaw Society, 40; London, 1911), pp. 223–31)Google Scholar, although this too included the psalm Eructavit in second nocturns (p. 226).

92 Pfaff, , New Liturgical Feasts, p. 59Google Scholar.

93 Ibid., p. 55; Missale Sarum, col. 796 (secret and postcommunion at high mass).

94 See Staniland, K., ‘Royal Entry into the World’, England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 297–314Google Scholar. Henry and Elizabeth were related in the fourth and fifth degrees of consanguinity, requiring papal dispensation for their marriage (and hence their offspring) to be legitimised; the dispensation granted by Innocent VIII (2 March 1486) was subsequently printed and distributed (Chrimes, , Henry VII, pp. 330–1Google Scholar).

95 Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth with a Memoire of Elizabeth of York, ed. Nicolas, N. H. (London, 1830), p. 2Google Scholar.

96 Ibid., p. 3.

97 An analysis of this text by Andrew Carwood can be found in the notes to the third instalment of The Cardinall's Musicke, The Works of Robert Fayrfax (CD GAU 160).

98 Harrison, , Music in Medieval Britain, pp. 329–30, n. 3Google Scholar.

99 The singing of Regnum mundi at the veiling of nuns (see above, p. 249) would have lent the respond significance to Margaret Beaufort, who took a vow of chastity in 1499, which she renewed in 1504 (Jones, M. K. and Underwood, M. G., The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 187–8Google Scholar). Elizabeth Woodville retired from court in July 1486, withdrawing first to Westminster Abbey, and then to Bermondsey Abbey in 1487.

100 Having received numerous royal grants from Edward IV, Banaster (if he was the author of the motet text) had good reason to perpetuate Edward's memory (see below, Appendix 2).

101 Lyte, H. C. Maxwell, A History of Eton College (4th edn, London, 1911), pp. 81–3, 92Google Scholar.

102 Eton College Library, MS 231 (bursars' draft book, 1473/4), fol. 5v (under Custus necessariorum pro ecclesia); an artisan of Windsor was paid 8d. for an ‘ymago domini Ricardi principis filii Regis Edwardi iiij(i’. This picture may have been made in commemoration of Prince Richard's creation as Duke of York on 28 May 1474.

103 For a comprehensive survey on this subject, see Martindale, Andrew, ‘Patrons and Minders: The Intrusion of the Secular into Sacred Spaces in the Late Middle Ages’, in Wood, D. (ed.), The Church and the Arts (Studies in Church History, 28; Oxford, 1992), pp. 143-78Google Scholar.

104 See Colvin, H. M., Ransome, D. R. and Summerson, J. (eds), The History of the King's Works, iii: 1485–1660 (Part I) (HKW) (London, 1975), pp. 192–3 and 213Google Scholar. In Henry VII's Chapel, the display of John Skelton's eulogy on the bronze enclosure to Henry VII's chantry in 1512 recalls the earlier exhibition of Jean Calot's/John Lydate's dynastic panegyric to the Dual Monarchy (HKW, 213); see above, pp. 243–4 and 253.

105 See Missale Sarum, cols. 784*-786*.106 On the copying of the choirbook, see Williamson, ‘The Eton Choirbook’, pp. 183–338.

107 According to this hypothesis, O Maria et Elizabeth was copied into MS 178 before April 1502. This accords with the terminus ante quern I have suggested elsewhere (See Williamson, ‘The Eton Choirbook’, pp. 287–99) of c. 1504: the scribe of MS 178 had assembled approximately a third of the manuscript by the time he came to copy Banaster's antiphon.

108 See McNiven, P., Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge, 1987)Google Scholar, and Beckett, W. N. M., ‘Sheen Charterhouse from its Foundation to its Dissolution’ (D. Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1992), p. 10Google Scholar.

109 Bowers, R., ‘Obligation, Agency and Laissez-faire: The Promotion of Polyphonic Composition for the Church in Fifteenth-Century England’, in Fenlon, I. (ed.), Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 1–19Google Scholar.

110 Dean, J., ‘Listening to Sacred Polyphony c. 1500’, Early Music, 25 (1997), pp. 611–38, at pp. 611–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 See, for instance, Stevens, John, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 325–6Google Scholar (‘None of these [composers, including Banaster specifically] were learned men in any sense of the word’); see also Bowers, R., ‘Early Tudor Courtly Song: An Evaluation of the Fayrfax Book (BL, Additional MS 5465)’, in The Reign of Henry VII, pp. 188–212, at pp. 205–6Google Scholar (‘… music and text were independent … When a poem was set to music at this period the role of the composer was to supply an artefact parallel to and simultaneous with the poetic text, but not especially integrated with it.’). In ‘Cantus Firmus Procedures’, pp. 21−87, Catherine Hocking discusses intertextuality (between motet texts and cantus firmi) in the works of John Browne. See also Bisson, Noël, ‘English Polyphony for the Virgin Mary: The Votive Antiphon, 1430–1500’ (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998), pp. 35–115Google Scholar, for a detailed consideration of votive antiphon texts, their sources, imagery and ritual significance.