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Mapping the soundscape: church music in English towns, 1450–1550*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Clive Burgess  and
Andrew Wathey
Clive Burgess
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Andrew Wathey
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
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Extract

Topography and its metaphors have long dominated the historiography of towns and they continue to do so in the modern renaissance of what might be called ‘urban musicology’. Maps, plans and townscapes – likewise ‘soundscapes’ – have proved valuable in representing the diversity and disposition of activity, alongside the interplay of time and space and of private and public spheres. Yet at the same time a number of implications present in these constructs have yet to be fully explored, with consequences in turn for the ways in which we theorise the structures and dynamics of musical cultures. In this article we propose a redrafting of the institutional and historiographic ‘map’ of church music in English towns during the century or so before the Reformation. This serves as a preliminary to two larger questions, to be more fully investigated elsewhere but inevitably also touched upon here.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 19 , October 2000 , pp. 1 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

1 See in particular Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580 (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Burgess, C., ‘“By Quick and by Dead”: Wills and Pious Provision in Later Medieval Bristol’, English Historical Review, 102 (1987), pp. 837–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘London Parishes: Development in Context’, in R. (ed.), Daily Life in the Late Middle Ages (Stroud, 1998), pp. 151–74. See also, among numerous other studies, Tanner, N. P., The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532 (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: Studies and Texts, 66; Toronto, 1984)Google Scholar; Whiting, R., The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History; Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See, for example, Rosser, G., Medieval Westminster, 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Rosser, G. and Holt, R. (eds), The English Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200–1540 (Readers in Urban History; London, 1990)Google Scholar; Dyer, A., Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400–1640 (New Studies in Economic and Social History; Cambridge, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Earlier studies of English material include most obviously Baillie, H., ‘London Churches and their Musicians’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1958)Google Scholar, idem, ‘A London Church in Tudor Times’, Music & Letters, 36 (1955), pp. 55–64, and ‘A London Guild of Musicians, 1460–1530’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 83 (1956–1957), pp. 15–28. For the renaissance of ‘urban musicology’ in the 1970s and 1980s, see Carter, T., ‘The Sound of Silence: Models for an Urban Musicology’, forthcoming, and more particularly R.Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar. More recent studies include Kisby, F., ‘The Royal Household Chapel in Early Tudor London, 1485–1547’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1996)Google Scholar. See also the remarks in Wathey, A., Music in the Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England: Studies of Sources and Patronage (New York and London, 1989), pp. 165–7Google Scholar; idem, ‘Editorial [Music in Tudor London]’, Early Music, 25 (1997), pp. 180–2.

4 For example, Duffy, , The Stripping of the Altars;Google ScholarFrench, K. L., Gibbs, G.G. and Kümin, B. A. (eds), The Parish in English Life 1400–1600 (Manchester and New York, 1997)Google Scholar, and Collinson, P. and Craig, J. (eds), The Reformation in English Towns, 1540–1640 (Basingstoke, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Among much else, see Hutton, R., The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russell, C., The Causes of the English Civil War: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford 1987–1988 (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Rawcliffe, C., Medicine for the Soul: The Life, Death and Resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital, St Giles's, Norwich, c.1249–1550 (Stroud, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 The most influential exposition, following in the footsteps of many predecessors, is Dickens, A. G., The English Reformation (London, 1964)Google Scholar; for its effects, see for example Cross, C., Church and People, 1450–1660 (London, 1976)Google Scholar.

7 Haigh's views, many of which had first been aired in articles, are most conveniently and extensively summarised in his English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; see also Scarisbrick, J. J., The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, whose conclusions are more pessimistic.

8 Duffy, , The Stripping of the Altars, especially Part I, pp. 9–376Google Scholar.

9 See for example the appraisal of the rebellions in Edward VI's reign in Loach, S. J., Edward VI (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 183Google Scholar: ‘Moreover, without following in their entirety the romantic notions of pre-Reformation Catholicism offered to us by Eamon Duffy, I should also suggest that what Protestantism stood for in the eyes of many parishioners by 1553 must have been looting and sacking, and the stripping by the state of the objects of beauty which bound them to their locality and its past.’

10 See Thompson, A. H., The English Clergy and their Organization in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1947), p. 128Google Scholar, who led the way with the judgement that ‘There is no period at which money was lavished so freely on [the fabric of] English churches as in the fifteenth century’; Duffy and others have followed in considering the implications of structural remains. Cautley, H. Munro, Suffolk Churches and their Treasures (5th edn, Woodbridge, 1982)Google Scholar remains one of the most useful compendia charting the laity's achievement, albeit in a wealthy county.

11 Discussed by Duffy, , The Stripping of the AltarsGoogle Scholar, chapter 10; see also Burgess, C., ‘“A fond thing vainly invented”: An Essay on Purgatory and Pious Motive in Late Medieval England’, in Wright, S. J. (ed.), Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350–1750 (London, 1988), pp. 56–84.Google Scholar

12 Earlier penitential systems were severe, rendering salvation almost impossible for the great majority who were neither monks nor able to procure adequate substitutive penance.

13 The concept of Purgatory, and concomitant emphases on charity, prayer and good works to benefit the souls of the departed, had a pedigree of at least two centuries by the time they received official definition at the Council of Florence in 1439; see Le Goff, J., La Naissance du Purgatoire (Paris, 1981)Google Scholar, and more particularly the review of this work by Southern, R. W., Times Literary Supplement, 18 06 1982, pp. 651–2Google Scholar.

14 Just as Christ and His apostles had been paupers, so the honest poor were thought to be close to Christ and their prayers particularly efficacious; see Manning, B. L., The People's Faith in the Age of Wyclif (2nd edn, Hassocks, 1975)Google Scholar, chapter 10.

15 It is striking that, as a result of the Reformation, charity had to be sustained by statute, particularly the Poor Laws of the 1590s (although these still relied very much on the parish); moreover, for the most part, church-building languished.

16 To the classic account in Harrison, F. Ll., Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958)Google Scholar may be added Dom Hughes, A., ‘The Topography of English Mediaeval Polyphony’, in Anglès, H. et al. (ed.), In memoriam Jacques Handschin (Strassburg, 1962), pp. 127–39Google Scholar and Bowers, R., ‘Choral Institutions Within the English Church: Their Constitution and Development’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 1975)Google Scholar. See also Wathey, , Music in the Royal and Noble Households;Google ScholarHaggh, B., ‘Foundations or Institutions? On Bringing the Middle Ages into the History of Medieval Music’, Acta musicologica, 58 (1996), pp. 87–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 For example, Rosser, , Medieval Westminster, pp. 1–2Google Scholar, and the remarks in Sweet, R., The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 75–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 This point is explored in relation to the English royal household chapel in the fifteenth century in Wathey, , Music in the Royal and Noble Households, pp. 92–134Google Scholar.

19 Of the dean and six residentiary canons in 1442, at least four also held such positions. Damett was a canon 1419–1436, becoming a residentiary in May 1427; Sturgeon was a residentiary canon 1440–1454, becoming Precentor in July 1442; see GL MS 25513, fol. 118, and John Le Neve: Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1300–1541, v: St Paul's, London, ed. Horn, J. M. (London, 1963), pp. 17, 28, 58.Google Scholar

20 For example, from prime on 5 February 1441 to prime on the following Saturday, 10 February, coinciding with the King's presence at Westminster between 3 and 16 February, and from prime on 14 October 1441 for 10 days, coinciding with the King's presence there between 12 and 27 October (GL MS 25513, fols. 183r-v, 190; Wolffe, B., Henry VI (London, 1981), pp. 362–3). Almost thirty dispensations were made to Sturgeon between 1441 and 1447, and his ready availability at St Paul's may have been one element in his appointment by the Privy Council to choose ‘vj singers of England’ for the Emperor Friedrich IIIGoogle Scholar; see Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, H., 7 vols. (London, 1834–1837), v, p. 218 (16 10 1442).Google Scholar

21 See GL MS 25513, fols. 180–254 passim; for the use of royal licences sanctioning absence, see fol. 201v (Thomas Lyseux). For repeat absences granted to Sturgeon in the late spring of 1441 while the King was at Windsor and Sheen, see fols. 185–186v.

22 GL MS 25513, fol. 138.

23 The list of such days changed marginally over time but in the 1440s and early 1450s comprised All Saints, St Nicholas, the Conception of the BVM, Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, the Purification and Annunciation of the BVM, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi and the Assumption and Nativity of the BVM (see, for example, PRO, E 101/409/9, fol. 32v (1441/2), E 101/410/9, fol. 37v (1451/2), and other accounts cited in Wathey, , Music in the Royal and Noble Households, p. 127)Google Scholar. For crown wearings, with which this list overlaps substantially, see Liber regie capelle: A Manuscript in the Biblioteca Publica, Evora, ed. Ullmann, W. (Henry Bradshaw Society, 92; London, 1961), pp. 18, 61–2Google Scholar, and for the observance of such days at the early Tudor court, see Kisby, F., ‘“When the King Goeth a Procession”: Chapel Ceremonies and Services, the Ritual Year and Religious Reforms at the Early-Tudor Court, 1485–1547’, Journal of British Studies, 40 (2001), forthcoming.Google Scholar

24 Liber regie capelle, p. 66: ‘Excusantur etiam omnes de Capelle Regis a residencia in beneficiis suis quibuscumque, licet in cathedralibus, ecclesiis dignitates fuerint maiores et necessariam requirant residenciam, quamdiu in obsequio vel servicio Regis aut Regine fuerint.’

25 GL MS 25513, fols. 225, 227, 228, 229v, 232v.

26 The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478, ed. Myers, A. R. (Manchester, 1959), p. 215: ‘the chaplains make their attendaunce from halve year to halve year, som at oo tyme and som at another; and that for the same half yere they shalbe absent from their saide attendaunce they kepe and be reseant and abiding on their cures’Google Scholar. See also Wathey, , Music in the Royal and Noble Households, p. 62;Google ScholarKisby, , ‘The Royal Household Chapel’, pp. 192–4.Google Scholar

27 Windsor, The Erary, MS V.B.l (October 1384-January 1386) and MS V.B.2 (June1468-July 1479); an analysis of the latter appears in Jeffries, H., ‘John Plummer, the Royal Household Chapel and St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle’ (M.Mus. thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 1999)Google Scholar.

28 Relatively few such records survive; for chaplains and clerks in the attendance registers of the household of John of Gaunt in the 1380s and 1390s, see Wathey, A., ‘John of Gaunt, John Pycard and the Negotiations at Amiens, 1392’, in Barron, C. and Saul, N. (eds), England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1995), pp. 29–42.Google Scholar

29 See GL MS 25526, the original return to the commissioners in 1548, passim, and London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate, 1548, ed. Kitching, C. J. (London Record Society, 16; London, 1980), pp. xxviii–xxx, 52–9.Google Scholar

30 GL MS 25526, fols. 12v, 20, and Hearne, T., The History and Antiquities of Glastonbury, to which are added the Endowment and Orders of Sherington's Chantry, Founded in Saint Paul's Church, London (Oxford, 1722), pp. 161–223Google Scholar. For chantries supporting the choir or choristers, see London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate, 1548, ed. Kitching, , pp. xxx, 53, and MS 25526, fols. 2, 4v.Google Scholar

31 For examples in contrasting parishes see The Medieval Records of a London City Church (St. Mary at Hill) A.D. 1420–1559, ed. Littlehales, H., 2 vols. (Early English Text Society, O.S. 128; London, 1904–1905), i, pp. 270, 309–10 and other references at i, pp. xxi–xxii;Google ScholarThe Churchwardens Accounts of the Parish of All Hallows, London Wall in the City of London, 33 Henry VI to 27 Henry VIII, ed. Welch, C. (London, 1912), p. 50: ‘Item payd to master Corbrand for hellpyng of the quere at ester [1510]’. Littlehales prints only extracts from the St Mary's accounts (GL MS 1239/1) for the years after 1495, where further comparable references remain unpublished.Google Scholar

32 See Christie, J., Some Account of Parish Clerks, More Especially of the Ancient Fraternity (Bretherne and Sisterne) of St. Nicholas Now Known as the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks (London, 1893), pp. 71–2Google Scholar. See also Lloyd, R., ‘Provision for Music in the Parish Church in Late Medieval London’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2000)Google Scholar, chapter 3, and Baillie, ‘A London Guild of Musicians’, pp. 19–20.

33 See for example the accounts for 1477–1479: ‘to iiij childre of St Magnus [the neighbouring parish] for syngyng, 4d.’; 1527/8 [paid at the son tavern for the drinking of Mr Colmas with others of the kinges chapple that had songen in the churche, 9d.’; 1512/13 ‘paid to a condukte for the Ester halydays, for lak of the Clerkes absence, for to play at orgons, 2s. 4d.’ (The Medieval Records, Littlehales, , i, pp. 81, 344, 281, and for further examples i, pp. 197, 229, 233, 256, 270, 309, 310, 373, 411)Google Scholar. See also the index to The Church Records of St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, c1450–c1570, Burgess, C. (London Record Society, 34; London, 1999), pp. 307-8 sub ‘Clergy’.Google Scholar

34 The Medieval Records, ed. Littlehales, , ii, p. 411.Google Scholar

35 For Westminster, see for example PRO, E 28/90 (43); Rosser, , Medieval Westminster, p. 255. For Medwall see PRO, C 1/81/49 (between October 1486 and March 1487): under this agreement, Medwall was to meet the costs of the obit in return for an annual pension of 5 marks; however, he alleged that he had met the costs of the obit for eighteen months and had then been dismissed without payment. The Abbot's answer is C 1/81/50Google Scholar. See also Johnson, A. F. and MacLean, S.-B., ‘Reformation and Resistance in Thames/ Severn Parishes: The Dramatic Witness’, in French, , Gibbs, and Kömin, (eds), The Parish in English Life, pp. 178–200, at p. 185. The inventory of goods at St Margaret's parish church, taken by the churchwardens on 16 November 1485, includes ‘a prykyd songboke of parchment þat syr John Docheman gave, prise 6s. 8d.…anoder prykyd songboke of papyr bowght of John Medwale, prise 9s.’ (GLRO, P92/SAV/24, fol. 5v)Google Scholar; see also Carlin, M., Medieval Southwark (London and Rio Grande, 1996), pp. 89–93.Google Scholar

36 For St Anthony's, see Baillie, , ‘London Churches’; Knowles, D. and Hadcock, R. N., Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (2nd edn., London, 1971), p. 373, and more recently on John Benet, instructor of the choristers there, c. 1443−9Google Scholar, Barron, C. M., ‘Education in London’ in Blair, J. and Golding, B. (eds), The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford, 1996), at pp. 228–9. An inventory of the Hospital's books in 1499 included ‘a lytyll grayle for the organys. Item ij pryksong bookys one of paper and theother of parchment. Item a boke of brevys and longys’ (Windsor Erary, XV.37.23).Google Scholar

37 See BL Egerton MS 2886, at, for example, fol. 263 (1524/5), which records payments to clerics from King's Lynn, Leicester, Tattershall, St Paul's and Revesby Abbey, and from the household of Cardinal Wolsey. We are grateful to Magnus Williamson for drawing our attention to this information.

38 See Lincolnshire Archives Office, Louth, St James' Parish 7/2, fol. 53; cited in Williamson, M., ‘The Role of Religious Guilds in the Cultivation of Ritual Polyphony in England: The Case of Louth, 1450–1550’, in Kisby, F. (ed.), Music and Musicians in Renaissance Cities, c.1350-c.1650 (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

39 Harrison, , Music in Medieval Britain, pp. 38–45, 185–94Google Scholar mentions only six (Glastonbury, Leicester, Muchelney, St Albans, Syon and Waltham) in addition to monastic cathedrals; see also the remarks in Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, p. 2062.

40 Under less auspicious circumstances as it turned out, since Preston later brought a suit, at some point between 1518 and 1529, alleging non-payment over a period of four years; see PRO, C 1/557/60. The larger abbeys provide similar cases: James Renynger, engaged as organist at Glastonbury in 1534, had previously been organist at Eton and subsequently worked at St Dunstan in the East, London (Harrison, , Music in Medieval Britain, p. 462Google Scholar; Williamson, M., ‘The Early Tudor Court, the Provinces and the Eton Choirbook’, Early Music, 25 (1997), pp. 229–44, at p. 239)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See The Register of Thetford Priory, ed. Dymond, D., 2 vols. (Records of Social and Economic History, NS; Oxford, 1995–1996), i, p. 284 (1511/12); ii, p. 600 (1532/3).Google Scholar

42 The Register of Thetford Priory, i, p. 54Google Scholar. The annual incomes of Tavistock, Cerne and Thetford c. 1535 were respectively £902, £575 and £312; some twenty-three monastic houses had incomes over £1,000 (for details see Knowles and Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses). At Tutbury Priory, whose income at dissolution was £199, the Prior and Convent retained a layman, Thomas Alenson, ‘to kepe oure lady masse daily with priksong and organs and every night after evensong an antem of oure lady and odur divine servyce of festivall dais … and to be at mattens at mydnyght in such principall feestes as hath been or hereafter shalbe accostomed to be kept with organs and priksong and to teche vj children playnsong and priksong and descant’ (PRO, C 1/603/3). Alenson was engaged in 1495/6 and dismissed in 1527 following, it was alleged, a series of violent disagreements and having ‘giffen playn answere that he wold be no daily plair opon thorgans’.

43 Kisby, F., ‘Music and Musicians of Early Tudor Westminster’, Early Music, 23 (1995), pp. 223–42, at p. 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See Appendix, no. 2, item 30. The remainder of the inventory makes clear the church's overall lavishness in provision.

45 Music in Medieval Britain, p. 197.

46 Lloyd, ‘Provision for Music’, chapter 3.

47 Frye's membership of the parish clerk's guild, which began in the year from Ascension (15 May) 1455, is redated together with those of many others in James, N., The Bede Roll of the Fraternity of St Nicholas (London Record Society, forthcoming)Google Scholar; we are grateful to Dr James for allowing us to see the text of his edition before publication. For Frye's will (12 August 1474, proved 5 June 1475), see PRO, PROB 11/6, fol. 141v. For Frye and Anne, Duchess of Exeter, see A. Wathey, ‘Walter Frye and the Brussels Choirbook’, forthcoming.

48 See PRO, PROB 11/6, fol. 141v: ‘Item volo quod littere fraternitatis mee pro conventum [sic] fratrum predicatorum London' michi sigillate post obitum meum eidem conventui deportetur unacum xl s. ut faciant me participem magis suffragiorum suorum prout in litteris predictis continentur.’

49 See GL MS 25513, fol. 202v. For Richard Sturgeon, see PRO, PROB 11/3, fol. 65r–v (will of 14 May 1456; proved 1 June 1457).

50 See, for example, CLRO, Hustings Rolls 172, 175; Wathey, A., ‘Dunstable in France’, Music & Letters, 67 (1986), pp. 1–36, at p. 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Discussed in Lloyd, ‘Provision for Music’, chapter 5. See also, for example, The Medieval Records, ed. Littlehales, , i, pp. 133, 314, 350,382; ii, pp. xix, lvii. Two late fifteenth-century cases concerning the theft of church goods from St Giles Cripplegate (PRO, C 1/76/111) and St Mary Woolnoth (C 1/66/292) throw further light on the detail of this relationship.Google Scholar

52 The following account is indebted to the essays and maps in Lobel, M. D. (ed.), The City of London from Prehistoric Times to c.1520 (The British Atlas of Historic Towns, 3; Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar

53 The walled area was not left void, however; on the western hill, closest to the wic, were a royal residence, a possible place of public assembly in the former amphitheatre, the cathedral and the bishop's house and a number of lesser residential enclosures.

54 The following rests on the discussion in Brooke, C., ‘The Central Middle Ages: 800–1270’, in Lobel, (ed.), The City of London, pp. 30–41, at p. 33.Google Scholar

55 From west to east: the Shambles, or meat market, between Newgate and Westcheap; a fish market, in Old Fish Street linked to Cheapside by Friday Street; Bread Street and Milk Street, populated by bakers and dairymen; Honey Lane, and the Coneyhope (rabbit market), and finally, at the east end of Cheapside, the Poultry.

56 Brooke, ‘The Central Middle Ages’, p. 34.

57 The Panorama of London circa 1544 by Anthonis van den Wyngaerde, ed. Colvin, H. M. and Foister, S. (London Topographical Society, 141; London, 1996).Google Scholar

58 Much of the following rests on Drew, C., Early Parochial Organisation in England: The Origins of the Office of Churchwarden (St Anthony's Hall Publications, 7; York, 1954)Google Scholar; see also Kümin, B., The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish, c.1400–1560 (Aldershot, 1996), chapter 2Google Scholar.

59 For a more detailed discussion of these points based on two of London's parishes in Billingsgate ward, see Burgess, C., ‘Shaping the Parish: St Mary at Hill, London, in the Fifteenth Century’, in Blair, and Golding, (eds), The Cloister and the World, pp. 246–86; The Church Records of St Andrew Hubbard, ed. Burgess, , pp. xxi–xxx; and as a summary, idem, ‘London Parishes’.Google Scholar

60 This was explicitly done in Bristol's All Saints' Church Book, where long-obsolete accounts were copied up to celebrate the good deeds of the parish's churchwardens, just as other material in the Church Book commemorates the generosity of other benefactors ‘so that they should not be forgotten but be had in remembrance and be prayed for of all this parish’; see The Pre-Reformation Records of All Saints', Bristol: Part 1, ed. Burgess, C. (Bristol Record Society Publications, 46; Bristol, 1995), pp. xxvi–xxxvi, xxxviii–xli, 4.Google Scholar

61 The much fuller audited accounts are printed in The Pre-Reformation Records of All Saints Bristol: Part 2, ed. Burgess, C. (Bristol Record Society Publications; Bristol, forthcoming, 2001).Google Scholar

62 It is, for instance, striking that in both All Saints', Bristol, and St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, churchwardens paid for the wine given to the singers on Palm Sunday, but did not pay for the singers.

63 For a transcript see The Medieval Records, ed. Littlehales, , i, p. 16Google Scholar; the will, copied in 1486, is GL MS 1239/2, fols. 10–12; the memorandum is copied later and in a different hand on fol. 12v. For a summary, see also Burgess, ‘Shaping the Parish’, p. 280.

64 London and Middlesex Chantry Certificate, 1548, ed. Kitching, records a number of churches in London with more stipendiaries than St Mary at Hill, including two (St Magnus and St Dunstan in the East) in the Billingsgate area.

65 Printed in Sede Vacante Wills: A Calendar of Wills proved before the Commissary of the Prior and Chapter of Christ Church Canterbury during Vacancies in the Primacy, ed. Woodruff, C. E. (Kent Archaeological Society Records Branch, 3; London, 1914), pp. 127 ff.Google Scholar

66 BRO, P/AS/CI; printed in Harrison, F. LI., ‘The Repertory of an English Parish Church in the Early Sixteenth Century’, in Robijns, J. et al. (eds), Renaissance-muziek, 1400–1600: donum natalicium René Bernard Lenaerts (Musicologica Lovaniensia, 1; Leuven, 1969), pp. 143-7 and in Appendix, no. 1 belowGoogle Scholar; see also Atchley, E. G. C. F., ‘The Halleway Chauntry at the Parish Church of All Saints, Bristol, and the Halleway Family’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 24 (1901), pp. 74–135.Google Scholar

67 ‘The Repertory’, p. 147.

68 Particularly in the late 1520s, though whether this was a new development or resulted from a change in the brief determining accounting methods is open to debate. In 1527 the wardens paid 6s. 8d. and 8s. 10d. respectively to the clerk of St Thomas for five pricksong books containing eight masses and to John Beche for pricking four books of masses and anthems ‘of the trebuls and the meanes’ (both entries probably refer to sets of partbooks). They also paid 3½d. for a quire of paper to ‘perform the said pricksong book[s]’ and 4d. to the clerk of St Thomas for binding a book. All Saints' had an altar dedicated to St Thomas and it is likely that this clerk was one of the parish's own clergy; the identity of John Beche is uncertain. In 1528 Beche received 4d. for ‘pricking a song against St Nicholas Night’ and possibly also the payment of 12d., immediately following, ‘for making and pricking a part that was lost’. See BRO, P/AS/ChW 3, sub 1527, fol. 4 and sub 1528, fol. 5.

69 Appendix, no. 1.

70 For a general guide, see Horwitz, H., A Guide to Chancery Equity Records and Proceedings (2nd edn, Public Record Office Handbooks, 27; London, 1998)Google Scholar.

71 See PRO, C 1/1092/42, the bill of complaint of Richard Wetwood, administrator of John Wetwood's goods; C 4/23/127, the Dean and Chapter's answer, and C 1/1092/43, Richard Wetwood's replication. For payments in 1540/41, see the sub-treasurer's accounts in PRO, E 315/64, fols. 17–34; see also Styles, D., Ministers' Accounts of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary, Warwick, 1432–85 (Dugdale Society, 26; Oxford, 1969), pp. xxix–xxxiGoogle Scholar for the payment of stipends in the early fifteenth century, and p. lv for John Wetwood.

72 For the following, see the bill of complaint, answer and replication in PRO, C1/51/253–255 (quotations from C 1/51/253). The bill was addressed to the Bishop of Lincoln as chancellor, thus locating the case within the chancellorship of Thomas Rotherham, 1474–1480. Mortram was still a priest serving the chantry of William Cambridge at St Mary at Hill in 1481 but had vacated this position by 1489 (see The Medieval Records, ed. Littlehales, , i, pp. 89, 97, 155); his will was proved before 21 01 1493 (p. 182).Google Scholar

73 The Medieval Records, ed. Littlehales, , i, pp. 181–2, 197, 213; the annual cost to the churchwardens was 6s. 8d.Google Scholar

74 Carter, ‘The Sound of Silence’.

75 An initial exploration of some of the following, to be treated at greater length as part of the Church Music in English Towns project, appears in Wathey, A., ‘The Production of Books of Liturgical Polyphony’, in Pearsall, D. and Griffiths, J. (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 143–61Google Scholar. For supporting documentation see idem, ‘Lost Books of Polyphony in Medieval England: A List to 1500’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 21 (1988), pp. 1–19, and the supplement covering additions to 1500 and a list to 1548, by F. Kisby, A. Wathey and M. Williamson, forthcoming in the same journal.Google Scholar

76 Above, p. 34; see also Wathey, , ‘The Production’, pp. 149–50Google Scholar. For a later example, see the will of Thomas Allen, chantry priest at St Dunstan in the East, London, 24 April 1520, in London Consistory Court Wills, 1492–1547, ed. Darlington, I. (London Record Society, 3; London, 1967), p. 56 (‘I bequethe to the seyde chirche a blake booke of masses in prikson, also 4 quayres of antymes in prikson’).Google Scholar

77 See also the comments in Milsom, J., ‘Songs and Society in Early Tudor London’, Early Music History, 16 (1997), pp. 235–93, at pp. 237–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

79 See Cambridge, King's College, Mundum Book 10 (unfoliated), sub ‘Custus equitancium’ 1507/8, ‘Item xiiij° die Aprilis pro expensis Bourman equitant' ad Fodringay pro quadam cantu ex mandato magistri prepositi, ix d.’, and sub ‘Custus ecclesie’ 1508/9, ‘Item in regardis datis Prentise et Domino Nicholo Thomas pro missa Fayrfax et aliis cantulis, v s.’; cited in Williamson, M., ‘The Eton Choirbook: Its Institutional and Historical Background’ (D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1997), chapter 4Google Scholar.

80 See The First Churchwardens' Book of Louth, 1500–1524, ed. Dudding, R. C. (Oxford, 1941), p. 131 (1510/11): ‘William Prince prest for songs prekyng at Yorke xvj d.’; Winchester College Muniment 2206 (Bursar's Account, 1548/9): ‘Item domino Godwyn pro expensis suis eunti Sarum pro cantilenis, v s. iij d.… Item pro cantalenis emptis hoc anno pro choro, v s.'Google Scholar. For what may be a parallel case, see The Register of Thetford Priory, ii, p. 600.Google Scholar

81 As, for example, in The Medieval Records, ed. Littlehales, , i, pp. 131, 133; ii, p.350, or at All Saints' Bristol, where the churchwardens paid for five books of ‘songs of square note’ to be copied at ‘Gaunts’, the Hospital of St Mark in Bristol (BRO, P/AS/ChW3, sub 1524/25, fol. 5).Google Scholar

82 See, for example, Kisby, F., ‘Books in London Parish Churches, 1400–1603’, Proceedings of the 1999 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 11; Stamford, 2001), forthcomingGoogle Scholar.

83 See Plomer, H. R., ‘Two Lawsuits of Richard Pynson’, The Library, NS 10 (1909), pp. 114–33, at pp. 124–30, printing PRO, C 1/1510/43–47Google Scholar; idem, ‘Pynson's Dealings with John Russhe’, The Library, 3rd ser. 9 (1919), pp. 150–2; Johnstone, S. H., ‘A Study of the Career and Literary Publications of Richard Pynson’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Western Ontario, 1977), pp. 12–18Google Scholar.

84 See, for example, Bent, M., ‘New and Little-Known Fragments of English Medieval Polyphony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), pp. 137–56, at p. 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 See, for example, Harrison, , Music in Medieval Britain, pp. 156–219Google Scholar; Wathey, ‘Lost Books’, p. 1.

86 Harrison noted that nine of 109 reformation inventories from London parishes include polyphony (Music in Medieval Britain, p. 201; see also his earlier comments, reported in the discussion of Baillie, ‘A London Gild’, pp. 26–7); most list no more than a single set of part-books.

87 See Ker, N. R., Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1969–1992), ii, pp. 773–4Google Scholar; Williamson, ‘The Eton Choirbook’, pp. 432–8.

88 The connection between the fragments in All Souls College, MS 330 and London Royal College of Physicians, MS 734 was first signalled in Ker, N. R., Fragments of Medieval Manuscripts Used as Pastedowns in Oxford Bindings, with a Survey of Oxford Binding c.1515–1620 (Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, NS 5; Oxford, 1954), pp. 83, 105Google Scholar (nos. 872, 1128); further leaves and fragments in New College, Oxford and Chester Town Archive, identified by Wathey, are listed sub ‘Lost Choirbook 2’ in 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.

89 Oxford, New College, MS 368; see Manuscripts at Oxford: An Exhibition in Memory of Richard William Hunt (1908–1979), Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1945–1975, ed. de la Mare, A. C. and Barker-Benfield, B. C. (Oxford, 1980), pp. 115–16.Google Scholar