No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Creating Harmonious Subjects? Ballads, Psalms and Godly Songs for Queen Elizabeth I's Accession Day
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) was the first monarch whose Accession Day (17 November) became an occasion for celebration. Poetic tributes to the day frequently evoked images of singing, music-making and dancing, evidence of which can be found in extant single-sheet publications, manuscripts and prayer books, as well as records of now-lost songs in the Stationers’ Register. These songs for Elizabeth's Accession Day reveal how cheaply printed or orally circulated music could become a medium for royal propaganda. Such genres spanned diverse social classes and contexts: from the educated to the illiterate, from street to church; from private household devotions to civic festivities. This countrywide singing was officially encouraged by church and government, as well as fuelled by the local enthusiasm of civic or parish authorities, individual households and commercial printers. It both created an image of England as a harmonious kingdom and attempted to instil such unity in difficult times.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2015 The Royal Musical Association
References
1 William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur quinque et sex partium (1575), sig. A2v; translation from William Byrd, Cantiones sacrae (1575), ed. Craig Monson, Byrd Edition, 1 (London, 1977), xxv. Anon., The Praise of Musicke wherein Besides the Antiquitie, Dignitie, Delectation, and Vse Thereof in Ciuill matters, is also Declared the Sober and Lawfull Vse of the Same in the Congregation and Church of God (Oxford, 1586), 62.
2 Craig Monson, ‘Elizabethan London’, The Renaissance: From the 1470s to the End of the 16th Century, ed. Iain Fenlon (London, 1989), 304–40; Katherine Butler, Music in Elizabethan Court Politics (Woodbridge, 2015), chapters 1–3.
3 Recent studies include: The Royal Chapel in the Time of the Habsburgs: Music and Ceremony in the Early Modern European Court, ed. Juan José Carreras López and Bernardo J. García García, trans. Yolanda Acker (Woodbridge, 2005); Mary Tiffany Ferer, Music and Ceremony at the Court of Charles V: The Capilla Flamenca and the Art of Political Promotion (Woodbridge, 2012); and Andrew H. Weaver, Sacred Music as Public Image for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III: Representing the Counter-Reformation Monarch at the End of the Thirty Years' War (Farnham, 2012). The ‘public’ reached by the musical examples Weaver describes was either courtly, with sufficient means to buy polyphonic music books, or a localized crowd at a specific royal occasion.
4 Rebecca Wagner Oettinger, Music as Propaganda in the German Reformation (Aldershot, 2001); Kate van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France (Chicago, IL, 2005), chapter 4; Peter J. Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots: The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Ithaca, NY, 2008), 69–70.
5 Kate van Orden, ‘Cheap Print and Street Song Following the Saint Bartholomew's Massacres of 1572’, Music and the Cultures of Print, ed. van Orden (New York, 2000), 271–323; Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots, 61–2, 70–1, 188–9, 275–6.
6 Monarchs certainly did engage with forms of cheap print, however. For example, pamphlets sponsored by Charles V circulated in the Dutch Republic. Craig E. Harline, Pamphlets, Printing and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht, 1987), 131–3; Steven Gunn, ‘War and Identity in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1477–1559’, Networks, Regions and Nations: Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300–1650, ed. Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann (Leiden, 2010), 151–72 (pp. 157–9).
7 For examples, see below, pp. 289, 295–6. The anniversary of the coronation – 15 January 1559 – was not marked.
8 John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 19 November 1602: Kew, National Archives, State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I, SP 12/285, fols. 149r–150v (fol. 149r–v).
9 Frances Amelia Yates, ‘Elizabethan Chivalry: The Romance of the Accession Day Tilts’, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1975), 88–111; Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (new edn, London, 1999), 129–63; Butler, Music in Elizabethan Court Politics, chapter 4.
10 Roy Strong, ‘The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth I’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), 86–103.
11 Maurice Kyffin, The Blessednes of Brytaine, or A Celebration of the Queenes Holyday (London, 1587), sig. B4r. Alfred W. Pollard and Gilbert R. Redgrave, A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, rev. William A. Jackson, Frederic S. Ferguson and Katharine F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (2nd edn, London, 1976–91; hereafter STC), no. 15096.
12 Kyffin, The Blessednes of Brytaine, sig. B3v.
13 George Peele, Anglorum feriae: Englandes Hollydayes Celebrated the 17th Novemb. Last, 1595 (Ipswich, 1840), sig. B1r, C1v.
14 Butler, Music in Elizabethan Court Politics, 30–6.
15 Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year: 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), 149–51.
16 Similarly, Jonathan Willis has shown how psalm-singing, sung Catholic services and performing music on the Sabbath could be sources or expressions of religious discord: Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England (Farnham, 2010), 225–34.
17 Natalie Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, 2005), 232–3.
18 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 125–6.
19 Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), 11–38; Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), 299–334.
20 Most of these are printed on one side of a single large sheet, and usually subsumed under the general label of ‘broadside ballad'; however, as my intention is to differentiate between various styles and audiences, I will refer to them as ‘single-sheet publications' and describe their contents following the terms used by the author or printer, or using the generic term ‘song’.
21 My distinction is similar to Peter Burke's great (learned/exclusive) and little (shared/popular) traditions: Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Farnham, 2009), 50–6.
22 On the audiences for ballads, see Natalie Würzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550–1650 (Cambridge, 1990), 26, and Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2010), 250–87. For psalms, see Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000), 503–19, and Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘“For Musicke is the Handmaid of the Lord”: Women, Psalms, and Domestic Music-Making in Early Modern England’, Psalms in the Early Modern World, ed. Linda Phyllis Austern, Kari Boyd McBride and David L. Orvis (Farnham, 2011), 77–114 (pp. 89–94).
23 Thomas Holland, Paneguris D. Elizabethae, Dei gratia Angliae, Franciae, & Hiberniae Reginae: A Sermon Preached at Pauls in London the 17. of November Ann. Dom. 1599 (Oxford, 1601; STC 13597), sig. I2v.
24 Marie Axton, The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (London, 1977), 12–17; Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 121–3. For gender in royal entertainments, see, for example, Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London, 1989); Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (Oxford, 1993), 22–96; and Catherine Bates, The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (Cambridge, 2007), chapter 3.
25 Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England's Eliza (Cambridge, MA, 1939), 3; Alfred Leslie Rowse, The England of Elizabeth: The Structure of Society (London, 1950), 14–15; Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth.
26 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 16, 114.
27 Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (2nd edn, Harlow, 1998), 10, 155. See also Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (Chicago, IL, 2006), 113.
28 Sydney Anglo, ‘“Image-Making”: The Means and the Limitations’, The Tudor Monarchy, ed. John Guy (London, 1997), 16–42 (p. 36).
29 William Leahy, Elizabethan Triumphal Processions (Aldershot, 2005), 14–15.
30 Anglo, ‘“Image-Making”’, 36.
31 Ibid.
32 Frye, Elizabeth I, 10; Butler, Music in Elizabethan Court Politics, 3–5.
33 Kevin Sharpe characterized Accession Day as a ‘melding' of ‘official direction and popular desire’, though I hope to distinguish further between central and local governance, and between initiatives that were local and sporadic and those that were national and intended to have countrywide influence. Kevin Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy: Authority and Image in Sixteenth Century England (New Haven, CT, 2009), 463–4.
34 Old English Ballads 1533–1625: Chiefly from Manuscripts, ed. Hyder Rollins (Cambridge, 1920), 8–12.
35 Wylliam Birche's A Songe Btwene [sic] the Quenes Maiestie and Englande (London, 1564; STC 3079) was probably a reprinting of an earlier song of 1558–9, and the now-lost In Prayse of Worthy Ladyes Here in by Name and Especially or Queen Elysabeth so Worthy of Fame was printed by Thomas Hackett and registered in 1561–2. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London: 1554–1640, ed. Edward Arber, 5 vols. (London, 1875–94), i, 179; Hyder Rollins, An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries (1557–1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (Chapel Hill, NC, 1924), 56, 205.
36 David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London, 1989), 52; Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse, 250.
37 John P. D. Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the West Country (Oxford, 2003), 15–23, 30–1. In Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI, the Duke of York (a pretender to the throne) calls for bell-ringing and bonfires as the entertainments fit to welcome a king: ‘Ring, bells, aloud; burn, bonfires, clear and bright, / To entertain great England's lawful king.’ William Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works, ed. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott (London, 2011), 526 (Act 5, scene i, lines 3–4).
38 Records of Early English Drama (hereafter REED): Newcastle upon Tyne, ed. John Julian Anderson (Toronto, 1982), 94; Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 56.
39 Strong, ‘The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day’, 89–92; Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 56.
40 William Camden, Annales: The True and Royall History of the Famous Empresse Elizabeth. Queene of England France and Ireland (London, 1625; STC 4497), 255.
41 For a recent analysis, see Krista J. Kesselring, The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics, and Protest in Elizabethan England (Basingstoke, 2007).
42 Carole Rose Livingston, British Broadside Ballads of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1991), 331–80.
43 London, 1569? (STC 995). Image available on Early English Books Online (hereafter EEBO): <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99852475>. Kingston's ballad is known only from the Stationers’ Register: Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, i, 404.
44 Craig Monson, ‘Byrd, the Catholics, and the Motet: The Hearing Reopened’, Hearing the Motet: Essays on the Motet of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Dolores Pesce (Oxford, 1997), 348–74 (pp. 348–53).
45 Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 112.
46 A Fourme to be Vsed in Common Prayer Twise a Weeke, and also an Order of Publique Fast, to be Vsed […] During this Tyme of Mortalitie and other Afflictions (London, 1563; STC 16505), sig. C2r; Beth Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603 (Aldershot, 2008), 240–7.
47 The Whole Booke of Psalmes, Collected into Englysh Metre by T. Starnhold, I. Hopkins, & Others (London, 1562; STC 2430), 367–95; Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme, 225–35, 246–7.
48 Strong, ‘The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day’, 88; Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 117. This professional singing continued: the choristers at St Paul's sang an ‘Anthem’ at St Paul's Cross on Accession Day 1595. John Stowe, A Summarie of the Chronicles of England. Diligently Collected, Abridged, & Continued vnto this Present Yere of Christ, 1598 (London, 1598; STC 23328), 452–3.
49 John P. D. Cooper, ‘O Lorde Save the Kyng: Tudor Royal Propaganda and the Power of Prayer’, Authority and Consent in Tudor England: Essays Presented to C. S. L. Davies, ed. George W. Bernard and Steven J. Gunn (Aldershot, 2002), 17–196.
50 A Fourme to be Vsed […] During this Tyme of Mortalitie; Fourme to be Vsed in Common Prayer […] to Pray vnto God for the Preseruation of those Christians and their Countreys, that are Nowe Inuaded by the Turke in Hungary or Elswhere (London, 1566; STC 16510); Natalie Mears, ‘Brought to Book: Purchases of Special Forms of Prayers in English Parishes, 1558–1640′, Negotiating the Jacobean Printed Book, ed. Pete Langman (Farnham, 2011), 29–44 (p. 33). The form of prayer to be used on the occasion of bad weather is no longer extant.
51 Drafts with corrections by Cecil are extant from 1563 (London, British Library, Lansdowne MS 116, fol. 73), 1585 (fols. 77–80) and 1596 (fols. 81–2).
52 Mears, ‘Brought to Book’, 35.
53 He was appointed only in November 1575, so 1576 was his first opportunity to instigate the service. Patrick Collinson, ‘Grindal, Edmund (1516x20–1583)’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11644> (accessed 31 October 2013).
54 With 34 numbered items (17 for each composer), Byrd's and Tallis's Cantiones sacrae (1575) appears to commemorate the seventeenth year of Elizabeth's reign, most likely with the intention of it being presented to her on 17 November 1575. As this number was reached only by counting the parts of some multi-section pieces as separate items, this programme may well have been a late addition to the project, whose beginnings may in fact have predated Elizabeth's granting of the printing patent. The content of the individual motets does not appear to be specifically Accession Day themed: Byrd, Cantiones sacrae (1575), ed. Monson, vi; Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, Cantiones sacrae 1575, ed. John Milsom, Early English Church Music, 56 (London, 2014), xi–xiii, xviii.
55 A Fourme of Prayer, with Thankes Geuyng, to be Vsed Euery Yeere, the .17. of Nouember (London, [1576]; STC 16479). Images available on EEBO: <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:76698462> (incorrectly labelled as STC 16480). This version of the prayer book was reprinted by Jugge's successor, Christopher Barker, the following year. A Fourme of Praier with Thankes Giuing to be Vsed Euery Yeere, the 17. of Nouember (London, [1577]; STC 16479.5). Images available on EEBO: <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:23149926>.
56 The Whole Booke of Psalmes, sig. A3r.
57 I. Pit, A Prayer and Also a Thankesgiuing vnto God for His Great Mercy in Giuing, and Preseruing Our Noble Queene Elizabeth, to Liue and Reigne Ouer Vs, to His Honour and Glory, and Our Comfort in Christ Iesus: To be Sung the Xvii Day of Nouember 1577 (London, 1577; STC 19969.2). Image available on EEBO: <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:2968328>.
58 ‘I. Pit' may be identical with the ‘John Pyttes’ who wrote another single-sheet publication, A Prayer or Supplycation Made Vnto God by a Yonge Man (London, 1559; STC 19969.4), and also the ‘John Pits’ who wrote A Poore Mannes Beneuolence to the Afflicted Church (London, 1566; STC 19969). The latter contains two metrical psalms and ‘To the afflicted church’, a compilation of lines of psalms and scripture in metre.
59 See Appendix 2. Differences in typesetting indicate this was a whole new edition, not merely an addition of extra pages.
60 One of the single sheets, An Antheme or Songe Beginning the Lord Save and Blesse with Good Encrease the Churche Our Queen and Realm in Peace, is clearly identifiable with ‘An Antheme or Prayer for the Preseruation of the Church, the Queenes Maiestie, and the Realme’ in the prayer book, as it had the same opening lines and refrain. It is likely that the other, A Psalme or Songe of Praise, was the prayer book's ‘A Song of Reioysing’, though the title in the Stationers' Register is not distinct enough to be certain.
61 Barker was having trouble with printers abusing his printing rights. In July 1578 the Privy Council wrote to the Stationers to have them enforce his privilege. Privy Council, ‘The xvjth of July, 1578, at Haveringe’: Kew, National Archives, PC 2/12, 229–30.
62 A Fourme of Prayer with Thankes Giuing, to be Vsed of All the Queenes Maiesties Louing Subiects Euery Yeere, the 17. of Nouember (London, [1578?]; STC 16481), sig. C7v–C8r. Images available on EEBO: <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:44920344>.
63 Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 205–35.
64 The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1845–50), iv, 231. On the widespread use of psalms in churches, see Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme, 242–7.
65 Matthew Parker, The Whole Psalter Translated into English Metre, which Contayneth an Hundreth and Fifty Psalmes (London, 1567; STC 2729), sig. E2v–E3r.
66 John Calvin, ‘Epistle to the Reader’, The Geneva Psalter (1642), trans. in Strunk's Source Readings in Music History, ed. Leo Treitler (New York, 1998), 364–7 (p. 365).
67 A Fourme of Prayer [1578?], sig. C4v.
68 Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 114.
69 Christopher Tye, The Actes of the Apostles (London, 1553; STC 2985), sig. A3r.
70 On the creation of meaning by prior associations in songs, see Marsh, Music and Society, 299–327.
71 Nicholas Temperley, The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979), 58.
72 Marsh, Music and Society, 225–8.
73 London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), Churchwardens' Accounts of St Peter Westcheap 1441–1601, P69/PET4/B/006/MS00645/001, fols. 100r, 101r, 103r.
74 LMA, Churchwardens' Accounts of St Benet Gracechurch 1548/9–1724, P69/BEN2/B/012/MS01568, i, 270, 279; LMA, Churchwardens' Accounts of St Mary Woolchurch Haw 1560–1672, P69/MRY14/B/006/MS 01013/001, fol. 33r; LMA, Churchwardens' Accounts of St Stephen Walbrook 1549–1637, P69/STE2/B/008/MS00593/002, fols. 67r, 68r. Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 53; Willis, Church Music and Protestantism, 112.
75 Robert Dymond, ‘The History of the Parish of St Petrock, Exeter, as Shown by its Churchwarden Accounts and Other Records', Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, 14 (1882), 402–92 (p. 468).
76 Edmund Bunny, Certaine Prayers and Other Godly Exercises, for the Seuenteenth of Nouember Wherein We Solemnize the Blessed Reigne of our Gracious Soueraigne Lady Elizabeth (London, 1585; STC 4089), sig. A2r–v. Images available on EEBO: <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99849362>. William Sheils, ‘Bunny, Edmund (1540–1618)′, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3943> (accessed 31 October 2013).
77 Bunny, Certaine Prayers, sig. E4v.
78 Cooper, ‘O Lorde Save the Kyng’, 180; Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme, 247–9.
79 The Whole Booke of Psalmes, title page; The Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes Whiche May be Song to Al Musicall Instrumentes (London, 1563; STC 2431), sig. A1v.
80 Green, Print and Protestantism, 503–19; Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge, 2004), 29–41; Austern, ‘“For Musicke is the Handmaid of the Lord”’, 89–94.
81 Austern, ‘“For Musicke is the Handmaid of the Lord”’, 92–3.
82 Temperley, Music of the English Parish Church, 63; Green, Print and Protestantism, 511; Hamlin, Psalm Culture, 38–9; Austern, ‘“For Musicke is the Handmaid of the Lord”’, 93–4.
83 Nicholas Temperley, ‘“If Any of You be Mery Let Hym Synge Psalmes”: The Culture of Psalms in Church and Home’, ‘Noyses, Sounds, and Sweet Aires’: Music in Early Modern England, ed. Jessie Ann Owens (Washington, DC, 2006), 90–100 (p. 95); Austern, ‘“For Musicke is the Handmaid of the Lord”’, 94–6.
84 W. Parsons, ‘Prayer for the Queene’, The Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes, ed. Sternhold and Hopkins, sig. T2v–T3r; William Daman, ‘A Prayer and Thankesgeuyng to God for the Queenes Maiestie’, The Psalmes of David in English Meter, with Notes of Foure Partes Set Vnto Them (London, 1579; STC 6219), 78; idem, ‘A Prayer for the Queenes Most Excellent Maiestie’, The Former Booke of the Musicke of M. William Damon, Late One of her Maiesties Musitions Conteining All the Tunes of Dauids Psalmes, as they are Ordinarily Soung in the Church (London, 1591; STC 6220), 46–7; John Dowland, ‘A Prayer for the Queens most excellent Maiestie’, The Whole Booke of Psalmes: With Their Wonted Tunes, As They are Song in Churches, ed. Thomas East (London, 1592; STC 2482), sig. V2v–V3r.
85 The Monument of Matrones Conteining Seuen Seuerall Lamps of Virginitie, or Distinct Treatises, ed. Thomas Bentley (London, 1582; STC 1892), 253–362.
86 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, ii (1875), 326; Harry Gidney Aldis, A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640 (London, 1910), 159; Kirk Melnikoff, ‘Jones, Richard (fl. 1564–1613)′, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15070> (accessed 29 October 2012). Jones had perhaps tested the market for songs praising Elizabeth seven months earlier, on 9 April 1578, when he registered A Song of Reioycinge Wherein Maie be Seene Howe Muche Little England is bound to Our Queene.
87 Aldis, A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers, 156.
88 William Patten, Ann: Foelicissimi Regni Reginae Elizabeth: XXVI (London, 1583; STC 2368.3) and Anno Foelicissimi Regni Augustae Reginae Nostrae Elizabeth Quadragesimo Primo, Fauste[m] Iam Incepto (London, 1598; STC 2368.5). Image available on EEBO: <http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:24258407>.
89 Rivkah Zim, English Metrical Psalms: Poetry as Praise and Prayer, 1535–1601 (Cambridge, 1987), 133–4; Livingston, British Broadside Ballads, 807.
90 Colchester, University of Essex, Albert Sloman Library, Harsnett I.f.11 (29); Livingston, British Broadside Ballads, 807.
91 Peter Sherlock, ‘Patten, William (d. in or after 1598)’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21573> (accessed 29 October 2013).
92 Philip Brett and Thurston Dart, ‘Songs by William Byrd in Manuscripts at Harvard’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 14 (1960), 343–65 (p. 353); William Byrd, Consort Songs for Viols and Voices, ed. Philip Brett, Byrd Edition, 15 (London, 1970), 37–42, 170–1; Philip Brett, ‘Paston, Edward (bap. 1550, d. 1630)’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/70482> (accessed 29 October 2013).
93 For more on these events, see, for example, Wallace MacCaffrey, War and Politics, 1588–1603 (Princeton, NJ, 1992), 3–9, and Carole Levin, The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 2002), 80–103.
94 The emphasis on conveying news of events or admonishing traitors gives these songs a different style to Accession Day ones. Livingston, British Broadside Ballads, 520–6, 567–84.
95 John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion and Other Various Occurrences in the Church of England During Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1824), iii/1, 607; Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 76; Quitslund, The Reformation in Rhyme, 247.
96 Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, 354.
97 A Fourme of Prayer [1578?], sig. C6v–C6r.
98 Elizabeth had also been intending to process through London for a thanksgiving service at St Paul's on Accession Day, though this was postponed to 24 November. Leahy, Elizabethan Triumphal Processions, 75.
99 REED: Norwich, 1540–1642, ed. David Galloway (Toronto, 1984), 95, 350 (see also pp. 98–107, 114, 117, 122–3).
100 Strong, ‘The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day’, 91–4; Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 54; REED: Bristol, ed. Mark C. Pilkington (Toronto, 1997), 140–4; REED: Kent, Diocese of Canterbury, ed. James M. Gibson, 3 vols. (London, 2002), ii, 716–20.
101 REED: Newcastle upon Tyne, ed. Anderson, 94; REED: Norwich, ed. Galloway, 95, 98–9, 103; REED: Cumberland, Westmorland and Gloucestershire, ed. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield (Toronto, 1986), 172–6; REED: Bristol, ed. Pilkington, 115, 139–40, 144–7; Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 120; REED: Kent, ed. Gibson, ii, 704; REED: Oxford, ed. John R. Elliott, Alan H. Nelson, Alexandra F. Johnston and Diana Wyatt, 2 vols. (Toronto, 2004), i, 159–60.
102 REED: Coventry, ed. Reginald W. Ingram (Manchester, 1981), 341, 346–7; REED: Kent, ed. Gibson, ii, 489.
103 Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 6, 11–38; Marsh, Music and Society, 244.
104 R. Thacker, A Godlie Dittie to be Song for the Preseruation of the Queenes Most Exclent Maiesties Raigne (London, 1586; STC 23926).
105 It is clear that these were not two separate songs printed on one sheet, as the refrain is cued at the end of every verse.
106 John Milsom, ‘Music, Politics and Society’, A Companion to Tudor Britain, ed. Robert and Norman Jones (Oxford, 2004), 492–508 (pp. 496–7).
107 REED: Norwich, ed. Galloway, 354.
108 Ibid., 84, 87.
109 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, ii, 506.
110 Single-sheet songs were registered by John Wolfe (1588), John Danter (1593 and 1595) and Edward White (1594): Kyffin, The Blessednes of Brytaine; Peele, Anglorum feriae; idem, Polyhymnia; Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, ii, 508, 640, 664, and iii (1876), 53.
111 See, for example, The Monument of Matrones, ed. Bentley, 8.
112 Arber, A Transcript of the Registers, ii, 665; iii, 53 (the one exception being John Charlewood's A Prayer and Thancksgyvinge Vnto God for the Prosperous Estate and Longe Contynuance of the Queenes Maiestie to be Songe on the Xvijth of November 1587).
113 John M. Ward, ‘The Hunt's Up’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 106 (1979), 1–25 (p. 2).
114 Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, NJ, 1966), 325.
115 The Shirburn Ballads, 1585–1616, ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford, 1907), 179–81.
116 Aldis, A Dictionary of Printers, 84.
117 Ibid., 5–6; Ian Gadd, ‘Allde, Edward (1555x63–1627)’, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/363> (accessed 29 October 2013).
118 Watt and Green reached similar conclusions in studying the printers of godly ballads. These, too, regularly sold both ‘bawdy ballads and calls to repentance’, and both Puritan and illicit Catholic literature, indicating that they were motivated not by religious fervour but by their business interests. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 51–2; Green, Print and Protestantism, 445–72.
119 Aldis, A Dictionary of Printers, 36, 95, 288.
120 He described himself as ‘printer to the right Honourable Earle of Arundell’ in 1583. Henry Richard Tedder, ‘Charlewood, John (d.1593)’, rev. Robert Faber, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, <www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5159> (accessed 29 October 2013).
121 Livingston, British Broadside Ballads, 855, 864.
122 Cyndia Clegg, Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1997), 31.
123 Ibid., 30–64.
124 Clegg, Press Censorship, 6–14.
125 Mears, ‘Brought to Book’, 32, 42.
126 John Guy, ‘The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?’, The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. Guy (Cambridge, 1995), 1–19.
127 Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), 1–2, 9–14; Guy, ‘The 1590s’, 1–4, 8–11.
128 Guy, ‘The 1590s’, 1–4, 7.
129 Joel Hurstfield, ‘The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England’, Freedom, Corruption and Government in Elizabethan England, ed. Hurstfield (London, 1973), 104–34; Nick Myers, ‘The Gossip of History: The Question of the Succession in the State Papers’, The Struggle for the Succession: Politics, Polemics and Cultural Representations, ed. Jean-Christophe Mayer (Montpellier, 2004), 49–64; Susan Doran, ‘Three Late-Elizabethan Succession Tracts’, ibid., 100–17.
130 John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton, 22 November 1598: Kew, National Archives, State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I, SP 12/268, fol. 186r–v (fol. 186v); 19 November 1603, SP 12/285, fol. 149r–v.
131 Sara Mendelson observed that despite complaints about the hard times there is little evidence of a decline in the queen's reputation among the wider populace: ‘Popular Perceptions of Elizabeth’, Elizabeth I: Always her Own Free Woman, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney and Debra Barrett-Graves (Aldershot, 2003), 92–214 (p. 208).
132 James I on 24 March; Charles I on 27 March.
133 Cressy, Bonfires and Bells, 57–65, 134–8.
134 John E. Neale, ‘November 17th’, Essays in Elizabethan History (London, 1958), 9–20 (pp. 15–18).
135 A Fourme of Prayer with Thankesgiuing, to bee Vsed of All the Kings Maiesties Louing Subiects Euery Yeere, the 24. of March (London, 1604; STC 16483); A Forme of Prayer, with Thankesgiuing, to bee Vsed of All the Kings Maiesties Louing Subiects Euery Yeere the 27. of March (London, 1625; STC 16485). There were occasional news ballads describing courtly events on Accession Day: Rollins, An Analytical Index, 100, 233.
136 Gunn, ‘War and Identity’, 157–9.
137 Johann Strack, Ein Christliche Leichpredigt Vber dem Tödlichen abgang weiland des Durchleuchtigsten vnd Hochgebornen Fürsten Herren Herrn Iohan Casimirs (Heidelberg, 1592), 31–2. I am grateful to Matthew Laube for this example. For his discussion of palatine funerals and confessional and political identity, see his ‘Music and Confession in Heidelberg, 1556–1618’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2014), 252–62.