Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:00:45.952Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Officers and Office-Holding at the English Court: A Study of the Chapel Royal, 1485–15471

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Fiona Kisby
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There is an established literature on office-holding in the English royal household, which has focused on those members of the court involved in the royal body service and ceremonial; those associated with the domestic needs of the monarch, the royal family and wider domus and those involved in its administration. Yet this mainly deals with the late seventeenth century and beyond; comparable detailed and comprehensive information on this particular aspect of court history for earlier periods has yet to appear in print. The courts of the Tudors have, for example, suffered in this respect. This is surprising, for recent historical scholarship has shown that far from ossifying into a purely domestic establishment as an older generation of scholars thought, the Tudor Court was rather of central importance in the political, administrative, religious and cultural history of sixteenth-century England. By that time the royal domus was the centre of politics, patronage and power and access to the sovereign—the sole font of that power—and the ability to catch ‘either… [his/her] ear or… eye’ headed, to a large extent, the agenda of any ambitious courtier. A published investigation of the patterns and procedures of office-holding within this important institution is, therefore, long overdue.

Type
Articles
Information
Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle , Volume 32 , 1999 , pp. 1 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Unless stated otherwise, all manuscript references occurring in this article are to material in the Public Record Office, London. All abbreviations in the footnotes are given in full in the Abbreviations to the Appendix which follows the main text.

References

2 Gerald Aylmer, The King's Servants: the Civil Service of Charles I, 1625–42 (London, 1961); Robert O. Bucholz, The Court in the Reign of Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, Ca., 1993); Robert O. Bucholz and John Sainty, Officials of the Royal Household 1660–1837: Department of the Lord Chamberlain and Associated Offices, Office Holders in Modern Britain, 11 (London, 1997); Robert O. Bucholz and John Sainty, Officials of the Royal Household 1660–1837: Department of the Lord Steward and the Master of the Horse, Office Holders in Modern Britain, 12 (London, 1998); Robert Bucholz, “The Database of Court Officers', Court Historian, 3/2 (1998), 22–28.Google Scholar

3 Geoffry Rudolf Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge, 1953), 370–3; Stanley Bertram Chrimes, An Introduction to the Administrative History of Medieval England (Oxford, 1959), 266. Several revisionist essays, together with bibliography on the court, are contained in EC.Google Scholar

4 LP, V, 614; XVII, 468; XXI/l, 234.Google Scholar

5 A comprehensive, systematic prosopographical survey of all Tudor court office-holders and office-holding has yet to be completed. Some preliminary material is incorporated into unpublished doctoral theses; Robert Braddock, “The Royal Household 1540–1560’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971); Richard Brock, ‘The Courtier in Early-Tudor Society, Illustrated from Select Examples’ (Ph.D. dissertation, London University, 1964); P.W. Lock, ‘Office-Holders and Office-Holding in Early-Tudor England’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Exeter, 1976); Robert Joseph Mueller, ‘Service to the Sovereign: a Prosopographical Study of the Royal Household, Court and Privy Council of Elizabeth I of England…‘ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Santa Barbara, 1993).Google Scholar

6 For example see Henry de Lafontaine, The King's Musick: a Transcript of Records Relating to Music and Musicians (1460–1700) (London, 1909); Harold Hillebrand, ‘The Early History of the Chapel Royal’, Modem Philology, 18 (1920), 65–100; Stanley Roper, ‘Music at the English Chapels Royal, c. 1135–Present Day’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 54 (1927), 19–33; Baldwin; MMB; WC; Charles Wallace, The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare (Berlin, 1912); Edmund Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford, 1923–26); John Stevens, Music and Poetry at the Early Tudor Court (Cambridge, 1978); Suzane Westfall, Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels (Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar

7 For a discussion of peripatetic nature of the court, and its impact on the royal itinerary, see Kisby, Fiona, ‘Kingship and the Royal Itinerary: a Study of the Peripatetic Households of the Early-Tudor Kings, 1485–1547', The Court Historian, 4/1 (1999), 29–39; Fiona Kisby, ‘The Music and Musicians of Early-Tudor Westminster', Early Music, 23 (1995), 223–41; Fiona Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels in the City and Suburbs of Early-Tudor London: Professional Activities and Private Interests’, Early Music, 25 (1997), 199–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Kisby, Chapter One; David Starkey, ‘Representation Through Intimacy’, Symbols and Sentiments, ed. Ioan Lewis (London, 1977), 187–224; EC; Simon Thurley, The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (London, 1993).Google Scholar

9 See Kisby, Fiona, ‘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, 40/1 (2001), 44–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 This grouping is slightly artificial, for by the 1520s the Chamber had risen to an administrative pre-eminence rivalling that of the Exchequer and also dealt with financial matters of national importance. It is legitimately included in the second category since its accounts still contained material relating to the domestic affairs of the king. Although the Great Wardrobe was situated outside the court in the parish of St Andrews by Baynard's Castle London, it is included in the ‘household’ category as its expenditure was largely concerned with the magnificence of the monarch; David Loades, The Tudor Court (London, 1987), 38.Google Scholar

11 For the general workings of the Chancery see Henry Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926); A.L. Brown, ‘The Authorization of Letters Under the Great Seal’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 37 (1964), 125–56.Google Scholar

12 The early-Tudor Chancery warrants are C82/1–334; C82/342/470; PSO 2/1–3; C261/6–7; C270/1, 4, 6.Google Scholar

13 E403/2558; E404/79–104; E405/95–113; E404/2444.Google Scholar

14 i.e. from 1512–16, 1522–25 and 1542–47; Richard Hoyle, Tudor Taxation Records: A Guide for Users (London, 1994), 1. Returns used in this study are listed in the Appendix.Google Scholar

15 Hoyle, Tudor Taxation, 3, 12.Google Scholar

16 Hoyle, Tudor Taxation, 11–12, 16.Google Scholar

17 Lord Chamberlain's livery lists are listed in the Appendix.Google Scholar

18 E101/414/7–8; E101/415/7; E101/417/3, 6; E101/418/1, 5; E101/420/1, 14; E101/423/11.Google Scholar

19 The extant accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber of the early-Tudor kings are: Lbl Add. MS 7099; E101/414/6; E101/414/16; E101/415/3; Lbl Add. MS 59899; Lbl Add. MS 21480; E36/214; Lbl Add. MS 21481; E36/216; E101/420/11; Lbl Arundel MS 97; Lbl Stowe MS 554; Lbl Add. MS 59900. Three sets of Privy Purse accounts survive; E36/210, printed in Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, ed. Nicholas H. Nicolas (London, 1830); Lbl Add. MS 20030, printed in Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII, ed. Nicholas H. Nicolas (London, 1827); Lbl Royal MS 17B.XXVIII, printed in Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary, ed. Frederick Madden (London, 1831).Google Scholar

20 AR, i, 296–341; ii, 184–208; HO, 137–207; G.W. Murray and E.F. Bosanquet, ‘Excerpts From the Manuscript of William Dunche …', The Genealogist, new series, xxix (1913), 21–22, 94–101, 144–151. See also San Marino, Huntington Library MS HM 41955. These are discussed in more detail in David Starkey, ‘Henry VIII's Old Blue Gown: the English Court Under the Lancastrians and Yorkists', The Court Historian, 4/1 (1999), 1–29.Google Scholar

21 LRC; BB; OCB. I am grateful to Mr David Baldwin, Sergeant of the Queen's Vestry, for providing me with a copy of a translation of the LRC by Canon Gordon Dunstan.Google Scholar

22 Andrew Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England (London, 1989), 122.Google Scholar

23 BB, 31. This is an oft-quoted source concerning the institutional structure of the entire late-medieval court. It describes the bipartite household of Domus Providencie and Domus Magnificencie referred to above.Google Scholar

24 OCB, i-xii, xii-xiv.Google Scholar

25 Bowers states that from 1360 to 1384 the chapel contained 18 adults and four or five choristers; over the next 40 years gradual expansion was said to have occurred, culminating in a total of 49 adults and boys; Roger Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions Within the English Church: their Constitution and Development, 1340–1500‘ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of East Anglia, 1975), 4021, 4032; LRC, 57.Google Scholar

26 Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 92, 103, 114, 130–4.Google Scholar

27 Aylmer, The King's Servants, 69, 73.Google Scholar

28 LRC, 57; BB, 136, 138.Google Scholar

29 Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers. The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993), 42–3.Google Scholar

30 Mueller, ‘Service to the Sovereign’, 45; John Sainty, ‘The Tenure of Offices in the Exchequer’, English Historical Review, 80 (1965), 451, note 3; R.L. Storey, ‘English Officers of State, 1399–1485‘, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 31 (1958), 87.Google Scholar

31 Includes Gospeller and Epistoler.Google Scholar

32 Includes Gospeller and Epistoler.Google Scholar

33 Loades, The Tudor Court, 93–4; Braddock, ‘The Royal Housheold, 1540–1560‘, 115.Google Scholar

34 Lbl Cotton MS Vespasian C.XTV ii, ff. 144–44v.Google Scholar

35 OCB, 107–112.Google Scholar

36 OCB, 107–8.Google Scholar

37 Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 67; Ian Bent, ‘The English Chapel Royal before 1300‘, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 90 (1963–64), 90.Google Scholar

38 See Appendix. This was not always the case under the Yorkist regime. Of the four deans appointed during the reign of Edward IV, two, William Say and Thomas Bonyfaunt, died in office and only one, William Dudley, resigned his deanery on promotion as Bishop of Durham: BB, 291–2. For the different types of tenure of royal offices, see Aylmer, The King's Servants, 106–7; Gerald Aylmer, ‘Office-Holding as a Factor in English History, 1625–42‘, History, 44 (1959), 231.Google Scholar

39 See Appendix.Google Scholar

40 See Appendix.Google Scholar

41 BB, 292; see Appendix.Google Scholar

42 The royal privy chaplains were a separate body of clerics at court whose duties included the daily recitation of the mass and office hours before the king in his Privy Closet. This devotional space was located in the monarch's private quarters and was distinct from the Holyday closet in the public chapels of the royal houses, where the sovereign and royal family sat during the main chapel royal services. For further information see Kisby, ‘When the King Goeth a Procession’.Google Scholar

43 LP III ii, 1895; Neil Samman, ‘The Tudor Court During the Ascendancy of Cardinal Wolsey’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales, Bangor, 1988), 300–1.Google Scholar

44 Samman, ‘The Tudor Court’, 241, 247–8; LP II i, 172; LP III ii, 2103Google Scholar

45 LP, III ii, 2661.Google Scholar

46 Wolsey also used other senior positions, such as the post of King's Almoner, to insert his own men into the royal household; Samman, ‘The Tudor Court’, 247–8, 253.Google Scholar

47 BB, 133–5.Google Scholar

48 LRC, 57.Google Scholar

49 LRC, 64.Google Scholar

50 Bishops officiated, for example, at Easter and Whitsun, 1488; John Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. Thomas Hearne (London, 1774), iv, 238, 243. More detailed information on the types of special services occurring in the chapel royal can be found in Kisby, ‘When the King Goeth a Procession’.Google Scholar

51 LRC, 64; Memorials of King Henry VII, ed. James Gairdner (London, 1858), 289–90.Google Scholar

52 See Appendix.Google Scholar

53 LRC, 56.Google Scholar

54 See Appendix.Google Scholar

55 BB, 134.Google Scholar

56 E.g. E36/215, p. 504.Google Scholar

57 LP VII, 30, 32.Google Scholar

58 For a full list of those who gave sermons in the early-Tudor chapel royal, see Kisby, Appendix Three.Google Scholar

59 BB, 133; Bowers ‘Choral Institutions’, 3001.Google Scholar

60 LRC, 63.1 noble = 6s 8d = ½ a mark.Google Scholar

61 LRC, 62–3. The cramp rings were objects which, by virtue of their consecration at the hands of the monarch, were said to restore health to those who subsequently wore them; see also Kisby, Chapter Three.Google Scholar

62 E403/2558, f. 274v; E404/89/107.Google Scholar

63 See Appendix.Google Scholar

64 BB, 134. All the deans of Henry VII's chapel, except Simeon, were Oxford graduates; three of those appointed by Henry VIII (Thirlby, Sampson and Clerk) were graduates of Cambridge; see Appendix.Google Scholar

65 Margaret Condon, ‘Ruling Elites in the Reign of Henry VII’, Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England, ed. Charles Ross (Gloucester, 1979), 110–11.Google Scholar

66 See Appendix. A comprehensive history of the early-Tudor council remains to be written, and some aspects of its functions and structure remain obscure. The best appraisal of the existing historiography is Geoffrey Elton, ‘Why the History of the Early-Tudor Council Remains Unwritten’, Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1974–92), i, 308–39; Geoffrey Elton, ‘Tudor Government: the Points of Contact. II: The Council’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 25 (1975), 195–211; Stanley Chrimes, Henry VII (London, 1987), 97–114, 147–174; SCC, Select Cases before the King's Council in the Star Chamber I. 1477–1509, ed. Isaac Leadam, Seiden Society, 16 (London, 1963); SCCR, James Baldwin, The King's Council in England During the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913); SCCR, xxxv, xxxvii-xxxviii.Google Scholar

67 Chrimes, Henry VII, 98–9; Elton, ‘Why the History’, 331–2.Google Scholar

68 Chrimes, Henry VII, 147, 149, 152. The courts of Star Chamber and Requests were maintained throughout the Tudor period, whereas the ‘council learned in the law’ (if it indeed ever really had a separate identity) was discontinued by 1509.Google Scholar

69 SCCR, x-xi; Chrimes, Henry VII, 153.Google Scholar

70 SCC, lxxxvi.Google Scholar

71 See Appendix; Elton, The Tudor Revolution, 136; John A. Guy, The Cardinal's Court (Hassocks, 1977), 41; John A. Guy, ‘Wolsey, the Council and the Council Courts’, English Historical Review, 91 (1976), 481–505.Google Scholar

72 Somerville, R., ‘Henry VII's “Council Learned in the Law”‘, English Historical Review, 54 (1939), 440; SCC, xxvii.Google Scholar

73 Elton, The Tudor Revolution, 320, 324, 331–2. For the debate on the formation and development of the Privy Council see John A. Guy, ‘The Privy Council: Revolution or Evolution?‘, Revolution Reassessed. Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration, ed. Christopher Coleman and David Starkey (Oxford, 1986), 59–86; The Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Diarmaid MacCulloch (London, 1995), 48–53.Google Scholar

74 Elton, The Tudor Revolution, 334. This aspect of the council's functions were taken over by the Court of Star Chamber, which had attained a distinct institutional identity by the 1530s; Elton, ‘Why the History’, 322.Google Scholar

75 HO, 159–60; Elton, The Tudor Revolution, 321, 339, 347, 349. The men selected for the Privy Council of August 1540 were Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk; Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; Sir Thomas Audley; William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton; Robert Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex; Edward Seymour Earl of Hertford; Sir John Russel; William Lord Sandys; Bishops Stephen Gardiner and Cuthbert Tunstall; Sir Thomas Cheyney, Sir Anthony Browne; Sir Ralph Sadler; Sir Anthony Wingfield; Sir John Baker Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Richard Rich Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations; Sir William Kingston, Comptroller of the Household; Sir Thomas Wriothesley; Albert Pollard, ‘Council, Star Chamber and Privy Council’, English Historical Review, 38 (1923), 43.Google Scholar

76 Elton, The Tudor Revolution, 348.Google Scholar

77 John Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council of England, 32 vols (London, 1890–1907), i, 8, etc.Google Scholar

78 Jack Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors, 1461–85', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 32 (1959), 157; Robert Knecht, ‘The Episcopate and the Wars of the Roses', University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 6 (1957–58), 130.Google Scholar

79 Wilhelm Busch, England Under the Tudors, trans. Alice Todd, 2 vols (London, 1895), i, 48–55; Chrimes, Henry VII, 80–1, 238, 278, 280–1.Google Scholar

80 See Appendix.Google Scholar

81 Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 74. Of the chaplains and clerks in the capella between 1272 and 1307 one was called ‘subclerk’, and it is possible that this was the precursor of the office in question; Bent, ‘The English Chapel Royal’, 90.Google Scholar

82 Richard Surland, Roger Norton, Richard Wade and John Donne.Google Scholar

83 OCB, 70–1.Google Scholar

84 OCB, 71–2.Google Scholar

85 Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 389.Google Scholar

86 See Appendix.Google Scholar

87 BB, 134–5.Google Scholar

88 See Appendix.Google Scholar

89 Nicholas Orme, ‘The Medieval Clergy of Exeter Cathedral: the Vicars and Annuellars’, Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art. Report and Transactions, 113 (1981), 82; Nicholas Orme, ‘The Medieval Clergy of Exeter Cathedral: the Secondaries and Choristers’, Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art. Report and Transactions, 115 (1983), 79; Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4041.Google Scholar

90 Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4040–6; the Liber Regie Capelle states that approximately half of the ‘clerks’ of the chapel were priests; LRC, 56.Google Scholar

91 See Table One. The calculation of ratios does not include the Dean, Subdean, Gospeller or Epistoler. Thus, in 1500 there were 8 chaplains and 15 gentlemen; in 1503, 7 chaplains and 17 gentlemen; in 1511, 6 chaplains and 21 gentlemen; in 1547, 7 chaplains and 20 gentlemen.Google Scholar

92 Storey, R.L., ‘Gentlemen Bureaucrats’, Profession, Vocation and Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. Cecil Clough (Liverpool, 1982), 90; David Morgan, ‘The Individual Style of the English Gentleman’, Gentry and the Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe, ed. M.G.E. Jones (Gloucester, 1986), 16.Google Scholar

93 Those of knightly rank were to possess £40 worth of landed income; an esquire £20, a gentleman £10; Morgan, ‘The Individual Style’, 16. See also Kate Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250–1600: Good Governance and Politic Rule (Oxford, 1988), 26–31.Google Scholar

94 Storey, ‘Gentleman-Bureaucrats’, 101–2.Google Scholar

95 That the term was in part used generically is suggested by the fact that not every ‘gentlemen’ of the chapel listed in the livery lists of the Lord Chamberlain was a lay clerk; Sir Lawrence Squier and Sir John Lloyd, for example, were priests.Google Scholar

96 Orme, ‘The Medieval Clergy of Exeter Cathedral: the Secondaries and Choristers’, 80.Google Scholar

97 Bowers, 179.Google Scholar

98 Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 75.Google Scholar

99 See Appendix.Google Scholar

100 BB, 135.Google Scholar

101 Braddock, “The Royal Household', 163Google Scholar

102 Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels in the City and Suburbs of Early-Tudor London’.Google Scholar

103 CSPV ii, 624. The chapel of James II contained a higher percentage of foreign musicians; J. A. Westrup, ‘The Chapel Royal Under James II’, Monthly Musical Record, 70 (1940), 220.Google Scholar

104 Northumberland Household Book, ed. Thomas Percy (London, 1770), 374.Google Scholar

105 Watkins Shaw, The Succession of Organists of the Chapel Royal… (Oxford, 1991), 2. In 1537–38 William Beton, an alien, was appointed as court organmaker for £20 a year, double that of his predecessor John de John (Lbl Arundel MS 97, f. 5v; Lbl Add. MS 2640, f. 3v). Elaine Pearsall has suggested this increase signified that Beton was providing additional musical services, and was probably therefore the first official chapel royal organist; ‘Tudor Court Musicians, 1485–1547: their Number, Status and Function’ (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1986), 177. This is unlikely to have been the case, as the size of court wages was not commensurate with services rendered. Moreover, when the organist's post had definitely been created by 1575 it was always given to a former gentleman of the chapel, usually a native musician; it is again unlikely that the inaugural appointment was given to an alien with no earlier connections.Google Scholar

106 Aylmer, The King's Servants, 69–96, 82, 89.Google Scholar

107 At the funeral of Henry VIII in 1547, of the 13 men who constituted the staff of the Cellar, three shared the surname of ‘Askewe’; LC2/2, f. 29.Google Scholar

108 David Lasocki and Roger Prior, The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England 1531–1665 (Aldershot, 1995). Sometimes a particular office was held by successive members of the same family; Geoffrey White, ‘The Household of the Norman Kings’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 30 (1948), 143, note 5; Loades, The Tudor Court, 203.Google Scholar

109 See Appendix.Google Scholar

110 See Appendix.Google Scholar

111 PROB 11/22 40 Porch.Google Scholar

112 See Appendix and also Kisbyl.Google Scholar

113 See Appendix.Google Scholar

114 Carole Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, 1394–1521 (Cambridge, 1978), 22–3, 40.Google Scholar

115 See Appendix.Google Scholar

116 Samman, ‘The Tudor Court’, 240–7.Google Scholar

117 Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, A048.Google Scholar

118 Braddock, ‘The Royal Household’, 141.Google Scholar

119 See Appendix.Google Scholar

120 Alan Smith, ‘The Practice of Music in English Cathedrals and Churches, and at the Court, During the Reign of Elizabeth I’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 1967), 65, 68.Google Scholar

121 Mertes, The English Noble Household, 67, 73; Braddock, ‘The Royal Household’, 181–2. For some of the changes in prominent household personnel effected by the shift from Lancastrian to Yorkist regimes, see Morgan, David, ‘The King's Affinity in the Polity of Yorkist England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 23 (1972), 6.Google Scholar

122 See Appendix.Google Scholar

123 William Browne, Thomas Bury, etc.Google Scholar

124 Peter le Huray, Music and the Reformation in England, 1549–1660 (Cambridge, 1978), 72–3.Google Scholar

125 Bent, ‘The English Chapel Royal’, 90; LRC, 65; BB, 135.Google Scholar

126 Lbl Add. MS 9835, f. 21v.Google Scholar

127 Lbl Royal MS 14.B.XXXIX.Google Scholar

128 Roger Bowers, ‘The Vocal Scoring, Choral Balance and Performing Pitch of Latin Church Polyphony in England, c. 1500–58‘, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 112 (1987), 61 note 61.Google Scholar

129 Pearsall, ‘Tudor Court Musicians’, 100–5.Google Scholar

130 Robert Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding in Tudor England’, Journal of British Studies, 14 (1974), 36.Google Scholar

131 Braddock, ‘The Royal Household’, 192.Google Scholar

132 LRC, 65; Lbl Add. MS 21481, ff. 37, 58, 230v.Google Scholar

133 Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding’, 33–5.Google Scholar

134 See Kisby, ‘The Music and Musicians of Early-Tudor Westminster’; Kisby, ‘Royal Minstrels in the City and Suburbs of Early-Tudor London’.Google Scholar

135 Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding’, 32–3. In the first decade of the sixteenth century, an Oxford labourer was reputed to earn 4d a day. By the end of that century, this had increased to 8d—more than the gentlemen of the chapel, a highly skilled occupational group, were receiving from Elizabeth I. Pearsall, for example, does not take these factors into account, and therefore her statements about minstrel remuneration are of only limited use; ‘Tudor Court Musicians’, 100, 101, note 15.Google Scholar

136 This term is used here to denote grants and other benefits awarded by the Crown. It is not used in the art-historical sense to indicate the patronage of music by a patron with specific artistic tastes; Roger Bowers, ‘Obligation, Agency and Laissez-Faire: the Promotion of Polyphonic Composition for the Church in Fifteenth-Century England’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Iain Fenlon (Cambridge, 1981), 1–2.Google Scholar

137 Sources: Lbl Add. MS 45716 A, ff. 13–15, 21–6; Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding’, 32. A full list of early-Tudor minstrel wages appears in Pearsall, ‘Tudor Court Musicians’, 102.Google Scholar

138 LRC, 63.Google Scholar

139 Most domestic departments had yeomen, grooms or pages by the early fourteenth century; Thomas Tout, The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History, 2nd edn, rev. by Hilda Johnstone (Manchester, 1936), 241–84.Google Scholar

140 Wallace MacCaffrey, ‘Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Polities’, Elizabethan Government and Society, ed. Stanley Bindoff and Joel Hurstfield (London, 1961), 103–110.Google Scholar

141 A detailed study of the distribution of grants amongst the officers of the early-Tudor household has yet to be completed, and this table is only a preliminary summary of such information.Google Scholar

142 See Appendix.Google Scholar

143 See Appendix; Arthur Dickens, The English Reformation (London, 1964), 144. Hugh Baillie stated that these annuities were the main source of the musicians' payment and, as he was unable to identify an alternative source of remuneration, he posited that these men must have formed the ‘fundamental core’ of the chapel choir, present at all royal services. However all chapel musicians received daily wages from the Cofferer and their annuities were merely one aspect of royal patronage and special favour; ‘London Churches: their Music and Musicians’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1957), 76–7.Google Scholar

144 See Appendix.Google Scholar

145 MacCaffrey, ‘Place and Patronage’, 121.Google Scholar

146 MacCaffrey, ‘Place and Patronage’, 119–20.Google Scholar

147 Each entry denotes type of grant awarded, according to the categorization based on MacCaffrey, ‘Place and Patronage’, 103: 1. honour—peerages, orders of Chivalry, knighthoods; 2. offices in the royal gift—2a court/household, 2b Government, 2c church (including corrodies), 2d administration of royal lands (Bailiffs, stewards of manors, constable of castles, keepers of houses, parks, foresters), 2e advowson, 2f military; 3. miscellaneous—3a annuities and pensions, 3b leases and farms, 3c import and export licenses and monopolies, 3d tenements. All references in Roman numerals are to LP; all others refer to the Public Record Office, London.Google Scholar

This table is not intended to provide a statistical analysis of the grants awarded to members of the court, but is merely compiled as a summary and guide to the various types of patronage distributed to royal household officers, so that a comparison can begin to be made with that received by the royal musicians.Google Scholar

148 See Appendix.Google Scholar

149 See Appendix.Google Scholar

150 See Appendix.Google Scholar

151 John Tillotson, ‘Pensions, Corrodies and Religious Houses; an Aspect of the Relations of Crown and Church in Early Fourteenth-century England’, Journal of Religious History, 8 (1974–75), 127–43; Alexander Hamilton-Thompson, ‘A Corrody from Leicester Abbey’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, 14(1925), 114–18.Google Scholar

152 White, ‘The Household of the Norman Kings’, 137.Google Scholar

153 Gilbert Banaster, William Browne, Thomas Bury, William Colman, William Cornish, William Edmunds, Robert Fairfax, Thomas Farthing, John Fisher, John Goyne, Edward Johns, John Lloid, John Marten, John Melyonek, William Newerk, John Penne, Robert Penne, John Pratte, William Pygotte, Henry Stephenson, John Sidborowe, Thomas Worley.Google Scholar

154 See Appendix.Google Scholar

155 PROB 11/32 42 Popuwell.Google Scholar

156 C82/30/259; C82/30/258.Google Scholar

157 C82/374/175.Google Scholar

158 C82/350/257; C82/360/67.Google Scholar

159 For a general introduction to church livings in the gift of the Crown See Jones, W.R., ‘Patronage and Administration: the King's Free Chapels in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 9 (1969), 1–23; Robert Dunning, ‘Patronage and Promotion in the Late-Medieval Church’, Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. Ralph Griffiths (Gloucester, 1981), 167–80.Google Scholar

160 LP XV, 1027 (18); LP XX i, 846 (21).Google Scholar

161 See Appendix.Google Scholar

162 RECM, vii, 96, 101.Google Scholar

163 For grants to Henrician minstrels see LP XVI i, 107 (34); LP XVI i, 220 (35); LP IV i, 464 (27); LP TV in, 6600 (20). Dionysius Memo, the virtuoso priest organist retained at court as a privy chaplain, was granted the rectory of the church of Henbury, diocese of Coventry and Lichfield; RECM, vii, 50.Google Scholar

164 LP I i, 969 (19); LP I ii, 3324 (43); LP II i, 583; LP V, 318 (13); LP VL 1383 (26); LP I ii, 3226 (20); LP XIII ii, 734 (5); LP VII, 1352 (4).Google Scholar

165 Irene Scouloudi, ‘Alien Immigration and Alien Communities in London, 1558–1640‘ (M.A. dissertation, University of London, 1936), 10–17.Google Scholar

166 Minstrels receiving denization were Mark Anthony Galliardello, John de John, Joseph Lupo, Peter Restane, Peregrine Symon alias Mahou, Peter and Philip van Wilder and various members of the Bassani family; Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England 1509–1603, ed. William Page, Publications of the Huguenot Society, 8 (Lymington, 1893), 16, 100, 132, 158, 204, 229, 244.Google Scholar

167 Bent, ‘The English Chapel Royal’, 90.Google Scholar

168 At Christmas 1408 there may have been 13 boys; Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 124–5.Google Scholar

169 LRC, 57; BB, 136.Google Scholar

170 See Table One.Google Scholar

171 Dora Robertson, Sarum Close (London, 1938), 25.Google Scholar

172 Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 78.Google Scholar

173 BB, 136. See Appendix.Google Scholar

174 See Appendix. William Crane was formally appointed three years after the death of William Cornish, his predecessor, although he had taken over as acting master a few months just before the latter's death in December 1523.Google Scholar

175 See Appendix.Google Scholar

176 Baldwin, 321.Google Scholar

177 Lbl Add. MS 21481, ff. 151v, 263, 266, 282v, 287, E36/216, ff. 5, 7v, 10, 12v, 14v, 17v, etc. During the tenure of William Crane (1523–45) bordwages were paid from the Privy Purse, probably because this treasury had risen to a financial prominence rivalling that of the Treasury of the Chamber.Google Scholar

178 Braddock, ‘The Rewards of Office-Holding’, 38.Google Scholar

179 David Ransome, ‘Artisan Dynasties in London and Westminster in the Sixteenth Century’, Guildhall Miscellany, 2 (1960–68), 237. Neil Samman suggests that the childrens' bordwages provided for their temporary lodgings in times of plague, when they were required to leave their rooms at court and inhabit buildings at a safe distance from the king until the risk of infection was passed; ‘The Tudor Court’, 36–7, 58, 64. While this may have been true under certain circumstances, it cannot adequately explain why bordwages were paid regularly until the 1540s, as plague was not a constant threat throughout that period; Paul Slack, The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1985).Google Scholar

180 This issue is further discussed in Kisby, ‘A Courtier in the Community’.Google Scholar

181 Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society, 2 vols (London and Wiltshire, 1969–73), i, 26–7. Royal choristers continued to reside with their master even in the nineteenth century; Baldwin, 331.Google Scholar

182 BB, 136. One of the houses in which the children of the chapel boarded may have been situated at Greenwich, and this is discussed in greater detail in Kisby, ‘A Courtier in the Community’.Google Scholar

183 Bowers, 189–90, note 61; Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 140.Google Scholar

184 H433, ii, 163.Google Scholar

185 Lbl Add. MS 20030, f. 73.Google Scholar

186 See Kisby, Chapter Five.Google Scholar

187 Mertes, The English Noble Household, 145.Google Scholar

188 E101/420/11, ff. 115, 143; LC2/1, f. 69.Google Scholar

189 BB, 138.Google Scholar

190 BB, 138.Google Scholar

191 Alan Cobban, The King's Hall Within the University of Cambridge in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1969), 62; Nicholas Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973), 217.Google Scholar

192 Orme, ‘The Medieval Clergy of Exeter Cathedral: the Secondaries and Choristers’, 91.Google Scholar

193 Cobban, The King's Hall, 62.Google Scholar

194 Cambridge, St John's College, MS D102.9, p. 17; D91.21, p. 91. The Master of the Choristers was commonly in charge of the liturgical music books; T.N. Cooper, ‘Children, the Liturgy and the Reformation’, Studies in Church History, 31 (1994), 266.Google Scholar

195 BB, 136–7.Google Scholar

196 Cobban, The King's Hall, 9–14.Google Scholar

197 Cobban, The King's Hall, 21.Google Scholar

198 Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 88.Google Scholar

199 PSO 2/3, unlabelled membrane, 1 March 1488.Google Scholar

200 BRUOl, ii, 1802.Google Scholar

201 Smith, ‘The Practice of Music in English Cathedrals’, 86.Google Scholar

202 For the role of choristers in secular revels see Kisby, Chapter Three. Certain families (none with the surnames of early-Tudor choristers) monopolised minstrel appointments, and siblings were often instructed in the art of minstrelsey by their parents; the will of Egidiis (Giles?) Duwes and Philip van Wylder describes this process: Guildhall MS 9171/10, f. 244v; PROB 11/36 1 Tashe.Google Scholar

203 See Appendix.Google Scholar

204 See Appendix.Google Scholar

205 The vestry contained around five or six members in early-Tudor times; see Table One.Google Scholar

206 LRC, 57; BB, 165–72, 177–81.Google Scholar

207 See Appendix.Google Scholar

208 See Appendix.Google Scholar

209 LRC, 65; BB, 139; Bent, ‘The English Chapel Royal’, 90.Google Scholar

210 See Kisby, Chapter Six.Google Scholar

211 BB, 138.Google Scholar

212 BB, 138; E101/420/1/10; E101/421/3.Google Scholar

213 OCB, 76.Google Scholar

214 BB, 138–9.Google Scholar

215 The biographical entries in the Appendix also show that many of the gentlemen of the chapel were recruited from churches in London where the court was mainly based.Google Scholar

∗ Entries with an asterisk denote a known composer. Work lists can be found in EECM1/2.Google Scholar