The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book:

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
AND
PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ISSUES
by
Pamela Palmer Jones

A paper submitted to the faculty of

The University of Utah
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Musical Arts

in
Piano Performance

School of Music
The University of Utah
May 2009

Copyright Pamela Palmer Jones 2009

All Rights Reserved

THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE APPROVAL

of a thesis submitted by
Pamela Palmer Jones

This thesis has been read by each member of the following supervisory committee and by
majority vote has been found to be satisfactory.

____________________

__________________________________________
Chair: Susan H. Duehlmeier

____________________

__________________________________________
Margaret Rorke

____________________

__________________________________________
Susan Neiymoyer

____________________

__________________________________________
Ning Lu

____________________

__________________________________________
Eric Hinderaker

THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS

FINAL READING APPROVAL

To the Graduate Council of the University of Utah:
I have read the thesis of ____________Pamela Palmer Jones __________in its final form
and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographic style are consistent and
acceptable; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in place;
and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the supervisory committee and is ready for
submission to The Graduate School.
_________________________
Date

__________________________________________
Susan H. Duehlmeier
Chair: Supervisory Committee

Approved for the Major Department

__________________________________
Robert Walzel
Chair/Dean

Approved for the Graduate Council

__________________________________
Raymond Tymas-Jones
Dean, College of Fine Arts

ABSTRACT OF THE PAPER

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book:

Historical Background
and
Performance Practice Issues
by
Pamela Palmer Jones
Doctor of Musical Arts
The University of Utah, 2009
Professor Susan H. Duehlmeier, Chair

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in England in the late sixteenth-early

seventeenth centuries, very repressive anti-Catholic laws were enacted by Parliament.
Catholicism then became the illegal underground religion of the gentry, sustained
primarily by a web of intricate family alliances. The aims of this paper include: (1) a
discussion of how the anti-Catholic laws passed by Parliament during the 1570s and
1580s severely affected the Tregian family, specifically Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis
Tregian Jr.; (2) an in-depth exploration of the Tregian familys relationships with other
aristocratic Catholic recusant families and musicians within the larger context of late
sixteenth-century Tudor England; and (3) a detailed examination of the facsimile of the
manuscript of The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as an aid in creating a more accurate
modern performing edition of four pieces from this anthology that have not been reedited since the first printing by Breitkopf und Hrtel in 1899.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The History of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book ................................................ 1

Description and Ownership........................................................................................... 1
Political History of Tudor England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth
Centuries ..................................................................................................................... 10
History of the Tregian Family: Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Tregian Jr. ............. 14
Three Other Tregian Manuscripts ........................................................................... 28
Francis Tregian Jr. as Copyist - Legend or Fact? ....................................................... 29
Chapter 2 A New Examination of the FVB Manuscript ............................................... 39
Chapter 3 The Tregian Circle: Composers, Family, Friends, and Patrons .................... 51
Composers Represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book ......................................... 51
William Byrd (1539/431623).............................................................................. 51
Dr. John Bull (ca. 1559-1628) .............................................................................. 53
Peter Philips (ca. 1560-1628)................................................................................ 55
Giles Farnaby (ca. 1563-1640) ............................................................................. 56
Family, Friends, and Patrons ...................................................................................... 57
Chapter 4 Performance Practice Issues .......................................................................... 63
The Edition of the FVB Published by Dover Publications ......................................... 63
Ornamentation............................................................................................................. 64
Tempo ......................................................................................................................... 66
Fingering ..................................................................................................................... 67
Creating a New Performing Edition of Four Pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal
Book ............................................................................................................................ 69
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 84
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 85

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my DMA committee members for their guidance and support, especially
Dr. Susan Duehlmeier and Dr. Margaret Rorke. I am extremely grateful for the
unwavering love of my dear husband Alan and my three sons Andrus, Adam and
Richard, all of whom had to put up with having a partially-absentee wife and mother for
the past two years. I am also very thankful for my wonderful parents, Richard and
Carolyn M. Palmer, who provided emotional and financial help throughout this endeavor.
And finally, I give thanks to my best friend Jean Varney who so kindly offered invaluable
help with the research for and editing of this D.M.A. document.

CHAPTER 1
THE HISTORY OF THE FITZWILLIAM VIRGINAL BOOK

Sometime between 1614 and 1617, a man from a very prominent English Catholic
recusant family named Francis Tregian Jr. was imprisoned in Londons Fleet Prison.
During his confinement, he transcribed nearly 300 keyboard pieces into an anthology that
today bears the name of Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Several other collections of music
have subsequently been attributed to him as well, including a mammoth collection of
over 1,200 madrigals and instrumental works known today as the Egerton 3665
manuscript.
This chapter traces the history and ownership of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
from its present-day location in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge back through time
to Francis Tregian Jr. and the Fleet Prison. The political and social climate of
Elizabethan England will also be discussed, as well as the severe persecutions inflicted
upon Tregians devoutly Catholic family trying to survive in an extremely anti-Catholic
atmosphere.

Description and Ownership

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book is by far the largest of several manuscripts of
harpsichord music that were compiled in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, during the late Tudor and early Stuart eras in England. For a time, it was
thought that the collection had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth I, as it was formerly
known as Queen Elizabeths Virginal Book. Further research has proven, however,
that the manuscript never belonged to Elizabeth I, and subsequently this collection was

named after its final owner, Viscount Fitzwilliam. Currently, it is housed in the
Fitzwilliam Museum located in Cambridge, England.
The manuscript is contained in a small volume, which consists of 220 leaves, with
music filling 209 pages. The music is written on six-line staves with inner lines of each
stave ruled by hand. The manuscript measures 33 9/10 centimeters by 22 centimeters
(approximately 13 inches high and 9 inches wide).1 The red morocco gilt leather cover is
enriched with gold tooling, the sides being sprinkled with fleurs-de-lis. 2 The paper most
likely came from Basel, as the crozier-case watermark also appears in the arms of that
town.3 The manuscript had been cut in places by the binder, but the style of the work
shows that the binding dates from approximately the same time period as the
handwriting.
The book was compiled by Francis Tregian Jr., the oldest son of a wealthy
Catholic family from Truro in Cornwall. Tradition has it that Tregian copied the
manuscript sometime between 1611 and 1619, while he was serving time in the Fleet
Prison in London for violation of English recusancy laws and failure to pay his debts.4
More recent scholarship from the 1990s has revised the dates of Francis Tregian Jr.s

J.A. Fuller Maitland and W. Barclay Squire, eds., The Fitzwilliam Virginal
Book, vol. I, rev. ed. Blanche Winogron (New York: Dover Publications, 1979), iii.
2

Morocco leather, usually made from goatskin, is dyed red on the grain side to
produce a birds-eye effect. It is valued especially for bookbindings and purses.
Definition from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, s.v. Morocco leather,
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0834070.html (accessed July 28, 2008).
3

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.

Anne Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger: Musician, Collector and

Humanist? trans. Adrienne Burrows, Music and Letters 76 (1995): 401.
4

imprisonment to 1614-1617, and his death to 1617.5 It is also possible that Tregian began
the process of compiling his keyboard anthology, along with his huge collection of vocal
music, even earlier, during the late 1590s, while he was living on the Continent. After his
death in 1617, the warden of the Fleet Prison claimed that Tregian owed him 200 for
room and board. It appears that the warden recognized that Tregians numerous books
and manuscripts were valuable, particularly the one book of gilt, as he attempted to
claim possession of them in payment of the debt. Tregians sisters also recognized the
importance of the virginal book and had a difficult time obtaining possession of it from
the warden.6
It is likely that Tregians vast collection of music stayed within the protection of
the extended Tregian family over the next century, although there are no surviving
records of this. By 1740, the keyboard anthology had fallen into the possession of Dr.
John Christopher Pepusch, a German composer and theorist living in London. Pepusch
came to England in 1711 to work for the first Duke of Chandos, who was a direct
descendent of the Tregian family.7 Pepusch worked extensively in operatic/theatrical
circles in London and wrote the overture and several airs for John Gays immensely
popular The Beggars Opera. Pepusch was also a founding member of the Academy of
Ancient Music (1726) and was known as one of the most learned antiquarians of his day.8
5

Raymond Francis Trudgian, Francis Tregian - 1548-1608 - Elizabethan

recusant - A Truly Catholic Cornishman (Brighton: The Alpha Press, 1998), 41.
6

Ibid.

Elizabeth Cole, Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. An Interim

Report, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 79 (1952-53): 64,
http://jstor.org/journals (accessed December 30, 2007).
8

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. Pepusch, Johann
Christoph (by Malcolm Boyd, Graydon Beeks and D.F. Cook),
http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed October 19, 2008).
3

The particulars of how Pepusch came into possession of this collection are
unknown. It seems that the knowledge or tradition of Francis Tregian Jr. as compiler of
these manuscripts seems to have been lost at this point in time. Apparently Pepusch had
shown his music collection to a man named John Ward, author of a book written in 1740
entitled Lives of the Gresham Professors. In his book, Ward made reference to Dr. John
Bulls compositions that were found in Pepuschs keyboard collection, and also gave a
physical description of the keyboard anthology, stating that it was a large folio neatly
written, bound in red Turkey leather and gilt. 9 Other contemporary books also mention
this keyboard anthology, which was now associated with Tudor England and Queen
Elizabeth I. In his History of Music (1776), Sir John Hawkins relates a story of
Pepuschs wife, the opera star and amateur harpsichordist Margherita de lEpine, who
was unable to master the difficulties of the first piece in this keyboard collection, John
Bulls variations on Walsingham. The erroneous connection between Tregians keyboard
anthology and Queen Elizabeth seems to have originated in Hawkinss book, where he
stated that it once belonged to her.10 This same idea was also alluded to in Charles
Burneys History of Music, which was also published in 1776. In it, he relates an account
from Sir James Melvils Memoirs of Queen Elizabeths performance on the virginals,
adding that if Her Majesty was ever able to execute any of the pieces that are preserved
in a MS. which goes under the name of Queen Elizabeths Virginal Book, she must have
been a very great player.11

Edwin Naylor, An Elizabethan Virginal Book, rev.ed (1905; repr., New York:
Da Capo Press, 1970), 9.
9

10

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.

11

Ibid, v.
4

By 1762, the keyboard collection had been purchased from the estate of Pepusch
by a man named Robert Bremmer, and in 1783 it passed into the possession of Richard
Fitzwilliam, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion and Thorncastle. Over the course
of his lifetime, Fitzwilliam amassed a spectacular collection of works of art, antiquities,
books, and music. His collection of music included Tregians keyboard manuscript
(which would be known as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book after his death), Lord Herbert
of Cherburys Lutebook, fifteen volumes of G.F. Handel music manuscripts, and large
quantities of prints and manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.12 At his
death in February of 1816, Fitzwilliam bequeathed his entire collection to the University
of Cambridge, together with the dividends from 100,000 of South Sea Islands annuities
to pay for the construction of a museum to house the collection.13
The bulk of Fitzwilliams collection was housed in the family mansion in
Richmond. It was there in Richmond that Mr. James Bartleman prepared an index of the
music of Fitzwilliams collection.14 Known as an incomparable bass singer,15

12

Philip Olleson and Fiona M. Palmer, Publishing Music from the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge: The Work of Vincent Novello and Samuel Wesley in the 1820s,
Journal of the Royal Musical Association 130 (2005): 40, http://www.jstor.org (accessed
June 30, 2008).
13

Ibid.

14

Charles Cudworth, A Cambridge Anniversary: 2, The Musical Times 107

(1966): 209, http://www.jstor.org (accessed June 30, 2008).
15

The Georgian Era: Memoires of the Most Eminent Persons, who have
Flourished in Great Britain, from the Accession of George the First to the Demise of
George the Fourth (London: Vizetelly, Branston & Co., 1834), 4: 537.
5

Bartleman owed much of the grandeur of his style to his profound knowledge of the
most sublime compositions of every age and country.16
The index was compiled in March of 1816, only a month after Fitzwilliams death
and before the entire collection was permanently moved to Cambridge. An account of
the contents of the collection reads:
A catalogue of [Fitzwilliams] music was prepared by the well-known
bass singer James Bartleman . . . . From it we can derive a very good estimate of
the richness and range of his Lordships music collection.
The greater part was by Italian composers, ranging from Palestrina and
Marenzio via Stradella and the Scarlattis to Steffani and Clari, Leo and Pergolesi
and Paradies, and the other eminent Italians of Fitzwilliams own day. But there
were Frenchmen there as well; Lully and Rameau, of course, and others such as
Lalande and Couperin, Colasse, Charpentier, and even Mlle. Jacquet de la Guerre.
And there were many English composers, too, ranging from the great names of
the Golden Age, Morley and Byrd in particular, and of course the famous Virginal
Book composers, through the eminent men of the 17th century, Blow and Purcell,
to the Georgian composers of the mid-18th. Not many German names, though,
unless you count Pepusch and Handel and Hasse, who were less German than
English or Italian. There was a great deal of harpsichord music, for it seems that
his Lordship had been no mean keyboard player, and indeed even left some books
which according to Bartleman were filled with Fitzwilliams own compositions
for harpsichord and organ.17
A copy of Bartlemans index, which listed the contents of the Virginal Book,
was written down by Mr. Henry Smith in the back of the manuscript. At the end of the
index is the following postscript: Henry Smith, Richmond, Scripsit / from a M.S. Index
in the Possession of Mr. Bartleman / 24 March 1816. 18
When Fitzwilliams massive collection arrived in Cambridge in the spring of
1816, a supervisory committee was set up to oversee the task of cataloguing and
16

George Hogarth, Musical History, Biography, and Criticism: Being a General

Survey of Music from the Earliest Period to the Present Time (London: John W. Parker,
1835), 423, http://books.google.com/books (accessed 26 June 2008).
17

Cudworth, Cambridge Anniversary, 209.

18

Francis Tregian Jr., Fitzwilliam Virginal Book [manuscript], i.

6

managing this enormous bequest. William Shield was put in charge of cataloguing the
music in the collection, and the task was completed by August 16, 1816, only six months
after the death of Fitzwilliam.
At this point, nothing further was done with Fitzwilliams music collection for
eight years, until 1824, when the Senate of Cambridge University decided that parts of
the collection should be made available for editing or publication. This decision resulted
in the issuing of Vincent Novellos five-volume set, The Fitzwilliam Music (1825-27),
which contained Roman Catholic church music by Italian composers of the sixteenth
through the eighteenth centuries. There was also an edition by Samuel Wesley of three
hymn tunes by Handel set to words by his father, Charles Wesley. An edition of motets
from William Byrds Gradualia was also planned, but, because of financial difficulties,
this project never materialized.19 None of the keyboard works from Fitzwilliams
collection were published at this time, although it was known that these works existed
and were housed at Cambridge. For example, William Chappell makes reference to the
Elizabethan virginal manuscripts in a book he wrote in 1859.
In spite of the knowledge of its existence, the manuscript remained in obscurity
until 1887, when it was rediscovered in the archives during the continuing process of
cataloguing Fitzwilliams collection. In 1894, a huge transcription and editing project
was undertaken by J.A. Fuller Maitland, the distinguished music critic of the London
Times, and his brother-in-law William Barclay Squire, editor and music librarian of the
British Museum in London.20 The task was finished in 1899 and was soon afterwards
published as The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (FVB) by Breitkopf und Hrtel.

19

Olleson and Palmer, Publishing Music, 73.

20

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.

7

The 297 compositions in the FVB were mostly written by native Englishmen.
Those composers featured most prominently in the collection are William Byrd, John
Bull, Giles Farnaby, and Peter Philips. The amount of music written by these four men
represents about two thirds of the total music in the entire collection. In fact, the FVB
contains all of the known keyboard music written by Giles Farnaby except for two pieces.
Other English keyboard composers represented are William Blithman, Richard Farnaby,
Orlando Gibbons, James Harding, William Inglot, Edward Johnson, Robert Johnson,
Thomas Morley, John Munday, Robert Persons, Martin Peerson, Ferdinando Richardson,
Nicholas Strogers, Thomas Tallis, William Tisdall, Thomas Tomkins, Francis Tregian Jr.,
and Thomas Warrock. A few of these composers, such as Tallis and Gibbons, are wellknown, but most of the others remain obscure even today.
In spite of the preponderance of English works, the FVB also contains a number
of Italian compositions, with an occasional German and French piece and intabulations of
Italian madrigals thrown into the mix. Names such as Caccini, Galeazzo, Lasso,
Marenzio, Pichi, Striggio are found in the collection along with Marchant and
Oystermayre. Several pieces by the great Netherlandish organist and composer Jan
Pieterszoon Sweelinck also appear in the FVB. From the multi-national flavor of the
compositions represented in the FVB, it seems that the original collector was someone
who was quite familiar with both English and continental European musical styles. This
description perfectly fits Francis Tregian Jr., as he had spent many years of his life on the
Continent, receiving his education in France, and working in Rome and the Spanish
Netherlands.
The FVB also contains a wide variety of genres:

134 dances (pavans, galliards, almans, corantos, gigges, maskes, toyes, lavoltas,
rounds, spagniolettas, brauls, moriscos, and muscadins)
8

17 organ pieces, such as settings of plainchants, In nomines, etc.

46 arrangements of 40 different popular songs

9 arrangements of madrigals

22 fantasias and ricercares

7 fancies

19 preludes

6 compositions based on the hexachord

In his book entitled An Elizabethan Virginal Book (1905), Edwin Naylor says:
The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book can tell us more about the state of music in
Elizabeths days than many of us have ever known about our own times. . . .
It is not going too far to say that if all other remains of the period were
destroyed, it would be possible to rewrite the History of Music from 1550 to 1620
on the material which we have in the Fitzwilliam Book alone.21
The important historical position of the FVB in relation to other Elizabethan
keyboard repertoire is significant. The most important of these anthologies include:

My Ladye Nevells Booke (1590) contains 40 pieces by William Byrd. This

magnificent book was copied by a professional scribe named John Baldwin, under
the supervision of Byrd himself. It is currently housed at Eridge Castle as the
personal property of the Abergavenny family. First published in 1926 by J.
Curwen and Sons, London, it is now available through a Dover reprint.

Benjamin Cosyns Virginal Book (1600), housed in Buckingham Palace, contains

98 virginal pieces. Composers represented include Orlando Gibbons, John Bull,
William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Nicholas Strogers, Thomas Weelkes, and Elway
Bevin.

Will Fosters Virginal Book, also located in Buckingham Palace, contains 70

pieces by the above-named composers, plus Thomas Morley and John Ward.

Parthenia (1611) has the distinction of being the first music for the virginals ever
to be printed. It contains 21 works by Bull, Byrd, and Gibbons. 22

21

Naylor, Elizabethan Virginal Book, 4.

22

Ibid., 1-3.
9

Although all of these anthologies are very important, they are eclipsed by the sheer size
of the FVB. With 297 compositions in all, it is much larger than the other Elizabethan
compilations and contains the greater part of the repertoire of the English virginal school.

Political History of Tudor England in the Late Sixteenth and Early

Seventeenth Centuries
In order to fully understand the significance of the music that was chosen by
Francis Tregian Jr. for inclusion in his keyboard anthology, it is necessary to know
something of the tumultuous religious and political history of England throughout the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
In 1485, the War of the Roses between the Houses of York and Lancaster finally
came to an end. Henry Tudor of the House of Lancaster claimed victory over Richard III
and thus became Henry VII, King of England by right of conquest. His tenuous claim
to the throne was strengthened through the bloodline of his mother, Margaret Beaufort, a
descendant of Edward III. Henry later solidified his claim by marrying Elizabeth of
York, the eldest child of the late King Edward IV, thereby uniting the two factions.
Henry VII was a successful king in restoring faith and strength in the monarchy.
He managed to establish a new dynasty after thirty years of struggle, strengthened the
judicial system, built up the treasury, and successfully denied all other claimants to the
throne. At his death, he left a fairly secure and wealthy monarchy. His oldest son,
Arthur, was expected to become the next king. Arthur and Catherine of Aragon
(daughter of famed Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella) were betrothed as young
children as part of an alliance between England and Spain. Unfortunately, Arthur died of
tuberculosis after only a few months of marriage to Catherine. It was then arranged that
the next son, Henry, should marry Catherine when he became of age. According to the
10

book of Leviticus, marriage to a dead brothers wife was prohibited, although Catherine
insisted throughout her life that her marriage to Arthur had not been consummated. It
was for this reason that a papal dispensation was sought and obtained, so that the
legitimacy of the new marriage between Henry and Catherine would be recognized by all
parties.
At the death of his father, Henry VIII became king in 1509 and soon thereafter
married Catherine of Aragon. Catherine bore him several children, but only Mary would
survive. In pursuit of a male heir, Henry later sought a divorce from Catherine. After
failing to obtain papal approval for this divorce, Henry broke all ties with Rome and with
Catholicism, and set out to create a state church. The Church of England now became the
official religion of the country, and anti-Catholic or recusancy laws were then enacted
and put into practice. Henry went on to marry five more wives, divorcing several and
executing two.
When he died in 1547, Henry VIII had only three surviving legitimate children:
Edward VI (son of third wife, Jane Seymour), Mary (daughter of first wife, Catherine of
Aragon), and Elizabeth (daughter of second wife, Anne Boleyn). At the age of nine,
Prince Edward was too young to rule. Instead, he would be guided through a council
of regency. The first leader of the council was Edwards maternal uncle, Edward
Seymour, First Duke of Somerset, who was appointed to serve as Lord Protector of the
Realm and Governor of the Kings Person from 1547-49. A series of internal rebellions
coupled with steep inflation caused great social unrest in England during this time, and,
when France formally declared war on England in 1549, Somerset was soon deposed by
the council. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was later executed in
the early 1550s.

11

The council was then led by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, 1st Duke of
Northumberland, from 1549 to Edwards death in 1553. The rise to power of the Duke of
Northumberland also led to an increase in the persecution of Catholics in England.
Under his leadership all official editions of the Bible were replaced with those with antiCatholic annotations. Mobs were encouraged to desecrate Catholic symbols in churches.
The Ordinal of 1550 replaced the divine ordination of priests with a system in which the
government appointed priests instead. Parliament also passed the Act of Uniformity of
1552, which replaced the Book of Common Prayer (1549) with a newer and more
Protestant version. This book was the only authorized one for church services, and
anyone who did not attend a service where this liturgy was used faced imprisonment
ranging from six months to life.
Edward became ill with tuberculosis in early 1553, and it soon became clear that
he was dying. According to Henry VIIIs will, his daughters Mary and Elizabeth were
next in line for the throne, followed by his niece, Lady Frances Brandon, daughter of his
younger sister Mary, the Duchess of Suffolk. The Duke of Northumberland did not find
any of these three women to his liking, so he devised a plan to retain his power by
altering the line of succession. Part of his plan included marrying his son, Guilford
Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, the daughter of Lady Frances Brandon, who was a first
cousin to Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. After the marriage took place, two different
versions of Edwards will that contained the Device to Alter the Succession were written
in Edwards own hand. The first excluded Mary, Elizabeth, the Duchess of Suffolk, and
Lady Jane Grey from the line of succession, with the crown being left only to Lady Jane
Greys male heirs. When it became clear that Edward would die before Lady Jane Grey
could produce a male heir, Edwards second draft of the Device to Alter the Succession
stipulated that the crown would be left to Lady Jane and her male heirs. Edward finally
12

died on July 6, 1553 at the age of fifteen, and a power struggle immediately ensued.
Although some supported Lady Janes claim to the throne, most people maintained that
Mary was the rightful heir, based on Henry VIIIs Act of Succession (1543), which
stipulated that Mary, then Elizabeth, would follow Edward in the line of succession.
Lady Janes reign was brief, lasting only nine days, after which Mary Tudor was
proclaimed the rightful queen. The Duke of Northumberland was executed soon
afterwards. Lady Jane, her husband, and her father would eventually share that same
fate.
As the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor dynasty, Mary was devoutly loyal to
the memory of her mother, Catherine, to her half-Spanish heritage, and to Catholicism.
Mary and her cousin, papal legate Cardinal Pole, promptly set out to restore Catholicism
in England. Although her reign of five years proved to be a brief respite from
persecution for her Catholic subjects, Marys unwise decision to marry Phillip II of Spain
cost her most of the initial popularity that she had enjoyed with the English public.
Eventually, she became known as Bloody Mary because of the persecution and killing
of hundreds of Protestant dissenters during her five-year reign.
After her death in 1558, Marys younger half-sister, Elizabeth Tudor, became
queen. Although it has been said that Elizabeth was personally ambivalent towards
religion, as the monarch she chose to continue with the process that her father, Henry
VIII, had begun many years before: nationalizing Englands state religion.23 In
Elizabeths realm, to be a Catholic was to be an unnatural Englishman. This attitude
stemmed from a perceived threat of enemies from within (the English Catholic seminary

23

Alice Hogge, Gods Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeths Forbidden Priests and
the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005), 9.
13

priests and Jesuits who were illegally reentering the country after receiving their training
on the Continent) and without (France, the Pope, and Spain).
During Elizabeths reign, severe persecutions against English Catholics would
reach an all-time high, especially from the early 1570s until the mid 1590s, as numerous
pieces of legislation were passed aimed directly against Catholics. Much of the
legislation involved exorbitant fines, but the most severe of the laws included death by
drawing and quartering of any Catholic priest or Jesuit who was caught on English soil,
and for those who harbored any such priests, praemunire, the complete loss of lands and
wealth coupled with imprisonment for life.
It is this volatile political society and intolerant religious climate of Elizabethan
England which provides the backdrop and context to both the Tregian family saga and the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

History of the Tregian Family: Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis

Tregian Jr.
In his book entitled Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time
(1859), William Chappell proposed the idea that the Elizabethan manuscript might
have been made for or by an English resident of the Netherlands and that Dr. Pepusch
probably obtained it in that country. This conjecture was based on the fact that the name
Tregian was the only name that occurred frequently in abbreviated form throughout the
manuscript. Additionally, a sonnet signed Fr. Tregian prefaced Richard Verstegans
Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, which was published in 1605 in Antwerp.24
Verstegan was an expatriate Catholic Englishman living in the Netherlands. His

24

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vii.

14

occupation was publisher of Catholic devotional books and anti-Elizabethan political

tracts, but he was also the corresponding agent for Cardinal Allen in Rome and for the
Jesuits.25
Maitland and Squire also noticed that references to the name Tregian were
found in several places scattered throughout the FVB:

No. 60, Treg Ground by William Byrd (vol. I, p. 226 of Dover Edition)

No. 80, Pavana Doloros. Treg by Peter Philips (vol. I, p. 321)

No. 93, Pavana Ph. Tr. by William Byrd (vol. I, p. 367)

No. 181, A Gigg. by William Byrd (vol. II, p. 237) In the margin of this piece are
the letters F. Tr.

No. 214, Pavana Chromatica. Mrs Katherin Tregians Paven by William Tisdall
(vol. II, p. 278)

No. 105, Heaven and Earth by Fre [thought to be an abbreviation for Francis
Tregian]

No. 160, Rowland by William Byrd (vol. II, p. 190). There is a marginal note
which reads 300 to S.T. by Tom. This is probably a reference to Sybil Tregian,
sister of Francis Tregian Jr.26

Maitland and Squire continued to research the name Tregian and found that the
Tregians had been a rich and powerful Catholic family living in Truro in Cornwall. For a
time, John Tregian, the grandfather of Francis Tregian Sr., served as an officer in the
royal court, as Esquire of the Body to Henry VIII, Steward of the Chamber, and
Gentleman Sewer of the Kings Chamber.27 In recognition of a job well done, in 1514 he

25

The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Richard Verstegan (by J. H. Pollen),

http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/v/ verstegan,richard.html (accessed 7/13/08).
26

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vi.

27

P.A. Boyan and G.R. Lamb, Francis Tregian: Cornish Recusant (London:
Sheed and Ward, 1955), 20.
15

was granted a lifetime monopoly in the exporting of cowhides out of Cornwall.28 He

became very wealthy and accumulated much property. The wealth and prestige of the
Tregian family increased even further when his son, John Tregian Jr., married Katherin
Arundell, thus creating an alliance between two of the most powerful families in
Cornwall. This marriage greatly chagrined another powerful Cornish family, the
Protestant Greenvilles, led by Sir Richard Grenville. Sir Richard had attempted to marry
his daughter to John Tregian Jr., but his efforts went unrewarded. As a future sheriff of
Cornwall, Grenvilles grandson, Richard, would later be one of the prime instigators
against the Tregian family.
Like the Tregian family, the Arundell family was staunchly Catholic. In 1549,
during King Edwards reign, an Arundell was one of the leaders in the ill-fated
Rebellion of the West, in which an army of Cornish Catholic insurgents had planned to
march on London in an effort to restore the old religion. John Tregian Jr.s father-inlaw, Sir John Arundell, and his brother, Thomas Arundell, were arrested as part of this
uprising, and both were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Thomas Arundell was later
beheaded for conspiring against the Duke of Northumberland, the de facto ruler of
England during this time. Sir John was luckier than his brother; when Mary came to the
throne in 1553, he was released from prison and returned to Cornwall as the newly
appointed sheriff.29
John Tregian Jr. and Katherin Arundell were the parents of Francis Tregian Sr.,
who was born around the time of the Cornish Rebellion (1549). At the age of twenty-

28

Ibid.

29

Ibid., 23
16

one, Francis married Mary Stourton, also linked to the Arundell family.30 The exact date
of the marriage is unknown, although it was probably around 1570.
During the 1560s, the policies toward Catholic citizens in England were those of
deprivation rather than of persecution. Many former Catholic priests (including the socalled Marian priests who were ordained during Marys reign) now chose to serve as
priests in the English Church. It was common during this time for a bishop to turn a
blind eye to the superficial conformity of these ex-Marian clergy, allowing them great
freedom in officiating the services.31 Many of the gentry in England during this decade
were still Catholic, and it was common for a Catholic aristocratic family to have its own
priest on the estate, living in disguise. It was also common for these aristocrats to send
their sons over to the Continent to further their religious education. There was a
tremendous shortage of qualified Catholic clergy and teachers and no Catholic schools or
universities in England during this time, since these were all illegal.
Soon after his marriage, Francis Tregian Sr. went abroad, presumably to further
his religious studies. This would have been sometime between 1570 and 1572.32 Many
of his fellow Catholics had also been leaving the country for the same reason, so in 1571
Parliament passed an act which made it an offence for any of the Queens subjects to
leave the country without an official license and not return within six months. The
penalty for disobeying this law was the loss of lands and material goods for life. Francis
came back to England before his six months were up, returning to his wife and family.

30

Francis Plunkett, Heroum speculum de vita D.D. Francisci Tregeon (Lisbon,

1655), repr. with English translation, no city, date), 12.
31

Adrian Morey, The Catholic Subjects of Elizabeth I (Totowa: Rowman and

Littlefield, 1978), 40.
32

Boyan and Lamb, Cornish Recusant, 24.

17

He then decided to go to London and live at Elizabeths court for a time. His primary
motivation for doing this was to plead the Catholic cause before the Queen. From all
accounts it seems that Francis was a very charming and successful courtier, and
eventually he did get the attention of the Queen, although certainly not in a way that he
had intended. It seems that Elizabeth was enamored of Francis Tregian, and she
proposed to make him a viscount, an offer which Tregian quickly refused. He explained
to the Queen that the main purpose behind his appearance at court was to plead for the
rights of Catholics in England.33 Rather than having him arrested and imprisoned for this
seemingly treasonous behavior, Elizabeth allowed him to remain at court. An account of
what happened next was written by Franciss grandson, Father Francis Plunkett:
The friendship of Elizabeth for Francis developed into passion, and she
desired to keep him as near to her person as she felt him near to her heart. As the
attraction waxed stronger, Elizabeth offered to make Francis a Viscount, but he,
in his modesty, shrank from the burden and courteously declined the honour, lest,
as he said, this premature mark of royal favour should detract from his merits by
being attributed solely to affection. To me, he added, it would be quite
enough, if the Faith, for the sake of which I came to Court, should breathe more
freely and recover strength. But because violent passion exceeds all bounds and
knows no law, it came to pass shortly afterwards that the Queen, late at night, sent
. . . one of those ladies who are called Maids of Honour. She earnestly begged
him to go and see the Queen without delay . . . . She added that he had captivated
the Queen, that nothing more agreeable could be imagined than that their
intercourse, with increasing familiarity, should ripen into intimate friendship, and
that Francis ought to realize what immense advantages would accrue to him from
the favours of royalty.34
Francis was greatly upset by this royal proposition, as he wished to honor his
marriage vows, yet he also saw that he and his family would be in danger if he refused
the Queen. He told the lady-in-waiting that he was very ill and that he must be excused
for not complying with Her Majestys wishes. A short time later Queen Elizabeth herself

33

Ibid., 27.

34

Plunkett, Heroum speculum, 12.

18

came to Tregians room to assess the situation. She again offered to make him a
viscount. Again, Tregian refused her offer, expressing his great unworthiness at such a
high honor, but this time he offered the Queen his entire fortune and all of his
possessions. She could have everything that was his except for his conscience.
His refusal of her amorous advances greatly enraged Elizabeth, and she was
deeply offended and insulted. After she stormed out of the room, Francis Tregian packed
his bags in a hurry and left in the middle of the night for Cornwall. The account by
Plunkett continues:
When Elizabeth heard of Tregians departure, thinking herself deceived by
him, she flew into a most unroyal rage. With an oath she asserted that the traitor
had left to plot some crime against her royal person; called him a perfidious
criminal, and declared that being a Catholic, nothing but evil could be expected of
him. She ordered the laws enacted against Catholics to be published without
delay, and further commanded the Knight Marshal to proceed against the said
Francis, his family, and dependents with all rigour, and promised their property
and goods to him for his pains. 35
The Knight Marshal was Sir George Carey, a cousin to Queen Elizabeth. He was
the grandson son of Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyns sister. As Knight
Marshal, Carey was in charge of one of the most notorious prisons in England, the
Marshalsea. Carey immediately got in touch with Richard Grenville, who was by then
the appointed sheriff in Cornwall, to enlist his help in framing Francis Tregian.
Grenville, who had no love for the Tregian or Arundell families, was more than happy to
assist with this task.
A plan was hatched with the intent of ruining the Tregian family by enforcing the
anti-Catholic recusancy laws. In June of 1577, Richard Grenville appeared at the door of

35

Ibid., 15. Because Francis Plunkett is the only source for this account, its
authenticity has been questioned by historians. On the other hand, he heard it directly
from his mother, Philippa Tregian, and it might only be family members who knew the
true story.
19

the Tregian mansion, accompanied by eight or nine justices of the peace and one hundred
armed men, and demanded to search the premises under the false pretense of looking for
an escaped prisoner. Grenville had no search warrant, so, when Tregian refused him
entrance, he and his armed men barged in and ransacked the house, looking for evidence.
Grenville and his men found Cuthbert Mayne, the Catholic seminary priest for the
Tregian household, who lived on the Tregian estate disguised as the steward. Francis
Tregian and Cuthbert Mayne would be the first nobleman and priest to be prosecuted
under the full penalty of recusancy laws.
For two years, Francis Tregian was confined illegally without a hearing or fair
trial in some of the worst prisons in England and under the vilest of conditions.
Eventually, he was convicted of recusancy in 1579 and was then deprived of all of his
property, money, and possessions and sentenced to life in prison. Soon afterwards his
wife and three little children were thrown out of their house in the dead of winter with
only the clothes on their back, when Carey took over the Tregian estate. Mary Tregian
was eight months pregnant at the time. As for the priest, Cuthbert Mayne (who had
studied for the priesthood at Dr. William Allens English College in Douai and had then
come back to England illegally as an ordained Catholic priest), his fate was even more
horrific than Tregians. Mayne was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death.
His sentence read as follows:
That you be taken to the place from whence you came, and from thence be
drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you shall be hanged by the
neck, not till you are dead; that you be taken down, while yet alive, and your
bowels be taken out and burnt before your face. That your head be then cut off
and your body cut in four quarters to be at the [Queens] disposal. And God
Almighty have mercy on your soul.36

36

Boyan and Lamb, Cornish Recusant, 56.

20

Mayne was the first seminary priest from the English College in Douai to be
executed for high treason; about one third of the graduates of this seminary would
eventually suffer the same fate. Nearly four centuries later, in 1970, Cuthbert Mayne was
canonized as a martyr in the Catholic faith, and Francis Tregian as a confessor.37
It was thought that punishing both Francis Tregian and Cuthbert Mayne to the full
extent of the law would discourage other Catholic aristocrats from having their own
priests on their estates. In reality, however, it did little to stop the English aristocrats
from practicing Catholicism. It seems that many times the degree of punishment of
recusants depended on the whims of the monarch. For example, Francis Tregians fatherin-law, Sir John Arundell, did not suffer the loss of all his money and property, as did his
son-in-law, even though he also spent time in prison and was fined repeatedly for
recusancy. It seems likely that the severity of Tregians punishment was based on the
fact that he had personally offended the Queen in a very embarrassing way.
Prison life was nearly fatal for Francis Tregian, and he suffered terribly. He was
confined in two of the most horrendous prisons in England, the Marshalsea Prison and
later in Launceston Prison. He was almost murdered several times by other inmates, and
finally he became very ill due to unsanitary living conditions. His captors also tried
starving him to death in an effort to break his spirits. Amazingly enough, Mary Tregian
chose to join her husband in captivity in the Launceston Prison. She also suffered
terribly. She gave birth to two children in these filthy conditions, and neither child
survived. She was finally forced to leave her husband for a time and stay with her mother
in an effort to regain her health.

37

The Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Blessed Cuthbert Maine (by John

Wainewright), http://www.newadvent.org/ (accessed 28 July 2008).
21

The Tregian and Arundell families still had some royal connections, and so in
1580 Francis Tregian was transferred from the Launceston Prison to the Fleet Prison,
where his living conditions greatly improved. Francis and Mary Tregian were the parents
of twelve children, eight of which were born while he was a prisoner at the Fleet.38
The fact that Francis Tregian Sr. was able to father so many children while
confined to prison or that later his son, Francis Tregian Jr., would be able to amass such a
large and valuable collection of books while he was also a prisoner in the Fleet requires
some explanation. Unlike the Marshalsea and Launceston Prisons, which existed for the
sole purposes of torturing inmates or holding hardened criminals, the Fleet Prison was a
money-making enterprise, which was populated primarily by upper-class debtors and
political dissidents. It seems that Francis Tregian and later his son, Francis Tregian Jr.,
lived in relative comfort in a private room in the Fleet because they had been wealthy and
still had rich relatives who could help pay for their room and board. According to
Annika Jokinen:
All prisoners had to pay fees for their lodgings and for favorable
treatment. The wardens of the Fleet were notorious for charging exorbitantly high
sums and abusing their posts. Prisoners, for a certain sum, could reside within the
Liberties of the Fleet, or mansion houses near the prison. Here too, money could
buy a certain amount of freedom; alas, for the debtors, such possibilities were
few.39
Soon after he arrived at the Fleet, Francis Tregian Sr. was moved from the
Common Ward into a private suite, which included a study. Here he was able to write
poetry, study foreign languages, and conduct a busy social life in the prison, along with
other intellectual recusants. It was also widely known that for a certain price a prisoner

38

Trudgeon, Francis Tregian, 42-43.

39

Luminarium, s.v. Fleet Prison (by Anniina Jokinen), www.luminarium.org/

encyclopedia/fleetprison.htm (accessed February 14, 2008).
22

could leave under surveillance, and unaccompanied for an even higher price. This would
explain how his son, Francis Tregian Jr., would later have the chance to travel, continue
to collect music, and attend to the copying of the manuscripts that he had presumably
accumulated on his travels.40
Mary Tregian was again allowed to live with her husband. She was free to move
about as she pleased and was even allowed to attend court, where she unsuccessfully
attempted many times to entreat Queen Elizabeth to release Francis from prison.
Apparently Mary Tregian was well-acquainted with William Byrds brother, John, and so
it is likely that William Byrd also knew the Tregian family, especially since the surname
Tregian appears in titles of several of his keyboard works found in the FVB.41
After spending twenty-four years in confinement, Francis Tregian was granted
parole in 1601.42 Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and in 1605 the new monarch, James I,
banished him. Tregian left England in July of 1606 and subsequently immigrated to
Spain, visiting the colleges of Douai and Brussels en route. There is no record of his wife
accompanying him. In Spain he was given a heros welcome by King Philip III, who also
granted him a pension. Tregian eventually retired to Lisbon, where he died on September
25, 1608 at the age of sixty. Seventeen years later he was re-buried standing up, facing
England, an honor which signified that he had stood up to the Queen for his beliefs. Over
time his burial place has become a pilgrimage site for Catholics.

40

Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 402.

40

Naylor, Elizabethan Virginal Book, 9.

41

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. Tregian, Francis (by
O.W. Neighbour), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 14, 2008).
42

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Tregian, Francis (by Raymond

Francis Trudgian), http://www.oxforddnb.com/ (accessed June 30, 2008).
23

Francis Tregian Jr. was the oldest son of Francis and Mary Tregian and the
presumed compiler and scribe of the FVB. He was born in 1574 at Golden Manor, the
Tregian family seat in Cornwall. Francis Jr. and his younger brother, Charles, were both
educated abroad at Eu and at the English College at Douai that was later moved to
Rheims. It should be remembered that, according to English recusancy law, the practice
of sending Catholic children away from England to be educated was strictly prohibited.
The English College in Douai was founded in 1568 by Dr. William Allen, one of the exOxford Catholic professors who fled England after Elizabeth I came to power. Many of
these exiled professors had congregated into a colony in Douai. The main objective of
Allens college was to train young Englishmen to be Catholic priests in the hope that
someday Catholicism would be restored to England. Dr. Allen left Rheims for reasons of
health, and was afterwards summoned to Rome to help with the English College there.
He was promoted to Cardinal in 1587 and remained in Rome for the rest of his life. It is
possible that Francis Jr. was later able to secure employment as a personal secretary to
Cardinal Allen in 1592 because of his success as an outstanding student and orator at the
English College in Douai.43
Cardinal Allen sincerely believed that it was in Englands best interest to return
to the old religion, and he was engaged in activities against Queen Elizabeth to help
facilitate this return. Cardinal Allen had in fact helped plan the Spanish Armadas
invasion of England, and, if that plan had succeeded, Allen would have been appointed
both Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Allen also encouraged Pope Pius V
to issue the Papal Bull Regnet in Excelsis, which excommunicated Elizabeth I and
declared her deposed. After this bull was issued in 1570, Elizabeth chose not to continue
43

Pamela Willetts, Oportet Meliora Tempora Non Expectare Sed Facere. The
Arduous Life of Francis Tregian, The Younger, Recusant History 28:3 (2007): 380.
24

her policy of religious tolerance and instead began actively persecuting her religious
opponents.44 Therefore, rather than helping the situation of his fellow Catholics back
home, the effect of Allens Counter-Reformation activities abroad resulted in making life
even more difficult for Roman Catholics in England.
In Cardinal Allens papers, Francis Tregian Jr. is described as of great nobility, a
secular person [not an ordained priest], twenty years old, layman, exceptional
intelligence, versed in philosophy, in music, and in the Latin language.45 Cardinal Allen
died in 1594, and it was Francis Tregian Jr. who delivered the eulogy at Allens funeral.
There is also a record of Francis Tregian Jr. returning to England in 1594 to visit his
parents. After Allens death, he went to work for Albert, Archduke of the Spanish
Netherlands, where he came in contact with the English composer Peter Philips. It is
likely that when Francis Tregian Sr. left England in July 1606 on his way to Spain, he
also visited his son, Francis Jr., in Brussels, where he presumably gave him instructions
to return to England as head of the Tregian family to reclaim the properties and titles that
had been confiscated by the Crown.46 By December of 1606, Francis Jr. was back in
England and had begun the task of reclaiming possession of his familys estate, which
had been given to George Carey (Lord Hundson) by Queen Elizabeth. In 1614, he was
convicted of recusancy and debt and sentenced to the Fleet Prison, just as his father had
been before him.47 The fact that he had worked for Archduke Albert, an enemy to Queen

44

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Allen, William (15321594)

(by Eamon Duffy), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/391 (accessed July 29, 2008).
45

Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 403: molto nobile, di 20 anni,

secolare, di ingenio felicissimo, dotto in filosofia, in musica, et nella lingua Latina.
46

Willetts, Arduous Life of Francis Tregian, The Younger 382, fn. 42.

47

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: vii.

25

Elizabeth, was a factor in his sentencing. Tregian was known to have been working on a
very important book for two years while he was confined in the Fleet, which scholars
now believe was the FVB. Francis Tregian Jr. died in the Fleet Prison in 1617 at the age
of forty-three.48
In the 1899 publication of the FVB, Barclay and Squire listed incorrectly the date
of Francis Tregian Jr.s imprisonment as 1609 and his death as 1619. They wrote:
From a statement drawn up by the Warden of the Fleet prison (apparently
about 1622), it seems that at his death he owed over 200 for meat, drink and
lodging, though in his rooms there were many hundreds of books, the ownership
of which formed a matter of dispute between his sisters and the Warden. It may
be conjectured with much plausibility that the present collection of music was
written by the younger Tregian to wile away his time in prison.49
This fragmentary passage about Francis Tregian Jr. formulated by Barclay and Squire
became the basis of the story of Tregian and his keyboard manuscript, which would
remain unchanged for many years.
Over fifty years later, in 1952, Elizabeth Cole wrote an article entitled Seven
Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. This oft-quoted article is considered to be
one of the most authoritative even today, in spite of the fact that many of her conclusions
are now thought to be incomplete or somewhat inaccurate. Cole was able to locate a
signature of Francis Tregian Jr. on a legal document, along with other writings
purportedly in his hand. As the handwriting style of the legal documents seemed to
match that of the FVB, this appeared to be the long-awaited proof that Tregian Jr. was
indeed the copyist of the Fitzwilliam manuscript.

48

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Tregian, Francis.

49

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: viii.

26

Cole was of the opinion that the FVB was a musical representation of Tregians
friends, many of them living underground lives in the face of political and religious
turmoil. She wrote:
As for the question of who made [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book], Squire
noticed a set of initials in some of the titles like Pavana Treg: at one point the
name appears in full as Tregian. This led him to surmise that the book was
written for or by one of the Tregian family, the two heads of which spent a total of
thirty-four years in prison for Catholic recusancy. . . . Now going directly to the
MS. we find . . . that no less than seventeen other names (both in full and in
abbreviation) appear in exactly the same circumstances as the name of Tregian
that is, in the titles of the pieces and in the margins. . . . Between the lines of
music cluster these little groups of men and women and they mean nothing to us.
But they must surely have meant something to the composers and to the maker of
the book. . . . To find out who they are and what they are doing there we must
reverse the usual process of reading history backwards and go ourselves to the
scene of action. Let us then go back for a few moments to the London of the first
Elizabethan age, forgetting the musical statistics, and using the Fitzwilliam
Virginal Book as a map of fifty years in the most troubled period of our history.
The first stop is Tower Hill, a familiar piece by Giles Farnaby, and a place
with two special features. From Stowes Survey of London, we learn that Upon
this hill is alwayes prepared . . . a large Scaffolde and Gallowes for the execution
of such Traytors as are delivered out of the Tower. Along one side of it runs the
wall and entrance to Lord Lumleys House. Now Lord Lumley, introduced by
Bull as the first of [Tregians] friends pictured within the Book, came from a long
line of Catholic conspirators. He was deeply implicated in the Ridolfi plot, to
marry his brother-in-law to Mary Queen of Scots. For twenty years he was in and
out of various prisons, and died in his house on Tower Hill in 1609.
The Elizabethan age was an uncomfortable time for the old diehards; an
age of violent contrast, of feminine inconsistency, and of fear which radiated
downwards from the Queen herself, for one tends to forget that for fifty years she
went in fear for her very life.50
Cole then goes on to talk about several other references to Catholicism which
Tregian wrote in the margins of the manuscript. According to Cole, the Pagget for
whom Peter Philips wrote the Pavana and Galiarda was a Charles Pagget, Catholic spy

50

Cole, Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 52-53.

27

and agent of the Spanish king.51 William Byrds Lady Montegles Paven was dedicated
to Lady Montegle but written for her husband, who helped dispatch an envoy to Spain
with an invitation for King Philip to invade England. The anonymous composition
entitled Lady Rich refers to a warm-hearted Catholic-sympathizer cousin of the Tregian
family. Ph Tr and S.T. refer to sisters of Francis Tregian Jr., Philippa and Sybil.52

Three Other Tregian Manuscripts

Around 1950, the British Museum acquired a manuscript that contained about
1,200 villanellas, madrigals, and instrumental pieces primarily written by English and
Italian composers. Identified as Egerton 3665, this huge anthology became of interest
almost immediately because the handwriting in the manuscript appeared to be the same
as the handwriting found in the FVB. In 1951, Bertram Schofield and Thurston Dart
wrote an article for Music and Letters. In it they said the following:
Whoever wrote the famous Fitzwilliam Book also wrote Egerton 3665.
The two hands are identical, even down to minute details of erasure, pagination,
correction of mistakes and numbering of the contents of the books; there can be
no doubt that the British Museum now owns a companion volume to the
Fitzwilliam manuscript, written by the same man at the same time. Though there
is still no final proof that this man was in fact the younger Francis Tregian, the
probability that he compiled both books is further strengthened by the presence of
new items in the Egerton manuscript signed F. and F.T. and an Allemanda
Tr. set by P[eter] P[hilips]. . . .
The contents of Egerton MS 3665 . . . have been copied mainly from
Italian and English printed books, some of the former being now exceedingly rare.
Moreover the volume contains annotations in Italian. If, as seems probable, the
writer was English he must have been someone like Tregian who had spent long
enough in Italy for Italian to have become a second language. It has been
suggested that Tregian wrote the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in prison. Certainly
51

It is more likely that the Pagget mentioned in the FVB was his eldest brother,
Thomas Lord Pagget, an expatriate English recusant aristocrat who was also Philips
employer.
52

Ibid., 54.
28

the vast amount of work involved in the compilation of so large a collection as

Egerton 3665 could scarcely have been undertaken by anyone who was not forced
to be idle, and the hundreds of books in Tregians lodging in the Fleet when he
died may well have included the many collections of music from which the
manuscript was copied.53
Discovery of the Egerton manuscript also led scholars to reevaluate a manuscript
that had been housed in the New York Public Library since the early twentieth century,
known as the Sambrook Manuscript. This smaller compilation also included motets
and madrigals by English and Italian composers and by its contents seemed to be a
continuation of the Egerton anthology. The Sambrook manuscript also looked like it was
written in the same hand as Egerton MS 3665 and the FVB.
Also in the early 1950s, yet another manuscript thought to be notated by Tregian
was discovered in the archives of Oxfords Christ Church Library. Now known as
Tregians Part-Books, this collection contained transcriptions of five-part Italian
madrigals, that were presumably copied from contemporary printed or other manuscript
sources. Several of those sources are now considered to be extremely rare.

Francis Tregian Jr. as Copyist - Legend or Fact?

Up until the mid 1990s, the most widely accepted accounts of Francis Tregian Jr.
portrayed him as the obedient eldest son of a Catholic refugee and a highly educated
young man who served as an aide to Cardinal Allen. Upon hearing of his fathers death,
Tregian Jr. faithfully returned to reclaim his familys confiscated properties and was
eventually convicted of recusancy and sentenced to the Fleet because he was a devout
Catholic. Here he passed the last years of his life collecting valuable books and creating
music manuscripts.
53

Bertrand Schofield and Thurston Dart, Tregians Anthologies, Music and

Letters 32 (1951): 206-07, http://jstor.org/journals (accessed February 22, 2008).
29

In 1995, this account was challenged by Anne Cuneo, who wrote the article
questioning some of the basic assumptions in the Tregian narrative:
I began to feel somewhat skeptical about current theories concerning
Francis Tregian when I first saw the imposing Tregians Anthology in the British
Library. It had seemed extraordinary enough that a man shut up in prison could
have collected the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, with its great range and variety.
Confronted by the unbelievable quantity of pieces in the Tregian collections as a
whole, it became incredible: counting as well those in London and New York and
those discovered in the 1950s at Oxford, there are close on 2,000.
Approaching the question with an open mind, to speak of a poor copyist
transcribing the pieces to wile away his time in prison becomes absurd. The
writing out of 2,000 pieces was more than just a copying job: rather, it was surely
the outcome of a life devoted to scholarship and the daily labour of research, and
to study and reflection. Above all, it implies not only great open-mindedness but
also freedom of movement and a degree of financial independence.54
Cuneo also challenged the like father, like son notion, especially with regard to
the fathers very conservative brand of Catholicism. Unlike Elizabeth Cole, who had
found a strong Catholic religious flavor inherent in the selections of music that Francis Jr.
chose for insertion in his manuscript, Cuneo argues that the sureness of taste and the
humanist spirit that his anthologies demonstrate should be counted as well.55 She
remarks that, after taking the historical context into account, the question of religion in
music was not the collectors main concern, as both Catholic and Protestant composers
were well-represented in the collection. She later states:
As one studies Elizabethan England, it soon becomes clear that this
society was not quite as black and white as it has subsequently been depicted.
The era was full of turmoil, as were the people. The two camps, Catholic and
Protestant, each of them further split into moderates and extremists, sometimes
mingled with each other, and for many the divide between the two religions was
blurred. The gray area was extensive, and in private Elizabeth I herself was
ambivalent. The choices [of the music in Tregians anthology] . . . reflect this
social reality.56
54

Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 399.

55

Ibid., 398.

56

Ibid., 401.
30

Cuneo also provides a different date for Tregians confinement in the Fleet.
Previously, it had been thought that he began his sentence in 1609, but Cuneo supplied
evidence showing that the summons for Tregian was not issued until July 27, 1611. She
claimed that it was possible that he was at liberty as late as 1616, as in Truro, Cornwall
there have been found numerous contracts and business papers written or signed by
Tregian between 1613 and 1616.
Cuneo argues that the main reason Tregian was imprisoned was for his debts
rather than his Catholicism, and that was the primary reason that he was imprisoned in
the Fleet. In an age when an average family could live very well on a yearly income
between 10-20, Tregian had amassed a huge debt of 3000 which he was unable to
repay.
Cuneo also relates a family legend regarding Tregians supposed death in 1619, as
told by Mr. Thomas Tomkin, who was a descendant of Francis Tregian Sr.s sister, Jane:
Mr. [Francis] Tregian resolving to do the best that he could, received some
money by compounding with various parties to confirm their titles, and thus
embarked for Spain, where, as it is said, he was very well received on account of
his own fathers sufferings for religion, and . . . he was made a grandee of that
kingdom; and . . . his posterity still flourish there with the title of Marquis of St.
Angelo. Whether this be true or not I cannot affirm, having it only by tradition.57
The family tradition held that Francis Tregian Jr. was still alive in 1630.
Still another musicologist questioned the notion of Tregian being the copyist at
all. In 2001, Ruby Reid Thompson published an article in Music & Letters that
challenged Elizabeth Coles 1951 supposition that the music script in any of the four socalled Tregian manuscripts was really in the hand of Francis Tregian Jr. She argues:

57

Davies Gilbert and Thomas Tomkin, The Parochial History of Cornwall

(London, 1838), 361, quoted in Cuneo, Francis Tregian the Younger, 402.
31

[Cole] discovered two legal deeds signed by him [Francis Tregian Jr.]
which she believed to be entirely in his hand. For she decided that the script was
identical with the text script in FVB, a judgment endorsed, perhaps a little
cautiously, by [Bertram] Schofield. Cole reported that Schofield, having
compared photographs of the documents and several variations of the signature
closely with the Egerton manuscript, saw no reason to doubt but that Tregian was
indeed the scribe of Egerton 3665 and, therefore, of the Fitzwilliam Book. He
remarked upon the distinct traces of Italianism in Tregians script, and the
individually characteristic way in which he formed the letters F, T, M, the small v
or u, and, above all, the most unusually shaped small t. . . .
Many early seventeenth-century English scripts contain a mixture of italic
and secretary letter shapes which create an impression of similarity between them.
The separation of the two styles was already breaking down before the end of the
sixteenth century, so that for several generations mixed hands combining
features of both styles were common. . . . [I]t is hard to know which one [of the
styles] Schofield may have found especially characteristic or close to those in the
Egerton scripts.58
Thompson also presents other arguments against Tregian being the copyist. She
points out that it is not entirely clear from the signatures on several of the Tregian family
legal documents that the signatory (Tregian) was also the scribe of the legal text. She
conjectures that another relative of Francis Jr., Thomas Tregian, may have written the
text for Francis to sign.59 Thompsons main argument, however, deals with the type of
paper used in the FVB manuscript, paper considered to be very expensive, unique, and
difficult to obtain:
The 220 folios of FVB consist entirely of a single type of high-quality Swiss
paper. The watermark is a simple crosier of Basle, with a letter D and the three-ring
insignia of the manufacturers, the Dring family of Basle . . . . It is likely that all
the paper was produced from three companion moulds, indicating that it has
remained together since manufacture. . . . The paper is arranged in 36 perfect
gatherings: 34 are made up of three bifolios each, and two of four bifolios each. . . .
The great regularity of the paper content indicates that no leaves are missing and

58

Ruby Reid Thompson, Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist: A

Legend and an Alternative View, Music & Letters 82 (2001): 6, http://jstor.org/journals
(accessed February 17, 2008).
59

Ibid., 9.
32

that no paper was spoilt during copying. The manuscript appears to have been
planned professionally as a unified project.60
Thompson argues that the so-called Tregian manuscripts were not copied by
Francis Tregian Jr., but rather were compiled by more than one scribe in a scriptorium
and that there was a conscious effort among the different scribes to preserve a uniform
style of writing. Because she was able to find some surviving court documents that use
the same expensive Dring paper of the same origin as the FVB, Thompson puts forward
the theory that these manuscripts may have been prepared by a group of professional
scribes working for aristocratic patrons who may have been connected with the court.61
In an article of 2002, David J. Smith refutes Thompsons views, especially with
regard to the Dring paper. He writes:
In order to make a connection between the manuscripts and the court,
there needs to be proof that the paper was obtained exclusively for use at court.
Thompson does not show this was the case: a large batch of paper might have
been imported and sold to anyone who could have afforded it. Although it could
be argued that Tregian was not in a position where he could afford such luxurious
paper, by all accounts it was an extravagant lifestyle coupled with a dogged
persistence in his religious beliefs that had landed him in trouble in the first place.
Tregian was precisely the sort of man who would purchase expensive paper for
copying music regardless of the cost.62
I also find Thompsons theory about the employment of professional scribes in
copying the Tregian manuscripts hard to believe. I have studied facsimile manuscript
pages from both the FVB and the Egerton 3665 manuscript, and I have compared the
writing styles from those two collections with that of My Ladye Nevelles Booke. To me,
the scribal work of the FVB and Egerton 3665 seems be in the same hand. For example,

60

Ibid., 16-18.

61

Ibid., 2, 5.

62

David J. Smith, A Legend? Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist,

The Musical Times 143 (2002): 12.
33

certain notational elements such as clefs and custodes (Exs. 1 and 2) appear to be
identical in the FVB and Egerton 3665 manuscripts. Neither of these manuscripts
appears to be as professional in appearance as the stunningly beautiful handwriting found
in My Ladye Nevelles Booke, which was copied by John Baldwin, a professional scribe at
Windsor Castle and a member of the Chapel Royal.

Ex. 1. Egerton MS 3665, La Pecha by Peter Philips.

34

Ex. 2. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Walsingham by John Bull.

35

Ex. 3. My Ladye Nevelles Virginal Book, Will yow walke the woodes soe wylde by
William Byrd.

36

Additionally, I believe there is compelling visual evidence to support the idea that
the handwriting in the FVB, Egerton 3665, and Francis Tregian Jr.s signature in a legal
document all belong to the same person. Example 4 below is a facsimile of a deed signed
(and presumably written) by Francis Tregian Jr. If one compares the handwriting of this
legal document with samples of writing from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and Egerton
3665, they all appear to be in the same hand. For example, the large case letters L,
N, G, M, B, U, and A are all very similar, as are other letters with
idiosyncratic curves and long stems, T, P, h, and d (see exs. 5A, 5B and 5C).
Ex. 4. Facsimile of a legal document signed by Francis Tregian Jr.

Ex. 5A - Legal Document

Ex. 5B - FVB

37

Ex. 5C - Egerton 3665

T and h

d
I believe that these handwriting samples from three different documents show that
the same person was the scribe for both. Since the legal document was signed by Francis
Tregian Jr. himself, it therefore seems logical to assume that he was also the
transcriber/copyist for the FVB.
38

CHAPTER 2
A NEW EXAMINATION OF THE FVB MANUSCRIPT

It was an invaluable experience to be able to immerse myself in looking at each

page of the microfilm of the manuscript. Over the course of a few weeks, I became very
familiar with Tregians handwriting. I noticed that the size of the handwriting on the first
page is slightly larger and wider than in the rest of the manuscript. By the middle of the
second page, the handwriting settles down to a smaller size that remains consistent
throughout the rest of the anthology. I also observed that the notes, stems and words on
MSS pages 1-176 of the manuscript are wider in appearance than those on MSS. pages
181-419; it looked as if the copyist was using a finer-point writing implement for those
pages.
Tregian consecutively numbered each page of his keyboard anthology beginning
with 1 and ending with 419. The page numbers are located in the upper left and right
edges. The manuscript naturally falls into the following subsections:

First section of manuscript, pages 1-176 (Pieces 1 through 95)

Four blank unruled pages, pages 177-180

Second section of manuscript, pages 181-419 (Pieces 96 through 297)

Three unnumbered ruled blank pages are found at the end

An index of pieces contained in the FVB was created by Richard Bartleman and
copied by a Mr. Harry Smith in 1816 after the death of Lord Fitzwilliam, who had
bequeathed the manuscript to Cambridge University. It was inserted into the
manuscript after the three unnumbered ruled blank pages.
In addition to listing the titles of the pieces in the first section of the manuscript,

Tregian also consecutively numbered each piece, 1 through 95. When studying the
manuscript, I also noticed a secondary numbering system in which Tregian assigned
39

another number to select pieces, thus linking a particular piece to a specific composer as
part of a collection of works by that person. For example, 82. Amarilli di Julio
Romano. 13 by Peter Philips indicates that this is the eighty-second piece in the
manuscript, but the thirteenth piece in a group of works by that composer. This was an
interesting feature that the original transcribers, Maitland and Squire, may have missed,
misinterpreted, or ignored. For example, a ii in the manuscript (meaning the second
piece in a composer set, was transcribed as a nonsensical 11 in the original 1899
Breitkopf und Hrtel edition, later reprinted by Dover. In fact, of all of the literature
written about the FVB that I have read, I only found mention of this interesting
organizational system in one other source. In 2002, David J. Smith wrote:
The scribe [of the FVB] numbers pieces by each individual composer as
they occur throughout the manuscript, but in the first layer (nos. 1-95) there is
also a consecutive numeration. Judging from the position of the number for
Byrds Pazzamezzo Pavan (no. 56, p. 102), the consecutive numeration was added
later, post-dating entry of the titles and pagination.63
Following piece No. 95, there are four blank pages in the manuscript. Tregian
abandoned the chronological numbering of pieces in the second section of his anthology;
however, he did continue with the secondary numbering system of linking individual
pieces to composer sets. Smith postulates:
The numeration of the contents ceases in the remainder of the manuscript:
the scribe finished the first layer as a unit, then inserted the numbers; presumably
he would have continued the numeration had the manuscript been completed.
The presence of empty, but ruled, folios at the end of the volume suggests that
FVB was a work in progress.64
In 1988, a facsimile of the Egerton 3665 manuscript was published with a preface
written by Frank DAccone. In his preface, DAccone created a chart which shows how

63

Smith, A Legend? Francis Tregian the Youngest as Music Copyist, 11.

64

Ibid.
40

Tregian organized his huge madrigal and instrumental collection of over 1,100
compositions, using several different numbering systems. Using DAccones Egerton
3665 diagram as a model, I have constructed a chart of the FBV that shows how Tregian
used two different numbering systems to organize his keyboard anthology. The chart
lists the 297 pieces contained in the FVB in order of their appearance in the manuscript.
Spellings of proper names have been modernized. Column 1 shows the chronological
numbers (Chr. #) of the 297 pieces in the FVB. Column 2 (Tr.1) lists Tregians
arrangement of numbering pieces 1 through 95; after Piece No. 95 this column ends.
Column 3 (Tr.2) shows Tregians secondary numbering system, which linked pieces
together into composer sets.

Contents of Tregians Keyboard Anthology

Outlining his two types of numbering systems
Chr. #

Tr.1

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.

Tr.2

Title_________________________________________
Walsingham by John Bull
Fantasia by John Munday
Fantasia by John Munday (Faire Wether)
Pavana by Ferdinando Richardson
Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson
Galiarda by Ferdinando Richardson
Variation by Ferdinando Richardson
Fantasia by William Byrd
Goe from my window by Thomas Morley
Jhon come kisse me now by William Byrd
Galliarda to my L. Lumleys Paven pag. 76 by John Bull
Nancie by Thomas Morley
Pavana by John Bull
Alman by anonymous
Robin by John Munday
Pavana by M.S. (seems to say M.S. in the manuscript)
Galiarda by John Bull
Barafostus Dreame by anonymous
Muscadin by anonymous
Alman by anonymous
Galiarda by anonymous
Praeludium by anonymous
41

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.

1.

2.
3.
4.

Praludium El. Kidermister by anonymous

Praeludium by anonymous
Praeludium by anonymous
The Irishe Ho-Hoane by anonymous
Pavane by Fernando Richardson
Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson
Galiarda by Ferdinando Richardson
Variatio by Ferdinando Richardson
The Quadran Pavan by John Bull
Variation of the Quadran Pavan by John Bull
Galiard to the Quadran Pavan by John Bull
Pavana by John Bull
Galiard to the Pavan by John Bull
St. Thomas Wake by John Bull
In Nomine by John Bull
(no title listed) by John Bull
Pavana. 1. by Robert Johnson (set by Giles Farnaby)
The Woods so wilde by anonymous
Pavana of my L[ord] Lumley by John Bull.
Goe from my Window by John Munday
Prludium by John Bull
Gloria tibi Trinitas by John Bull
Salvator Mundi by John Bull
Galliarda by John Bull
Variatio by Doctor Bull
Galiarda to the Paven pag. 63 by John Bull
Preludium by Thomas Oldfield
In Nomine by William Blithman
Ut re mi fa so la by Doctor Bull
Fantasia by William Byrd
The K[ingss] Hunt by Giles Farnaby
Spagnioletta by Giles Farnaby
For 2 Virg[inals] by Giles Farnaby
Passamezzo Pavana by William Byrd
Galiardas Passamezzo by William Byrd
The Carmans Whistle by William Byrd
The Hunts Up by William Byrd
Treg[ians] Ground by William Byrd
Monsieurs Alman by William Byrd
Variatio by William Byrd
Alman by William Byrd
Sellingers Round by William Byrd
Fortune by William Byrd
O Mistris myne by William Byrd
The Woods so Wild by William Byrd
Walsingham by William Byrd
The Bells by William Byrd

42

70.

70.

1.

Tirsi Di Luca Marenzio 1a Parte. Intavalota di Pietro

Philippi. 1. by Peter Philips
71.
71.
2.
Freno. Seconda Parte. 2. by Peter Philips
72.
72.
3.
Cosi moriro. 3a Parte. 3. by Peter Philips
73.
73.
4.
Fece da voi a 6. 4. P. Philips by Peter Philips
74.
74.
5.
Pavana Pagget. 5. by Peter Philips
75.
75.
6.
Galiarda. 6. by Peter Philips
76.
76.
7.
Passamezzo Pavana. 7. by Peter Philips
77.
77.
8.
Galiarda Passamezzo. 8 by Peter Philips
78.
78.
9.
Chi fara fede al Cielo, di Alessandro Striggio. 9. by Peter
Philips
79.
79.
10.
Bon Jour mon Cueur di Orlando. 10. by Peter Philips
80.
80.
11.
Pavana Dolorosa Treg[ian] 11. by Peter Philips
81.
81.
12.
Galiarda Dolorosa. 12. by Peter Philips
82.
82.
13.
Amarilli di Julio Romano. 13 by Peter Philips
83.
83.
14.
Margott Laborez. 14. by Peter Philips
84.
84.
15.
Fantasia. 15. by Peter Philips
85.
85.
16.
Pavana. 16. by Peter Philips
86.
86.
17.
Le Rossignuol. 17. by Peter Philips
87.
87.
18.
Galliardo. 18. by Peter Philips
88.
88.
19.
Fantasia. 19. by Peter Philips
89.
89.
1.
Fantasia. 1. by Nicholas Strogers
90.
90.
Alman by Martin Peerson
91.
91.
Pavana Bray by William Byrd
92.
92.
Galiarda by William Byrd
93.
93.
Pavana Ph[ilippa] Tr[egian] by William Byrd
94.
94.
Galiarda by William Byrd
95.
95.
Toccata by Giovanni Pichi
[four blank pages in the manuscript]
96.
1.
Praeludium Toccata. 1. by J.P. Sweelinck
97.
1.
Pavana. 1. by Thomas Warrock
98.
2.
Galiarda. 2. by Thomas Warrock
99.
1.
Praeludium. 1. by Galeazzo
100.
Praludium to ye Fancie ppg. 94 by William Byrd
101.
Ut re mi fa sol la by William Byrd
102.
Ut mi re by William Byrd
103.
Fantasia by William Byrd
104.
All in a Garden green by William Byrd
105.
Heaven and Earth by Fre [Francis Tregian] It is
interesting to note that Tregian only used abbreviations
for three composers in his manuscript: William Byrd,
Peter Philips, and himself.
106.
Praeludium by John Bull
107.
Veni by anonymous
108.
Fantasia by John Bull
109.
1.
Felix Namque 1er. 1. by Thomas Tallis
110.
2.
Felix Namque 2nd. 2. by Thomas Tallis
111.
Short untitled counterpoint exercise, presumably
written by Tregian
43

112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
130.
131.
132.
133.
134.
135.
136.
137.
138.
139.
140.
141.
142.
143.
144.
145.
146.
147.
148.
149.
150.
151.
152.
153.
154.
155.
156.
157.
158.
159.

5.
6.
7.

2.

1.

8.
9.
10.
2.
3.
4.

1.
11.
12.
3.

13.
1.

Daphne. 5. by Giles Farnaby

Pawles Wharfe. 6. by Giles Farnaby
Quodlings Delight. 7. by Giles Farnaby
Praeludium by John Bull
Praeludium Dor. by John Bull
Praeludium by anonymous
Ut re mi fa sol la by J. P. Sweelinck
In Nomine by John Bull
Praeludium by anonymous
Pavana Lachrymae by John Dowland, set forth by
William Byrd
Galiarda by James Harding, set forth by William Byrd
Pavana. 1. by Thomas Tomkins
Fantasia by Thomas Morley
Christe Redemptor by John Bull
The Maydens Song by William Byrd
Put up thy Dagger Jemy. 8. by Giles Farnaby
Bony sweet Robin. 9. by Giles Farnaby
Fantasia. 10. by Giles Farnaby
A Grounde. 2. by Thomas Tomkins.
Barafostus Dreame. 3. by Thomas Tomkins
The Hunting Galliard. No. 4 by Thomas Tomkins
Quadran Paven by William Byrd
Galiard to the Quadran Paven by William Byrd
The Kings Hunt by John Bull
Pavana by John Bull
Galiarda by John Bull
D[octor] Bulls Juell by John Bull
The Spanish Paven by John Bull
In Nomine. 1. by Persons
Wooddy-Cock. 11. by Giles Farnaby
The Duke of Brunswicks Alman by John Bull
Rosasolis. 12. by Giles Farnaby
Psalme. 3. by J.P. Sweelinck
Alman by Robert Johnson
Alman by Robert Johnson
Alman by Robert Johnson. Set by Giles Farnaby
The New Sa-hoo. 13. by Giles Farnaby
Nobodyes Gigge. 1. by Richard Farnaby
Malts come downe by William Byrd
Praeludium by anonymous
Alman by Thomas Morley
Pavana by Thomas Morley
Galiarda by Thomas Morley
La Volta by William Byrd
Alman by William Byrd
Wolseys Wilde by William Byrd
Callino casturame by William Byrd
La Volta L[ord] Morley by William Byrd
44

160.
161.
162.
163.
164.
165.
166.
167.
168.
169.
170.
171.
172.
173.
174.
175.
176.
177.
178.
179.
180.
181.
182.
183.
184.
185.
186.
187.
188.
189.
190.
191.

Rowland by William Byrd

Why aske yow by anonymous
The Ghost by William Byrd
Alman by William Byrd
Galliard by William Byrd
Pavana by William Byrd
Galiarda by William Byrd
Pavana by William Byrd
Galiarda by William Byrd
Pavana by Thomas Morley
Galliarda by Thomas Morley
The Queenes Alman by William Byrd
A Medley by William Byrd
Pavana by William Byrd
Galliarda by William Byrd
Miserere. 3 Parts. by William Byrd
Miserere. 4 parts. by William Byrd
Pakingtons Pownde by anonymous
The Irishe Dumpe by anonymous
Watkins Ale by anonymous
A Gigg by William Byrd
Pipers Paven by Martin Peerson
Pipers Galliard by John Bull
Variatio Ejusdem by John Bull
Praeludium. D. by John Bull
Galiarda by John Bull
Galiarda by John Bull
Allemda by Marchant
Can shee by anonymous
A Gigge. Doctor Bulls my selfe by John Bull
A Gigge by John Bull
Sr. Jhon Grayes Galiard by W. B. (W B presumably
stands for William Byrd, although it also could mean
William Blithman)
192.
Praludium by John
193.
A Toy by anonymous
[Because of their location at this point in the manuscript, it is possible that Nos. 194-199
represent the missing Nos. 14-19 in the Giles Farnaby set, although No. 197 is by his son,
Richard Farnaby. They are not numbered as such by Tregian, so this is strictly
conjectural on my part.]
194
(14?)
Giles Farnabys Dreame by Giles Farnaby
195
(15?)
His Rest Galiard by Giles Farnaby
196
(16?)
His Humour by Giles Farnaby
197
(17?)
Fayne would I Wedd by Richard Farnaby
198.
(18?)
A Maske by Giles Farnaby
199.
(19?)
A Maske by Giles Farnaby
200.
An Almain by anonymous
201.
Corranto by anonymous
202.
Alman by anonymous
45

203.
204.
205.
206.
207.
208.
209.

210.
211.
212.
213.
214.

215.
216.
217.
218.
219.
220.
221.
222.
223.
224.
225.
226.
227.
228.
229.
230.
231.
232.
233.
234.
235.
236.
237.
238.
239.
240.
241.
242.
243.
244.

(1?)
(2?)

4.
3.
4.

20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.

Corrto by anonymous
Corrto by anonymous
Corrto by anonymous.
Daunce by anonymous
Worster Braules by Thomas Tomkins
Fantasia by Giles Farnaby
A Maske by Giles Farnaby. Curiously enough, this
piece (along with Nos. 245, 267, 269, 270, 273, 280,
281, 283, 284, 285, 289, 290, 291, 293 and 296) was
not included in the Giles Farnaby set by Tregian.
Praeludium by John Bull
(untitled work) by anonymous
Martin sayd to his man by anonymous
Almand by William Tisdall
Pavana Chromatica - Mrs. Katherin Tregians Paven by
William Tisdall. [It is possible that Nos. 213 and 214
are the missing nos. 1 and 2 in the William Tisdall set,
although they are not numbered as such by Tregian.]
Ut re mi, fa, sol, la by John Bull
Gipseis Round by William Byrd
Fantasia by J.P. Sweelinck
Corranto set by William Byrd
Pavana Clement Cott by William Tisdall
Pavana by William Tisdall
Corranto by anonymous
Alman by Hooper
Corrto by anonymous
Corranto by anonymous
Corrto by anonymous
Corrto by anonymous
Alman by anonymous
Corranto by Hooper
Fantasia by Giles Farnaby
Loth to depart by Giles Farnaby
Fantasia by Giles Farnaby
Fantasia 2nd [hard to decipher the title] by Giles
Farnaby
(Untitled) by Giles Farnaby
(Untitled) by Giles Farnaby
Walter Erles Paven by Giles Farnaby
(Untitled) by Giles Farnaby
Fantasia by Giles Farnaby
Fantasia by Giles Farnaby
The L. Zouches Maske by Giles Farnaby
A Grode by Giles Farnaby
Coranto by William Byrd
Up T[ails] all by Giles Farnaby
Jhonsons Medley by Edward Johnson
Nowels Galiard by anonymous
46

245.
246.
247.
248.
249.
250.
251.
252.
253.
254.
255.
256.
257.
258.
259.
260.
261.
262.
263.
264.
265.
266.
267.
268.
269.
270.
271.
272.
273.
274.
275.
276.
277.
278.
279.
280.
281.
282.
283.
284.
285.
286.
287.
288.
289.
290.
291.

33.

1.
2.

1.

Tower Hill by Giles Farnaby

Praeludium by Giles Farnaby
The Kings Morisco by anonymous
A Duo by Richard Farnaby
Alman by anonymous
A Galliard Ground. 1. by William Inglot
The Leaves bee greene. 2. by William Inglot
Pavana by William Byrd
Galiarda by William Byrd
Pavana by William Byrd
Galiarda by William Byrd
Pavana by William Byrd
Pavana Fant[asia] by William
Galliarda by William Byrd
The Earle of Oxfords Marche by William Byrd
Galiarda. 1. by Jehan Oystermayre
Fantasia by William Byrd
The Duchesse of Brunswicks Toye by John Bull
A Toye by anonymous
Corrto by anonymous
Corrante Lady Riche by anonymous
Corranto by anonymous
A Gigge by Giles Farnaby
A Toye by anonymous
Galiarda by Giles Farnaby
A Toye by Giles Farnaby.
The Primerose by Martin Peerson
The Fall of the Leafe by Martin Peerson
Farnabys Conceit by Giles Farnaby
Allemanda by anonymous
Pavana. Canon 2 pts...(illegible) by William Byrd
Pescodd Time by William Byrd
Pavana Delight by Edward Johnson, set by William
Byrd
Galiarda by Edward Johnson, set by William Byrd
Miserere 3 ptr by John Bull
Tell mee Daphne by Giles Farnaby
Mal Sims by Giles Farnaby
Mundays Joy by John Munday
Rosseter Galiard set by Giles Farnaby
The Flatt Paven by Giles Farnaby
Pavana by Giles Farnaby
Why aske you by Giles Farnaby
Farmers Paven by Giles
Dalling Alman by anonymous
The old Spagnioletta by Giles Farnaby
Lachrimae Pavan by J.D. [John Dowland], set by Giles
Farnaby
Meridian Alman set by Giles Farnaby
47

292.
Pavana by Orlando Gibbons
293.
Muscadin by Giles Farnaby.
294.
Lady Montegles Paven by William Byrd
295.
5.
Galiarda. 5. by William Tisdall
296.
Fantasia by Giles.
297.
Hanskin by Richard Farnaby
MS p. 419 - blank page
MS p. 420 - unnumbered blank page 1
MS p. 421 - unnumbered blank page 2
MS p. 422 - unnumbered blank page 3
Index page 1 (which was added in 1816 at the death of Lord Fitzwilliam, reads: The
Nine Movements marked thus + are in Lady Nevils Music Book.)
Index page 2
Index page 3
Index page 4
Index page 5
Index page 6
Index page 7
Index page 8
Index page 9
unnumbered blank page 1
unnumbered blank page 2
unnumbered blank page 3
final page: more handwritten notes. Very bottom of the page reads:
Henry Smith, Richmond, Scripsit65

from a M.S. Index in the Possession

of Mr Bartleman
24 March 1816

Certain patterns emerge when looking at the way that Tregian added pieces to his
keyboard anthology. Several selections by the same composer are sometimes copied
consecutively in small groups (Nos. 130, 131, 132 by Tomkins, for instance), and these
composer-clusters reappear every so often throughout the manuscript. This clustering
may have something to do with the specific sources from which Tregian was copying.
Elizabeth Cole opined: How [the FVB] was made, was by bulk donations to Tregian

65

Scripsit is a Latin word meaning he wrote (it) or she wrote (it).

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc., s.v. Scripsit,
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scripsit (accessed: March 15, 2009).
48

from Peter Philips, from Farnaby, from Byrd and his pupils, and from manuscripts lent by
friends.66
It is interesting to note that the Giles Farnaby set is missing six pieces, nos. 14-19.
It is my theory that Nos. 194-199 [MS 308-310] are the missing six pieces because of
their location in the manuscript, as they fall between manuscript pages 267 (end of #13)
and 331 (beginning of #20), even though one of these pieces is written by Richard
Farnaby, son of Giles Farnaby. Likewise, William Tisdales first and second
compositions in the manuscript were not numbered, but the next three bear the digits 3, 4
and 5. It is also interesting to note that several of the composer sets contain only one
numbered selection; it is likely that Tregian had planned to add more pieces later to these
sets, if and when the music became available to him.
The most interesting thing that I noticed when looking over Tregians composersets was not whose music was chosen to be compiled into sets, but whose music was not,
namely William Byrd and John Bull. This is especially puzzling, since the amount of
music by these two men included in the FVB accounts for almost half of it. This raises
the question: why was Tregian numbering his anthology in this manner? Was he copying
copious amounts of music simply to add to his personal library, or for his own
enjoyment? Or was there another reason as well?
It is a fact that Tregian had accumulated a crippling amount of debt in his effort to
regain his familys property, and this debt was one of the reasons that he was sentenced
to serve prison time in the Fleet. Tregian had a grand-uncle, Henry FitzAlan, who was a
music collector. There were also two other notable music collectors during this time who
were both connected with William Byrd: Sir William Petre and Edward Paston. Byrd

66

Cole, Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 60.

49

dedicated a keyboard work to Petre in 1591, and became even more connected to Petre
when he moved from London to Stondon Massey in 1593.67 Edward Paston was also a
patron of Byrd. A connection between Byrd and Tregian has already been established; it
is possible that Tregian knew Petre and Paston as well. It is possible that Tregian
received a commission from a wealthy collector such as FitzAlan, Petre or Paston to copy
music for a personal library, and in this way he could earn money to pay off some of his
debts. Perhaps this patron already had much of Byrds and Bulls music in his collection
and thus wanted something different, which would explain the sets by the lesser known
composers in the FVB. At any rate, it seems likely that the main reason Tregian was
numbering individual pieces into sets was as an organizational reference tool in case he
should need to go back and find the pieces again.

67

John Harley, ed. British Harpsichord Music. vol. 2, (Hants, England: Scolar
Press, 1994), 43.
50

CHAPTER 3
THE TREGIAN CIRCLE: COMPOSERS, FAMILY,
FRIENDS, AND PATRONS

Composers Represented in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

In this section I will show the connection between Francis Tregian Jr. and the four
most prominent composers represented in the FVB: William Byrd, John Bull, Peter
Philips, and Giles Farnaby. The bulk of music chosen for inclusion in the FVB was
written by these four men, three of whom were fellow recusant Catholics with Tregian.
Philips and Bull both fled from England to the more tolerant climate of the Spanish
Netherlands, while Byrd lived his entire life as a publicly practicing Catholic in England
and was apparently granted immunity from punishment many times by Queen Elizabeth
herself.
William Byrd (1539/431623)
William Byrd is considered one of the most famous composers in the history of
England, and his music appears more prominently in the pages of the FVB than that of
any other composer. He was born in London sometime between 1539 and 1543, during
the last years of Henry VIIIs reign. His two older brothers, Symond and John, were both
choristers at St. Pauls Cathedral. It is assumed that William was a boy chorister in the
Chapel Royal, as he was listed as an organ pupil of Thomas Tallis. Byrd later became
Tallis assistant and remained close to the Tallis family throughout his life. It has already
been mentioned that Francis Tregian Jr.s mother was well-acquainted with Byrds
51

brother, John. There is also the connection with the Tregian and Byrd families with
regard to religion: both were devoutly Catholic. Both Francis Tregian Sr. and Francis Jr.
were punished severely for their recusancy, but Byrd was not, primarily because he was
considered by Queen Elizabeth to be one of the crown jewels in her Chapel Royal, where
he was a member from 1572 to about 1592. Later in his life, Byrd was also known to
have consorted with the Jesuits and even wrote liturgical music for them. 68 This was a
treasonous offence, and yet he was never punished severely by either Elizabeth or her
successor, James I.
Byrd was appointed to his first major position, that of organist and Master of the
Choristers at Lincoln Cathedral, when he was twenty years of age.69 He eventually ran
into trouble with his Protestant superiors, who labeled his organ playing during services
as too Popish. 70 Most of Byrds Anglican liturgical music was written during his
Lincoln years. After leaving Lincoln Cathedral, Byrd returned to London, where he was
sworn in as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1572. He was also listed as a joint
organist of the Chapel, along with his former teacher, Tallis.
Over the next twenty years, it appears that Byrd moved very easily in Elizabethan
aristocratic circles. His wealthy patrons included Thomas Lord Paget, the Earls of
Oxford, Northumberland and Worcester, and the famous collector Edward Paston. In the
1570s, Paston decided to retire from court to live on his Norfolk estate, where he could
practice the old religion undisturbed and also indulge in his passion for accumulating
large quantities of art and music. Many of Byrds works were included in Pastons
68

Hogge, Gods Secret Agents, 336.

69

Harley, British Harpsichord Music, vol. 2, 19.

70

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. Byrd, William (by
Joseph Kerman), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 23, 2008).
52

enormous collection. Queen Elizabeth was also an admirer of and benefactor to Byrd. In
1575 she bestowed her royal favor on both Tallis and Byrd by granting to them a joint
monopoly on music printing in England.71
In 1593, further recusancy laws were enacted by Parliament, and persecutions
against English Catholics reached an all-time high. Soon afterwards, Byrd retired from
the Chapel Royal and moved to rural Stondon Massey in Essex, near the Byrd ancestral
home. Essex was also the home of Sir John Petre, who now became the most important
of Byrds patrons. By this time Petre and Byrd had been acquainted for several decades.
Petre was a very private man and maintained an appearance of being a royal
conformist. In actuality, he was a staunch Catholic who harbored a priest on his estate
(just as Francis Tregian Sr. had done) and celebrated mass in secret throughout the entire
years on his property, undisturbed by the authorities. Byrd wrote his greatest Catholic
liturgical music during these years, including complete settings of the Proper and
Ordinary of the Mass, and music specifically written for use by the English Jesuits.
Dr. John Bull (ca. 1559-1628)
Of all of the composers represented in the FVB, Bulls music is some of the
longest, most difficult, and most virtuosic. One modern commentator has characterized
Bulls music as superficially brilliant.72 Bull was a student of William Blithman during
his formative years. Later he also referred to Byrd as my master, which would indicate
that Byrd had been his teacher or mentor as well. He became a member of the Chapel
Royal in 1586, during which time Byrd and Blithman were also there. Bull was awarded
a Bachelor of Music degree from Oxford in 1586 and a Doctor of Music degree in 1592.
71

Ibid.

72

Harley, British Harpsichord Music, vol. 2, 47.

53

In March of 1597, Bull was appointed to be the first Public Reader in Music at
Gresham College in London.73 When he became ill, it was Thomas Byrd, son of William
Byrd, who replaced him for a time. Bull was a member of the Chapel Royal for over
twenty-five years, serving under both Queen Elizabeth I and James I. In 1613, Byrd and
Bull (along with Orlando Gibbons) issued Parthenia, which was the first published work
for the virginals in England.
Bull also was an organ builder, and, in 1609, he was commissioned by the
Austrian Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, to build an organ. As
fate would have it, the organ was never finished, but in diplomatic state correspondence
which survives, Bulls friendship with Peter Philips is mentioned.74
By temperament Bull seemed to be very passionate and strong-willed. Like
Francis Tregian, William Byrd, and so many others, he was an English Catholic
struggling to live under the confines of the new state religion. In 1607, he was fired from
his post as Gresham Professor of Music for fathering a child out of wedlock. In 1613, he
was again charged with adultery, and, inside the church in the presence of many
parishoners, physically assaulted the clergyman who had accused him. It was in part
because of this incident, and also because of recusancy and debts, that Bull fled to the
Spanish Netherlands in exile in late 1613. Here he was employed as an organist by
Archduke Albert and renewed his friendship with fellow English composer Peter
Philips.75 Bull remained in the Spanish Netherlands for the rest of his life, where he
eventually died in March of 1628
73

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. Bull, John (by Susi
Jeans and O.W. Neighbour), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 23, 2008).
74

Ibid.

75

Ibid.
54

Peter Philips (ca. 1560-1628)

Peter Philips was born around 1560 and served as a choirboy at St. Pauls
Cathedral in London. His mentor at St. Pauls was Sebastian Westcote, and there is
evidence that he also studied with William Byrd.76 Westcote was in charge of the
musical education for the choirboys. He was also a devout Roman Catholic who had
been appointed to his post during the reign of Queen Mary, and his religious views had a
great influence on young Philips.
Shortly after Westcotes death in 1582, Philips fled to the Continent, partly to
avoid persecution for his Catholicism and partly because he wanted to study music in
Italy. He eventually arrived in Rome at the English College, where he was appointed as
organist for three years. In 1585, the aristocratic English expatriate, Lord Thomas Paget,
arrived at the English College, and Philips entered into his service. For the next five
years, Philips accompanied Paget on his travels throughout the Continent until Pagets
death in 1590 in Brussels.
In 1591, Philips settled in Antwerp, where he married Cornelia de Mompere in
the spring of that same year. Their only child, Leonora, was born in May of 1592.
Tragically, Cornelia died two months after the birth of her daughter. Philips bad luck
would continue into 1593, when he made a visit to Amsterdam with the intent of meeting
the great organist, Sweelinck. On the way back home, he became ill and had to stay for
three weeks in Middleburg. While he was recuperating from his illness, another
Englishman who was staying at the same inn became convinced that Philips was a
fugitive from English justice and had been part of a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

76

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, s.v. Philips, Peter (by
John Steele), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed February 23, 2008).
55

This man reported Philips to the Dutch authorities, who immediately took him into
custody, interrogated him, and then put him in jail, while they waited for correspondence
from London on the matter. During the period in which Philips was confined to a jail
cell, he composed the now famous Pavan and Galliard Dolorosa, which Francis
Tregian Jr. titled Pavana and Galiarda Dolorosa Treg. in the FVB. Eventually Philips
was exonerated of all charges and was able to return home.
In 1597, Philips became an organist for Archduke Albert, and he also became
quite well known as a composer of note through the publication of many of his works.
Sadness came to Philips in 1599, when his only child died at the age of seven. A few
years later, he became acquainted with Francis Tregian Jr., who was also working for
Archduke Albert in Brussels by 1603.77 Tregian left for England in 1606. A short time
later Philips made the decision to become a Catholic priest; he was ordained in 1609. It
is possible that Tregian received some of Philips music directly from Philips himself
while they were both in the Archdukes service.
Giles Farnaby (ca. 1563-1640)
Giles Farnabys name is found in the titles of four of his compositions in the FVB.
Numbers 194, 195, and 196 are a set of three short character sketches:

#194 - Giles Farnabys Dream by Giles Farnaby

#195 - His Rest - Galiard by Giles Farnaby

#196 - His Humour by Giles Farnaby

#273 - Farnabys Conceit by Giles Farnaby

Unlike Byrd, Bull, and Philips, Farnaby was not Catholic but a Protestant. One
historian, Anthony Wood, says that Farnaby was of the family of Farnaby of Truro in

77

Smith, A Legend? Francis Tregian the Younger as Music Copyist, 13.

56

Cornwall, and near of kin to Tho[mas] Farnaby, the famous schoolmaster of Kent.78 If
so, then there would likely be a strong connection between Farnaby and Tregian Jr. Even
if they did not know each other personally, it is likely that members of their families were
acquainted.
Farnaby was a joiner, or cabinet-maker, by trade, and as such, was not a member
of the aristocratic class. He also worked alongside a cousin as a maker of virginals.79 In
spite of his social standing and occupation, he was still able to attend Oxford University,
receiving the Bachelor of Music degree in 1592. In his time he was known for his vocal
compositions; his keyboard compositions circulated very little and were not widely
known. It is therefore quite interesting that Tregians keyboard anthology contains the
complete keyboard works of Farnaby, save two pieces, over 50 in all. Giles Farnaby also
had a musical son, Richard Farnaby, who has several compositions of his own included
among the pages of the FVB.

Family, Friends, and Patrons

There are many proper names found among the titles and in the margins of the
297 compositions in Tregians keyboard anthology. Most of these people can be easily
connected within one or two degrees of separation to the Tregian family, thus reinforcing
Elizabeth Coles assertion that these little groups of men and women . . . must surely

78

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Farnaby, Giles (by Richard

Marlow), http://www.oxforddnb.com/ (accessed July 27, 2008)
79

Ibid.
57

have meant something to the composers and to the maker of the book.80 Some of the
names include:

Tregian - family name; may refer to Francis Tregian Sr.

Katherin Tregian - paternal grandmother of Francis Tregian Jr.

S.T. (to Tom) - Sybil Tregian, a younger sister of Francis Tregian Jr. The identity
of Tom is not known, although there is a Thomas Tregian whose name is
found on the legal documents which bear Francis Tregian Jr.s signature.

Ph Tr - Philippa Tregian, another younger sister of Francis Tregian Jr.

Lord Lumley - A distant cousin to the Tregian family, also related to Queen
Elizabeth. His wife, Jane FitzAlan, was more closely related to the Tregian
family (second cousin, once removed).

The Earl of Oxford - Most likely refers to Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford,
who was a notorious bisexual courtier and one of Queen Elizabeths lovers, and
also a patron of both William Byrd and William Shakespeare. His daughter,
Elizabeth, was married to William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who was a first
cousin once removed to Francis Tregian Jr.

Lady Rich - beautiful noblewoman, influential courtier, sister to the Earl of Essex,
third cousin to Francis Tregian Jr.

John Munday - Elizabethan composer and organist.

Sir Jhon Gray - There are several persons with this name in the extended family
tree of the Tregians. He could be a grandfather, granduncle, or first cousin twice
removed of Francis Tregian Jr.

Lady Montegle Elizabeth Tresham, wife of 4th Lord Montegle/11th Baron

Morley William Parker. William Parker was a second cousin to Francis Tregian
Jr.

Lord Morley - father of Baron William Parker, Lord Morley and Montegle; first
cousin once removed to Francis Jr.

Walter Erle - Queen Elizabeths virginal player.

Pagget - Recusant aristocrat Lord Thomas Pagget (also spelled Paget, one-time
patron and employer of Peter Philips until his death.

80

Cole, Seven Problems of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 53.

58

In addition to being relatives of the Tregian family, many of the persons named
above are also related to Queen Elizabeth. In fact, Francis Tregian Jr. himself is doubly
related to Queen Elizabeth: through both his maternal and paternal lines. The following
two genealogical charts outline the probable relationships of most of these people to
Queen Elizabeth, and also to Francis Tregian Jr. Names which appear in bold print on
the charts are those that are found in the pages of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. The
third chart shows the twelve children of Francis Tregian Sr. and Mary Stourton.81

81

The genealogical charts were researched and created by C. Jean Varney.

59

60

61

62

CHAPTER 4
PERFORMANCE PRACTICE ISSUES

The Edition of the FVB Published by Dover Publications

At present, the only available complete edition of the FVB is the Dover
Publications reprint of the original Breitkopf und Hrtel publication (1899) edited by
Maitland and Squire. There are numerous problems associated with this publication, as it
is full of textual and transcription errors that have not been corrected in the 110 years
since it was first issued. (This assertion can be easily proven, as a microfilm of the
manuscript of the FVB has been in circulation since the 1980s.) Dover first printed this
edition in 1963. In 1979 it issued a revised edition that purported to correct many of the
mistakes. Blanche Winogron, the editor of the 1979 edition, commented:
Although the Maitland-Squire text has long been accepted as a faithful
translation into modern notation . . . a growing number of active performers and
scholars have felt that the correction of obvious errors, oversights and misprints
(perhaps due to insufficient proofreading) would make it ever more useful . . . [as]
there were . . . a considerable number of misreadings and misinterpretations of the
manuscript previously unsuspected.82
Despite Winogrons claim, further research has proven that no substantial
corrections or changes were made. Silly proofreading errors, such as having no number
171 (skipping from No. 170 to No. 172 in the consecutive numbering) and then having
two no. 182s to make up for the difference, could have been easily corrected before
issuing the 1979 edition, but they were not. Misspellings of titles and composers names
abound, as do wrong numbers. For example, after looking at the microfilm of the

82

Maitland and Squire, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 1: iii.

63

manuscript, I realized that in one instance either Maitland and Squire or their publisher
had misinterpreted Tregians Roman numeral ii as the Arabic number 11.
In 1986 W. D. Viljoen wrote a 368-page dissertation entitled The Ornamentation
in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book with an Introductory Study of Contemporary Practice
in which he shows that Dovers 1979 revised edition is riddled with errors when
compared with the manuscript of the FVB. As part of his research, Viljoen compared
both the 1963 and the 1979 editions with the original manuscript and then compiled a
complete list of errors and textual deviations, particularly those dealing with signs for
ornaments which he says form the greatest part. He lists three categories of errors:

Ornaments which appear in the Tregian manuscript, but are omitted in the printed
editions of the FVB

Ornaments which have been added in the editions of the FVB but which do not
appear in the Tregian manuscript

Ornaments placed on wrong notes

Viljoen then proceeds through every piece in Volumes I and II of Dovers

editions, compiling and listing the transcriptional errors found in every composition.83
As a performer with a scholarly interest, I personally found Viljoens research and
commentaries on ornamentation the most helpful of all the sources available to me.

Ornamentation
There are two types of ornaments that are found in the manuscript of the FVB: a
note with a single slash through the note stem, and a note with a double slash through the
note stem. Double-slashed ornaments are by far the more prominent. In other
83

W. D. Viljoen, The Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book with an

Introductory Study of Contemporary Practice, (PhD diss., University of Pretoria, 1986),
116-128.
64

Elizabethan manuscripts, triple-slashed note stems are also found, but I did not encounter
any of this type in the FVB manuscript.
These two types of ornament signs are scattered throughout the FVB. Viljoen
indicates that their frequency and indication by symbol are unique in sixteenth-century
keyboard music, when compared with Continental practice.84 As far as I am aware,
there are no extant records written by contemporary English performers, composers, or
theorists that explain exactly how the keyboard ornaments should be executed. There
are, however, several English lute treatises that survive, and Viljoen shows that the single
and double

slash ornaments look much like the single- and double-slash signs used

by English lutenists of this period:

and

As I compared different recorded performances of the same piece played by

prominent harpsichordists such as Davitt Moroney and Joseph Payne, I noted many
interpretative differences in the exact placement and execution of ornaments. Although
there is agreement among scholars and performers that these ornaments represent some
type of oscillation, there is no real consensus on exactly how these ornaments should be
realized in terms of such factors as beginning on the upper or main note or number of
oscillations. From a practical standpoint, I believe that two additional factors must also
be taken into consideration when playing these ornaments: the overall speed of the music,
and the ease or difficulty in executing an ornament depending on which fingers one is
required to use in a particular passage. After playing quite a few pieces from this
repertoire, I have learned that many times I am required to use a simple mordent or threenote trill beginning on the main note simply because the fast speed of the work demands
such a realization.
84

Ibid., 259.
65

One early twentieth-century commentator, Charles van den Borren, held the view
that the ornaments were added at the composers fancy and that the exact placement of
the ornaments was not important. In his book entitled The Sources of Keyboard Music in
England (1905), van den Borren wrote:
We have, in fact, a conviction that the graces are purely superficial
ornaments only, the presence of which has no determining influence on the
stylistic physiognomy of virginal compositions . . . . It suffices to read just as
they are - that is to say, deprived of their ornaments . . . these compositions are
wholly sufficient in themselves, and that the mordents and shakes add nothing to
their beauty.85
Along these same lines, Margaret Glyn wrote in 1934 that the ornaments of this
music, scattered throughout the virginal books, have no expressive character, and are not
essential to the text.86
I definitely do not subscribe to this view, and believe that the very opposite is
true: the ornaments are an integral part of the musical fabric, and are in fact the very
elements which give English virginal music its distinctive sound.

Tempo
One of the most crucial issues of performance practice is determining the right
tempo for a piece, one which is stylistically appropriate, and which enhances the
character and captures the spirit of the music. Many of the compositions in the FVB are
dances, the most common being the pavan-alman pairs. In cases such as this, the actual
85

Charles van den Borren, The Sources of Keyboard Music in England, London:
Novello (1914), quoted in Viljoen, Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book,
259-260.
86

Glyn, Margaret H. The National School of Virginal Music in Elizabethan

Times. Proceedings of the Musical Association 43rd Sess. (1916-1917): 29-49,
http://jstor.org/journals (accessed December 30, 2007), quoted in Viljoen, The
Ornamentation in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 259.
66

dance steps would determine the appropriate tempo. Generally speaking, the most
common mistake that performers make today is to take the tempi of this music too fast.

Fingering
In My Ladye Nevelles Virginal Book, I noticed that William Byrd had indicated a
system of fingering in which the left hand fingers are notated differently than is common
today. The fingering system is thus:
Left Hand:

1-2-3-4-5 (modern notation = 5-4-3-2-1)

Right Hand:

1-2-3-4-5 (same as modern notation)

A few pieces in the FVB contain fingerings. An anonymous work titled ElKidermister has an extended passage where Francis Tregian Jr. has indicated the
fingerings above the top staff for the right hand. Here is how Maitland and Squire
transcribed this section of the piece, as it is printed in the Dover 1972 edition:

Ex. 6. El Kidermister by anonymous, from the FVB.

67

Notice the strange consecutive use of the second finger in a quick passage. Using
this fingering makes no sense and would render this passage nearly impossible to play
quickly. Because of this realization of the fingering in the original Breitkopf und Hrtel
edition which was later reprinted by Dover, one writer in 1905 commented on the strange
fingering system of the English virginalists, and tried to explain why such fingerings
would be used in this passage. As I looked at Tregians manuscript and became familiar
with his handwriting, I discovered that Maitland and Squire had mistakenly transcribed
Tregians 1s as 2s. The passage as corrected reads:

Ex. 7. MSS p. 40 - Praeludium El Kidermister by anonymous, bars 17-19.

The underlined 1s in this score were transcribed as 2s in the Breitkopf und Hrtel
(1899) and Dover (1972) editions. Maitland and Squire also transcribed the word
Kiderminster as the composer instead of Kidermister as part of the title.

68

Creating a New Performing Edition of Four Pieces from the Fitzwilliam

Virginal Book
One of the main obstacles a modern performer faces is finding published editions
of the repertoire contained in the FVB that are both transcribed accurately and edited
clearly and intelligently. As I continued in my research for this paper, it became obvious
that I would need to make a more accurate performing edition of some of the pieces that I
would be performing from the FVB. Despite numerous typographical errors in the
original Maitland and Squire publication, that edition has proven to be a valuable
resource over the years, primarily because it was the only edition available for much of
the twentieth century. Of the 297 keyboard pieces found in the FVB, compositions by
William Byrd, John Bull, Peter Philips, and the father-and-son pair Giles and Richard
Farnaby are now available in several different editions, including the prestigious
scholarly edition Musica Britannica. However, many of the smaller pieces by lesser
known or anonymous composers have only been transcribed once, by Maitland and
Squire in the late 1890s, and have not yet been re-edited by Musica Britannica. This
afforded me a perfect opportunity for an editing project: pick four shorter compositions
by unfamiliar or anonymous composers from the FVB that had not been re-edited since
the 1890s, and create a cleaner, more accurate performing edition of these works by
transcribing and editing them directly from the primary source itself, the manuscript of
the FVB. The four pieces that I chose are:

No. 19, MSS page 37 - Muscadin / anonymous

No. 23, MSS page 40 - Praludium El-Kidermister / anonymous

No. 25, MSS pages 41-42 - Praeludium / anonymous

(no number listed) MSS pages196-197 - Heaven and Earth / Fre (Francis Tregian Jr.)

69

In setting up the parameters for this project, I read the editorial policies used by
the first transcribers, Maitland and Squire, and also those of the editors of Musica
Britannica. Other sources were helpful as well, such as a D.M.A. dissertation dealing
with the transcription of the Nani Bunko keyboard manuscript.
I used the following guidelines in transcribing and editing:

The microfilm copy of the manuscript of the FVB was used as the sole primary
source, as the pieces I transcribed and edited are not found anywhere else.
Maitland and Squires (1899) published edition was also used as a secondary
source as a basis of comparison with the manuscript, or in situations where the
manuscript is not very legible.

Time signatures and note values have been transcribed exactly as they appear in
the manuscript, with the exception of Tregians preferred usage of tying two half
notes together, which I have transcribed using modern notation into a single
whole note instead.

All ornaments and bar lines have been transcribed exactly as in the manuscript.

C clefs have been rendered as G or F clefs.

Accidentals and fingerings are notated just as they appear in the manuscript,
either to the left, above, or under a note.

Editorial suggestions such as musica ficta, realization of ornaments, fingerings,

and articulation appear above the affected note and are given in brackets.
Accidentals were indicated in retroactive circumstances to preserve the mode, to
avoid augmented seconds, and to sharp the leading tone at cadential points.

Directions of stems on groups of notes have been changed to conform to modern

usage, unless the original barring implies a certain phrasing.

The beaming of note groups has also been changed from the original notation to
conform to the modern notation of grouping the notes within a beat.

The six-line staves used by Francis Tregian Jr. have been replaced by modern
five-line staves.

70

Ex. 8. No. 19, MSS 37 - Muscadin by anonymous, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book

Tregian has inserted some fingerings under a few of the notes in the second bar.

Ex. 9. No. 19, MSS 37 - Measure 2 of Muscadin

I believe that the second 3 may provide a clue to the realization of this ornament, i.e.,
begin on the upper auxiliary note in this particular instance.

71

Ex. 10. Transcription of Muscadin (No. 19, MSS 37) from the Fitzwilliam Virginal
Book by Pamela Palmer Jones.

72

Ex. 11. No. 23, MSS 40 - Praludium El-Kidermister by anonymous, from the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

This piece features an extended passage of written-out fingerings which were

transcribed incorrectly by Maitland and Squire (see Example 7) and now appear in their
original form in my transcription.

73

Ex.12. Transcription of Praludium El-Kidermister(No. 23, MSS 40), from the

Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, by Pamela Palmer Jones.

74

Ex.13. No. 25, MSS 41-42 - Praeludium by anonymous, from the Fitzwilliam Virginal
Book.

Maitland and Squire found some discrepancies in the manuscript between the custodes at
the end of a line at the bottom of MSS 41 (which indicated which pitches should follow
on the next stave) with the actual notated pitches on the following stave at the top of MSS
75

42. They postulated that the custodes at the bottom of page 41 were correct, and that the
pitches at the top of page 42 were incorrect. Maitland and Squire then decided to
compose a hypothetical measure to match the pitches of the custodes, and then inserted
this hypothetical measure as the new bar 7 of their transcription.

Ex.14A. MSS 41 bottom of page

Ex. 14B. MSS 42 top of page

Manuscript bar 6

Maitland & Squire bar 6

Manuscript bar 7

M&S bar 7

M&S bar 8

Maitland and Squire also failed to follow the manuscript in bar 6, where the
manuscript specifies A and F on beat 2 in the left hand. They changed the notes to C and
A with no explanation. There is also a discrepancy in bar 17, where Tregian apparently
inserted a double-slash ornament and then changed his mind, placing a vertical line at
each end of the double-slash marking:

76

Ex. 15. MSS 42, Praeludium Bar 17

Maitland and Squire reproduced this sign in their edition without any explanation:

Ex. 16.

According to Viljoen, this sign

is used . . . to cancel the double-stroke ornament.87

Pertaining to the custodes, it seems equally valid to presume that they were
incorrect and Tregian wrote in the notes of the following bar correctly. Based on that
assumption, I have chosen to leave out Maitland and Squires hypothetical measure,
and transcribe it exactly as Tregian had written it. In addition, I have transcribed the
notes in bar 6 as Tregian wrote them, and have no ornament on the note in bar 17.

87

Viljoen, Ornamentation of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 130.

77

Ex. 17. Transcription of Praludium El-Kidermister (No. 23, MSS 40), from the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, by Pamela Palmer Jones.

78

Ex. 18. MSS 196-197, Heaven and Earth by Fre (Francis Tregian Jr.), from the
Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

79

If the abbreviation Fre does indeed stand for Francis Tregian Jr., this would
represent the only completed composition by him in the entire anthology. In comparison
to major works by Byrd, Philips, and Bull, Tregians piece sounds more like a students
composition. It has some interesting ideas, such as use of sequences and melodic
contours, but the ideas are undeveloped and incomplete, and the chord progressions are
unsophisticated. It has the sound of a work in progress.
It is possible that the change of stem directions found in the running 16th-note
passages was Tregian's way of indicating phrasing in this piece. As a performer, I chose
to inflect the piece using the phrasing shown by the stem directions, and I believe it
added some interest to what was otherwise a rather robotic-sounding piece.

80

Ex.19. Transcription of Heaven and Earth (MSS 196-197) by Fre [Francis Tregian Jr.],
from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, by Pamela Palmer Jones.

81

82

83

CONCLUSION
So little is known about Francis Tregian Jr., the man. With no surviving diaries
and few other written records in Tregians own hand, all we have to rely on is the
description left to us by Cardinal Allen and the mention of his name in the letter written
by the Warden of the Fleet Prison. It is only through this scant information, coupled with
names of people, places and situations found in the titles of the compositions and in the
margins of the FVB that we can begin to piece together a composite of his personality,
talents, and abilities.
What is certain is that Francis Tregian Jr. was an extremely well-educated and
erudite person. He spent a great deal of time, even while in prison, compiling several
huge anthologies of contemporary music. Because of this, he preserved music for future
generations, much of which is not found in any other source. Taking in consideration his
staunch Catholicism and the extreme sufferings of his family in the context of
Elizabethan and Jacobean England, his deeds become extraordinary. We can be grateful
that he had the aesthetic sense to compile this magnificent anthology of keyboard music
known today as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. To him we owe the creation of the
greatest collection of English keyboard music.

84

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89