FOOTNOTES:
[1] E. J. L. Scott, Letter Book of Gabriel Harvey (Camden Soc.), 67.
[2] Cf. App. D, No. lxxviii.
[3] Cf. ch. xi.
[4] G. Dugdale, Time Triumphant (1604), sig. B, ‘Nay, see the beauty of our all kinde soveraigne! not onely to the indifferent of worth, and the worthy of honor, did he freely deale about thiese causes, but to the meane gave grace, as taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines servants, now the Kings acters; the Queene taking to her the Earle of Worsters servants, that are now her acters; and the Prince, their sonne, Henry, Prince of Wales full of hope, tooke to him the Earle of Nottingham his servants, who are now his acters.’
[5] Cf. ch. xvi, introd., and App. C, No. lviii.
[6] Flecknoe (App. I) perhaps exaggerates the share of moral sentiment in bringing to an end the formal connexion of the choirs with plays (cf. p. 52).
[7] De la Boderie, in 1608 (cf. vol. i, p. 327), speaks of five companies in London. These would be the King’s, Queen’s, Prince’s, Revels, and King’s Revels.
[8] Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 216, from statutes collected in the decanate of Ralph of Baldock (1294–1304), ‘Cantoris officium est ... pueros introducendos in chorum et ad cantum intitulatos examinare ... Magistrum Scolae Cantus in ecclesia Sancti Gregorii, salva Decano et Capitulo ipsius collacione, preficere’; Dugdale, St. Paul’s (1818), 347, from fifteenth-or early sixteenth-century manuscript of statutes, ‘Magistrum Scholae Cantus constituit Cantor. Ad eum pertinet eos qui canere nequeunt instruere, pueros diligenter docere, eis non solum magistrum Cantus, sed etiam bonorum morum esse.’
[9] Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 215, from statutes collected in decanate of Ralph de Diceto (1181–99), ‘Cotidie pascat ... duos pueros elemosinarios ... et secum ad Ecclesiam media nocte panem et cervisiam pro iunioribus chorum frequentantibus defer[r]i faciat, et quolibet quarterio semel vel bis post matutinas iunioribus gentaculum unum in domo sua faciat’. A thirteenth-century statute required the pueri de elemosinaria to sit humbly upon the ground when feeding in the house of a canon. Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 355, for Diceto’s statute about the Boy Bishop, with its mention of the return of the boys ‘ad Elemosinariam’, and the reforming statute of 1263.
[10] Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 220.
[11] Ibid. 217, 220 (c. 1263; c. 1310) ‘Elemosinarius ... habeat insuper continuo secum octo pueros ad Ecclesiae ministerium ydoneos, quos per seipsum vel alium magistrum in spectantibus ad ministerium ecclesiae et litteratura ac bonis moribus diligenter faciat informari.... Quociens vero dicti pueri ad scolas vel spaciatum ire debent....’; Dugdale, 349 [Elemosinarius] ‘octo pueros bonae indolis et honestae parentelae habeat; quos alat et educat in morum disciplina; videat etiam instruantur in cantu et literatura, ut in omnibus apti ad ministerium Dei in Choro esse possent’.
[12] There was a bequest to the almoner to maintain boys, apparently at the University, after they had changed their voices, as early as 1315 (Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 219–22).
[13] Hennessy, 61; W. S. Simpson, Charter and Statutes of the College of Minor Canons in St. Paul’s Cathedral (Archaeologia, xliii. 165; cf. Trans. of London and Midd. Arch. Soc. (1st series), iv. 231). The statutes of c. 1521 note a dispensation of that year for Thomas Hikeman ‘peticanon and amner’ and for ‘all and euery peticanon which shalbe Amneur hear-after’ to bring a stranger to meals.
[14] Stowe, Survey, ii. 19; cf. the Hollar engraving in Baker, 95.
[15] Stowe, i. 327; Archaeologia, xliii. 171. By c. 14 of the statutes the college gates were shut at meals.
[16] Leach, Journal of Education (1909), 506, cites the Registrum Elemosinariae (ed. M. Hacket from Harl. MS. 1080), ‘If the almoner does not keep a clerk to teach the choristers grammar, the schoolmaster of St. Paul’s claims 5s. a year for teaching them, though he ought to demand nothing for them, because he keeps the school for them, as the Treasurer of St. Paul’s once alleged before the Dean and Chapter is to be found in ancient deeds’. Mr. Leach adds, ‘It is to be feared the Treasurer invented or misrepresented the ancient deed’. William de Tolleshunt, almoner, appears from his will of 1329 in the same register to have taught his boys himself (Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 220), ‘Item lego pueris ecclesiae quos ego educavi senioribus in Elemosinaria existentibus cuilibet xijd et iunioribus cuilibet vjd’. He also left his grammar books ‘et omnes quaternos sermonum de Festo Sanctorum Innocencium, quos tempore meo solebant Episcopi Puerorum pronuntiare, ad remanendum in Elemosinaria praedicta imperpetuum, ad usum fructum puerorum in eadem degencium’. His logic and physic books are to be lent out ‘pueris aptis ad scolatizandum, cum ab elemosinaria recesserint’.
[17] Mediaeval Stage, i. 356. The sermon written by Erasmus is headed Concio ... pronunciata ... in nova schola Iohannis Coleti, but Erasmus may not have known the exact procedure at St. Paul’s. The earlier sermon printed by Wynkyn de Worde has ‘whyche often times I radde whan I was Querester, in the Marteloge of Poulis’.
[18] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 380.
[19] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196, 215, 219. Wallace, i. 88, points out that the performers of the Menaechmi before Wolsey in 1527 were not the Paul’s boys, but the Cardinal’s gentlemen.
[20] Chamber Accounts (1545).
[21] Nichols, Eliz. i. xxxv, ‘By Sebastian, scolemaister of Powles, a boke of ditties, written’.
[22] Household Accounts of Princess Elizabeth, 1551–2 (Camden Misc. ii), 37, ‘Paid in rewarde to the Kinges Maiesties drommer and phipher, the xiijth of Februarye, xxs; Mr. Heywoodde, xxxs; and to Sebastian, towardes the charge of the children with the carriage of the plaiers garmentes iiijli, xixs. In thole as by warraunte appereth, vijli, ixs’.
[23] F. Madden, Expenses of Lady Mary, 62 (March 1538), ‘Item geuen to Heywood playeng an enterlude with his children bifore my lades grace, xls’.
[24] Wallace, i. 77, goes against the evidence when he asserts that Heywood wrote for the Chapel. Why he asserts that Heywood ‘had grown up in the Chapel under Cornish’, to whom, by the way, he wantonly transfers the authorship of The Four P. P., The Pardoner and the Frere, and Johan Johan, I do not know. There is nothing to show that Heywood was a Chapel boy, and the absence of his name from the Chapel list of 1509 (cf. p. 27), when he would have been about twelve, may be taken as disposing of the notion. He is first discoverable at Court in December 1514, for which month he received wages at the rate of viijd a day in some undefined capacity (Chamber Account in Addl. MS. 21481, f. 178), which was shared by one John Mason, who was a Yeoman of the Crown by March 1516 (Brewer, ii. 475). By 1520 Heywood himself was a Yeoman of the Crown (Brewer, iii. 1. 499), and during 1519–21 the Chamber Accounts show him as also a ‘singer’ at £5 a quarter. Later he became player of the virginals, and has 50s. a quarter as such in the Accounts for 1529–31, 1538–41, and 1547–9. He was Sewer of the Chamber at the funeral of Edward in 1553. It occurs to me as just possible that Heywood’s ‘children’ may have been neither the Chapel nor the Paul’s boys, but the boys taken up by Philip Van Wilder for the musical establishment of the Household; cf. p. 31. But I think it is more likely that Heywood wrote for the Paul’s boys throughout, as he almost certainly did in 1559. There is another hint of his connexion with them in the fact that at the coronation of Mary in 1553 he sat under a vine against the grammar school and made speeches (Holinshed (1808), iv. 6). A. W. Reed (1917, 3 Library, viii. 247) adds facts, and thinks the Yeoman was distinct.
[25] Addl. MS. 15233; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 454. Thomas Tusser, in the Autobiography printed with the 1573 edition of his Points of Good Husbandry, is the authority for placing Redford at Paul’s:
From Paul’s Tusser passed to Eton, before he matriculated at Cambridge in 1543. In other manuscripts compositions by Redford and Thomas Mulliner are associated, and one of these, Addl. MS. 30513, is inscribed ‘Sum liber Thomae Mullineri, Johanne Heywoode teste’. Stafford Smith, on what authority is unknown, stated (cf. D. N. B.) that Mulliner was Master of St. Paul’s School. If so, he may have come between Redford and Westcott. On 3 March 1564 he was admitted as organist in Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Fowler, Hist. of C.C.C. 426).
[26] Feuillerat, E. and M. 145; Wallace, i. 84. The mention of ‘xij cottes for the boyes in Heywoodes play’ does not justify the assumption that the players were the Chapel. The ten established boys of the St. Paul’s choir could be supplemented by probationers or the grammar school.
[27] Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196.
[28] Machyn, 206. ‘Mr Philip’ was organist of Paul’s in 1557 (Nichols, Illustrations, iii). Fleay, 57, guesses that the play was Nice Wanton, which is not likely, if Heywood had a hand in it.
[29] Hennessy, 61.
[30] Flood cites a Vatican record of 1561 from Catholic Record Soc. i. 21, ‘Sebastianus, qui organa pulsabat apud D. Paulum Londini, cum vellet eiici, tamen tum ita charus Elizabethae fuit, ut nihil schismatice agens locum suum in ea ecclesia retineat’; also Grindal’s letter of 1563 to Dudley in Strype, Grindal (ed. 1821), 113. Hillebrand adds from Libri Vicarii Generalis (Huick 1561–74), iii, f. 77, that in July 1563 Westcott failed to appear before the Consistory Court and was excommunicated as ‘contumacem’, and from St. Paul’s records (A. Box 77, 2059) that on 8 Nov. 1564 he gave a bond to conform or resign by the following Easter. Gee, 230, gives a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia (1571), 688, which includes among Magistri Musices ‘Sebastianus in Cathedrali ecclesia Londinensi’.
[31] Fleay, 15, 60, has some inaccuracies in these dates, and conjectures that among the early Paul’s plays were a revival of Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister and Ulpian Fulwell’s Like Will to Like, and that these contained satire of Richard Edwards and the Chapel.
[32] Dasent, ix. 56.
[33] Hillebrand from Repertory, xix, f. 18, ‘For asmoche as this Court ys enformed that one Sebastian that wyll not communicate with the Church of England kepe the playes and resorte of the people to great gaine and peryll of the coruptinge of the Chyldren wyth papistrie And therefore master Morten ys appoynted to goe to the Deane of Powles and to gyve him notyce of that dysorder, and to praye him to gyve suche remeadye therein, within his iurysdyccion, as he shall see meete, for Christian Relygion and good order’.
[34] Dasent, x. 127. Cath. Record Soc. i. 70 gives the date of Westcott’s committal ‘for papistry’ from S. P. D. Eliz. cxl. 40, as 21 Dec. 1577, and that of release as 19 March 1578. According to S. P. D. Eliz. cxviii. 73, Westcott was Master of the Children in 1577 and valued at £100 in goods.
[35] Gosson, P. C. 188.
[36] Flood (Mus. Ant. iv. 187) gives an abstract of his will, dated on 3 April and proved on 14 April 1582. He describes himself as almoner of St. Paul’s, dwelling in the almonry and born at Chimley in Devonshire; appoints Henry Evans overseer and Justinian Kyd executor, and leaves legacies to relatives (apparently he had no children or wife), to members of the Redford family, to ‘Gyles Clothier’, to the ten choristers, to ‘sometimes children of the said almenerey’, by name Bromeham, Richard Huse, Robert Knight, Nicholas Carleton, Baylye, Nasion, and Gregory Bowringe, to ‘Shepard that keepeth the door at playes’, and to Pole ‘the keper of the gate’. Wallace, i. 171, cites the will from P. C. C. 14 and 31, Tirwhite, giving the date of confirmation as 3 July 1582. One name may be added to Westcott’s list of boys from a Court Minute of Christ’s Hospital on 5 March 1580 (Musical Times, 1 Jan. 1907), ‘Mr. Sebastian, of Paulls, is appointed to have Hallawaie the younger out of this House to be one of the singing children of the Cathedral Church of Paulls in this Citie’.
[37] Gosson (1582) speaks of the plays as ‘at Paules’; and Rawlidge (1628) mentions a house ‘nigh Pauls’ as one of those pulled down by the City, apparently in 1596 (cf. ch. xvi). The Paul’s boys, however, can hardly have been playing for some years before that date. Howes (1629) definitely specifies the singing school (cf. ch. xvi). On the other hand, Flecknoe, a late authority and in a passage dealing (inaccurately) with Jacobean rather than Elizabethan conditions, assigns the plays to ‘behinde the Convocation-house in Paul’s’ (App. I). This is expanded by Malone (Variorum, iii. 46) into ‘in St. Paul’s school-room, behind the Convocation-house’, and Baker, 45, suggests that they used a small yard or cloister before the doors of the Convocation House and shut off by a high wall from the main churchyard (cf. Hollar’s prints in Baker, 95, 115). But I doubt if Flecknoe had anything in mind except St. Gregory’s, which stood just west of the Convocation House. The hall of the College of Minor Canons is perhaps also a possibility; but neither this nor the church is likely to have afforded a circular auditorium (cf. ch. xviii). Can they have used the Convocation House itself?
[38] McDonnell, 27, argues for the participation of the grammar school in the plays. Obviously the phrase ‘children of Paul’s’, ordinarily used of the playing-boys, proves nothing one way or the other. That the plays were mainly an affair of the choir is a fair inference from the fact that they were presented at Court by the song-school masters. But there is no reason to doubt that the mediaeval give and take between the two schools continued through the sixteenth century. Hunter, Chorus Vatum, v. 542, quotes a manuscript life of Sir Thomas Offley, ‘This Thomas Offley became a good grammarian under Mr. [William] Lillie and understood the Latin tongue perfectly; and because he had a sweet voice he was put to learn prick-song among the choristers of St. Paul’s, for that learned Mr. Lillie knew full well that knowledge in music was a help and a furtherance to all arts’. On the other hand, Dean Nowell (Churton, Life of A. Nowell, 190) instructed Thomas Giles in 1584 to teach the choristers catechism, writing, and music, and then to ‘suffer them to resort to Paul’s School that they may learn the principles of Grammar’. Some seventeenth-century performances by the grammar school, after the regular Paul’s plays ceased, are upon record.
[39] Cf. infra (Chapel, Oxford’s); ch. xvii (Blackfriars).
[40] R. Churton, Life of Alexander Nowell, 190, from Reg. Nowell, ii, f. 189; Nichols, Eliz. ii. 432; Collier, i. 258; Hazlitt, 33; Wallace, ii. 67, from original warrant under the Signet in Sloane MS. 2035b, f. 73:
‘By the Queene,
Elizabeth.
‘Whereas we haue authorysed our servaunte Thomas Gyles Mr. of the children of the Cathedrall Churche of St. Pauls within our Cittie of London to take vpp suche apte and meete Children as are most fitt to be instructed and framed in the arte and science of musicke and singinge as may be had and founde out within anie place of this our Realme of England or Wales, to be by his education and bringinge vp made meete and hable to serve vs in that behalf when our pleasure is to call for them. Wee therefore by the tenour of these presentes will and require you that ye permitt and suffer from henceforthe our saide servaunte Thomas Gyles and his deputie or deputies and every of them to take vp in anye Cathedral or Collegiate Churche or Churches and in everye other place or places of this our Realme of England and Wales, suche Childe and Children as he or they or anye of them shall finde and like of and the same Childe and Children by vertue hereof for the vse and service afouresaide, with them or anye of them to bringe awaye, withoute anye your lettes contradiccions staye or interruptions to the contrarie Charginge and commaundinge you and everie of you to be aydinge helpinge and assisting vnto the aboue named Thomas Gyles and his deputie and deputies in and aboute the due execucion of the premisses for the more spedie effectuall & bettar accomplisshing thereof from tyme to tyme as you and everie of you doe tendar our will and pleasure and will aunswere for doinge the contrarye at your perilles. Youen vnder our Signet at our Manour of Grenewich the 26th Day of Aprill in the 27th yere of our reign.
To all and singuler Deanes, Provostes, Maisters and Wardens of Collegies and all Ecclesiasticall persons and mynisters and to all other our officers mynisters and subiectes to whome in this case it shall apperteyne and to everye of them greetinge.’
No other commission for the Paul’s choir is extant, but their rights are reserved in the commission for Windsor (q.v.) of 8 March 1560.
[41] Harvey, Advertisement for Pap-Hatchet (Works, ii. 212). Lyly was still Oxford’s man but writing for Paul’s, c. Aug. 1585 (M. L. R. xv. 82.).
[42] Cf. ch. ix and App. C, No. xl, especially Pappe with an Hatchet (Oct. 1589).
[43] Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, iii. 46). I do not think the reference to a twelvemonth’s silence, due to envy, in the prologue to Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament (c. Oct. 1592) affords any justification for ascribing that play to the Paul’s boys. Murray, i. 330; ii. 284, records a payment at Gloucester in 1590–1 ‘to the children of powles’. I am sceptical about this, especially as I observe in the next year a payment for a breakfast to the Queen’s men ‘at Mr. Powelles’. Murray’s only other municipal record for the company, at Hedon, Yorkshire, on some quite unknown date, ‘Item, payd to the —— pawll plaiers’ (ii. 286), is even less satisfactory. But if the boys did travel on their suppression, they may well have gone to Croydon.
[44] Rimbault, 4. Giles must have resigned, if he was the Thomas Giles who, on 18 April 1606, was paid 100 marks a year as instructor to Henry in music (Devon, 35). He was instructor to Charles in 1613 (Reyher, 78) and figures in masks (cf. ch. vi). Fellowes, 184, 190, has two songs set by Pearce, one from Blurt Master Constable.
[45] 1 A. and M. IV. i. 30, ‘Enter Andrugio, Lucio, Cole, and Norwood’. Bullen thinks that the two boys played the parts named, but the action requires at least one page, who sings.
[46] Wallace, ii. 153, says he has evidence of playing at Paul’s in 1598, but he does not give it. It is perhaps rash to assume that Pearce originated the revival, as there is no proof that he came to Paul’s before 1600.
[47] Cf. ch. xi.
[48] V. i. 102.
[49] Collier, iii. 181. On the light thrown on the Paul’s stage by these plays, cf. ch. xxi. It is conceivable that some of them may have been originally written before 1590 (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Percy).
[50] Cf. ch. xxiv.
[51] Cf. infra (Queen’s Revels).
[52] Nichols, James, iv. 1073, from The King of Denmark’s Welcome (1606), ‘the Youthes of Paules, commonlye cald the Children of Paules, plaide before the two Kings, a playe called Abuses: containing both a Comedie and a Tragedie, at which the Kinges seemed to take delight and be much pleased’. The play is lost. Fleay, ii. 80, has no justification for identifying it with The Insatiate Countess. Wily Beguiled (ch. xxiv) might be a Paul’s play.
[53] C. W. Wallace, Nebraska University Studies (1910), x. 355; cf. infra (Queen’s Revels), ch. xvii (Blackfriars).
[54] Constitutio Domus Regis (c. 1135) in Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii, i. 342, ‘Capellani, custos capellae et reliquiarum. Corridium duorum hominum, et quatuor servientes capellae unusquisque duplicem cibum, et duo summarii capellae unusquisque 1d in die et 1d ad ferrandum in mense’; cf. R. O. Ld. Steward’s Misc. 298 (1279); Tout, 278, 311 (1318); H. O. 3, 10 (1344–8); Life Records of Chaucer (Chaucer Soc.), iv. 171 (1369); Nicolas, P. C. vi. 223 (1454).
[55] H. O. 10. In 1318 he was ‘chief chapellain’.
[56] J. H. Wylie, Henry IV, iv. 208, from Household Accounts, ‘John Bugby our chaplain retained 3 years ago pur apprendre et enformer les enfants de notre chapelle en la science de gramaire at 100/-p. a. nothing yet paid, £15 due’. A grant to John Tilbery, a boy of the King’s chapel, was made on 12 Nov. 1405 (C. P. R., Hen. IV, iii. 96).
[57] Wallace, i. 12, 21, from P. R. The commission of 1420 was to John Pyamour ‘uni clericorum Capellae hospicii nostri’; another of 1440 was to John Croucher, Dean. When regular Masters were instituted, the commissions seem to have been made direct to them.
[58] Wallace, i. 14, quotes laudatory accounts of the singing of the chapel by two members of the suite of Leo von Ro[vz]mital, a Bohemian who visited the English Court in 1466.
[59] H. O. 49. There is nothing about plays, but ‘Memorandum, that the King hathe a songe before hym in his hall or chambre uppon All-hallowen day at the latter graces, by some of these clerkes and children of chappel in remembrance of Christmasse; and soe of men and children in Christmasse thorowoute. But after the songe on All-hallowen day is done, the Steward and Thesaurere of houshold shall be warned where it liketh the King to kepe his Christmasse’.
[60] At the coronation of James in 1603 (Rimbault, 127) there were a Sub-dean, 7 Ministers, the Master of the Children, an Organist, 22 ordinary Gentlemen, and a Clerk of the Check; also a Sergeant, 2 Yeomen, and a Groom of the Vestry. This agrees with the Elizabethan fee lists, which give the total number of Gentlemen as 32. The coronation list does not name Epistolers; but it is clear from the notices of appointments in Rimbault, 1, that a Gospeller and Epistoler were appointed, as next in succession to the Gentlemen’s places, although it does not appear that they were necessarily ex-Children. There were also Extraordinary Gentlemen (Rimbault, 31).
[61] Cf. ch. ii.
[62] H. O. 160. The hall and chapel are to be kept ‘at all times when his Highnesse shall lye in his castle of Windsor, his mannors of Bewlye, Richmond, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Eltham, or Woodstock’; but ‘in rideing journeys and progresses’, only the Master of the Children, six men, six children, and some officers of the vestry are to attend. In the seventeenth century ‘all removinge weekes’ were amongst the ‘auntient tymes of lyberty and playinge weekes’ (Rimbault, 73). But the practice may have varied. Stopes, 252, gives a Stable warrant of 1554 for a wagon ‘for the necessarie conveying and cariage of the Children of our Chapel and their man from place to place, at such seasons, as they by our commandment shall remove to serve where wee shall appointe them’.
[63] A chapel of St. Stephen existed in 1205. It was rebuilt and made a free collegiate chapel in 1348, and dissolved in 1547, and the building assigned as a chamber for the House of Commons (J. T. Smith, Antiquities of Westminster, 72; V. H. London, i. 566). It may have originated as a domestic chapel, but seems to be quite distinct from the Household Chapel by the sixteenth century. Thus its St. Nicholas Bishop had an old annual reward of £1 from the Exchequer (Devon, Issues of Exchequer, 222; R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain3, xii. 459; Brewer, iv. 869), while the Household boys got their reward of £6 12s. 4d. from the Treasurer of the Chamber. Wallace, i. 22, notes that the Masters of the Children ‘all lived’ at Greenwich, which suggests that this was the Tudor head-quarters of the Chapel.
[64] Wallace, i. 22, 23, 26, 61, from patents of Masters; Fee List (passim).
[65] R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain3, xii. 457; Brewer, ii. 873; iii. 364; iv. 868; Fee Lists (passim); Wallace, i. 21, 23, 24, 26, 33, 61, from patents and Exchequer of Receipt, Auditor’s Privy Seal Books. The Elizabethan fee for a Gentleman was only £30 (cf. p. 41, n. 3), but it was increased again to £40 by James in 1604 (Rimbault, 61).
[66] H. O. 169, 212. The Chamber Accounts for Aug. 1520 include a special payment to the Master for the diets of the boys when they accompanied the King to Calais, at 2d. a day each.
[67] The allowance was 6d. in 1575 (Collier, i. 175; Nagel, 29; from Harl. MS. 589, f. 220), but Hunnis’s petition of 1583 (cf. p. 37) implies that this rate was customary before Elizabeth’s reign.
[68] Chamber Accounts (passim); cf. p. 24, n. 6. For the feast of the Boy Bishop on St. Nicholas Day, cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 336, 359, 369.
[69] Stopes, 15, ‘40 surplices for the gentlemen and 16 for the children of the Chapel’ (Wardrobe warrant of 7 Oct. 1533); ‘for 10 children of the Kings Chapell, for gownes of Tawney Chamblett lined with black satin of Bruges, and Milan bonnettes for the said children, as in the same boke of apparel is declared xliiili. iiis. iiiid. For two children of the Kings Chapell, for 2 gownes of Black Chamblett, lined with black satin of Bruges 2 cotes of yellow saten of Bruges lined with Coton, and 2 Millan bonnettes, and for making and lining of said gownes and cotes as in the said boke at large it duly apperes xli xviiis ... Item for twenty gentlemen of the King’s chapel, for 20 gownes of Black Damask for the said gentlemen, cxxviili. xs.’ (Queen’s Remembrancia, Wardrobe Expenses, Hen. VIII, 52/10 A).
[70] Chamber Accounts (passim). From 1510 to 1513 Robert Fairfax had 2s. a week for the diet of William Alderson and Arthur Lovekyn, the King’s scholars, and £2 13s. 4d. for their teaching. In 1513 William Max, late a Child of the Chapel, had 40s. In 1514 Cornish was finding and apparelling Robert Philip and another Child of the Chapel, for £1 13s. 4d. a quarter, and in 1517 finding and teaching William Saunders, late Child of the Chapel, for the same sum, with 2d. a week for board ‘when the king keepeth no household’. In 1529–30 Crane had 3d. a day wages and 20d. a week board wages for Robert Pery, and in 1530 also for William Pery. In 1531 Robert Pery was paid direct. Cunningham, xx, gives a late seventeenth-century example of a similar arrangement. In 1546 a royal letter was written for the appointment of William Bretten, late a Chapel boy, to be singing-man at Lichfield (Brewer, xxi. 1. 142). Some of the above names appear in a list of Chapel Children, William Colman, William Maxe, William Alderson, Henry Meryell, John Williams, John Graunger, Arthur Lovekyn, Henry Andrewe, Nicholas Ivy, Edward Cooke, and James Curteys, receiving liveries at the funeral of Henry VII in 1509 (Lafontaine, 3, from Ld. Ch. Records, 550, f. 131). Some amusing correspondence of 1518 relates to a boy Robin, whom Henry VIII wished to transfer from Wolsey’s chapel to his own. It was stipulated that Cornish should treat him honestly, ‘otherwise than he doth his own’, and later Cornish wrote praising the clean singing and descant of the recruit (Brewer, ii. 1246–50).
[71] J. M. Manly in C. H. vi. 279; C. Johnson, John Plummer (1921, Antiquaries Journal, i. 52); Wallace, i. 21, from patents and Exchequer payments. Wallace does not include Melyonek although (ii. 62) he gives the following commission, already printed by Collier, i. 41, and Rimbault, vii, from Harl. MS. 433, f. 189:
‘Mellenek, Ric. etc. To all and every our subgiettes aswele spirituell as temporell thise our lettres hering or seeing greeting, We let you wite that for the confidence & trust that we haue in our trusty and welbeloued seruant John Melyonek oon of ye gentilmen of our Chapell and knowing also his expert habilitie and connyng in ye science of Musique haue licenced him and by thise presentes licence and geue him auctorite that within all places in this our realme aswele Cathedral churges coliges chappells houses of relegion and al oyer franchised & exempt places as elliswhere our colege roial at Wyndesor reserued & except may take and sease for vs and in our name al suche singing men & childre being expart in the said science of Musique as he can finde and think sufficient and able to do vs seruice. Wherfor &c. Yeuen &c. at Nottingham the xvjth day
of September Ao secundo.’Banaster did not die until 1487, but I think Melyonek must have replaced him, perhaps without a patent, under Richard III.]
[72] Cf. D. N. B. Songs by Banaster and Newark are in Addl. MS. 5465 (Chambers and Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics, 299).
[73] Collier, i. 46; cf. Wallace, i. 12. I am not sure that Collier meant 1485.
[74] Reyher, 504, from Harl. MS. 69, f. 34v. Wallace, i. 13; ii. 69, citing the same MS., misdates ‘1490’, and says that eight children took part. Four singing children who had appeared in another disguising a day or two before were probably also from the Chapel.
[75] Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 28, 38; Bernard Andrew, Annales Hen. VII (Gairdner, Memorials of Hen. VII), 104; Halle, i. 25; Professor Wallace seems to think that the annual Christmas rewards paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber to the Gentlemen, which went on to the end of the reign, were for plays. But these were of £13 6s. 8d., whereas the reward for a play was £6 13s. 4d. They were paid on Twelfth Night, and are sometimes said to be for ‘payne taking’ during Christmas. In 1510 they had an extra £6 13s. 4d. for praying for the Queen’s good deliverance. The ‘payne taking’ was no doubt as singers. An order of Henry VII’s time (H. O. 121) for the wassail on Twelfth Night has, ‘Item, the chappell to stand on the one side of the hall, and when the steward cometh in at the hall doore with the wassell, he must crie three tymes, Wassell, wassell, wassell; and then the chappell to answere with a good songe’. The Gentlemen also had 40s. annually from the Treasurer of the Chamber ‘to drink with their bucks’ given them for a summer feast, which was still held in the seventeenth century (Rimbault, 122).
[76] Stopes, Shakespeare’s Environment, 238; Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 149, 289. Professor Feuillerat says that one of the documents relating to the play refers to the ‘Children of the Chapel’, and doubts whether there is a real distinction between the ‘Gentlemen’ and the ‘Children’ as actors.
[77] Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 3, 255. The conjecture is supported by the fact that garments belonging to the Revels were in possession of two Gentlemen of the Chapel in April 1547 (ibid., 12, 13).
[78] Chamber Accounts in Wallace, i. 38, 65, 70; Brewer, xiv. 2. 284; Kempe, 69; Collier, i. 78; Feuillerat, Ed. and Mary, 266, 288. The ‘iiij Children yt played afore ye king’ on 14 Jan. 1508 were not necessarily of the Chapel.
[79] Cf. ch. viii and Mediaeval Stage, ii. 192, 215.
[80] Wallace, i. 33. No patent is cited, but the privy seal for the payment to Cornish of the Exchequer annuity was dated 1 April 1510, and he was shortly afterwards paid for the Christmas and Easter quarters. Newark had died in Nov. 1509. It is therefore a little puzzling to find in a list of Exchequer fees payable during the year ended Michaelmas 1508 (R. Henry, Hist. of Great Britain3, xii. 457) the item ‘Willelmo Cornysshe magistro puerorum capellae regis pro excubitione eorundem puerorum 26li. 13s. 4d.’ Probably the list was prepared retrospectively in Henry VIII’s reign (cf. the analogous list in Brewer, ii. 873), and the name rather than the date is an error.
[81] The data are: (a) Exchequer Payments (Wallace, i. 34), Mich. 1493, ‘Willelmo Cornysshe de Rege’, 100s.; (b) T. C. Accounts, ‘to one Cornysshe for a prophecy in rewarde’, 13s. 4d. (12 Nov. 1493); ‘to Cornishe of the Kings Chapell’, 26s. 8d. (1 Sept. 1496); ‘to Cornysshe for 3 pagents’ (26 Oct. 1501); ‘mr kyte Cornisshe and other of the Chapell yt played affore ye king at Richemounte’, £6 13s. 4d. (25 Dec. 1508); (c) Household Book of Q. Elizabeth, 25 Dec. 1502, ‘to Cornisshe for setting of a Carrall vpon Cristmas Day in reward’, 13s. 4d.; (d) John Cornysh in list of Gent. of Chapel 23 Feb. 1504, and William Cornysh in similar lists c. 1509 and 22 Feb. 1511 (Lafontaine, 2, from Ld. Ch. Records); (e) Songs by ‘W. Cornishe, jun.’ in Addl. MS. 5465, by ‘John Cornish’ in Addl. MS. 5665, by ‘W. Cornish’ in Addl. MS. 31922 (Early English Lyrics, 299); (f) A Treatise betweene Trouthe and Enformacon, by ‘William Cornysshe otherwise called Nyssewhete Chapelman with ... Henry the VIIth his raigne the xixth yere the moneth of July’ [1504], doubtless the satirical ballad on Empson referred to by Stowe, Annales, 816 (B. M. Royal MS. 18, D. 11). I think they yield an older William and a John Cornish, of whom one, probably John, arranged the three pageants at Arthur’s wedding, and a William ‘jun.’ who must have joined the Chapel in 1503 or 1504 and became Master of the Children. The older William may be identical with the Westminster (q.v.) choir-master of 1479–80. A Christopher or ‘Kit’ Cornish, referred to by Stopes, 17, and elsewhere, had no existence. This is a ghost-name, due to the juxtaposition of ‘kyte’, i.e. Sir John Kite, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, and ‘Cornisshe’ in the 1508 record above.