The World of William Byrd

Musicians, Merchants and Magnates

John Harley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317011460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

In The World of William Byrd John Harley builds on his previous work, William Byrd: Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Ashgate, 1997), in order to place the composer more clearly in his social context. He provides new information about Byrd's youthful musical training, and reveals how in his adult life his music emerged from a series of overlapping family, business and social networks. These networks and Byrd's navigation within and between them are examined, as are the lives of a number of the individuals comprising them.

MUSICIANS · 1

The Byrd Family and St Paul’s Cathedral

The location of St Paul’s, in the City of London and under two miles by road or river from the royal palace at Westminster, gave it an importance which was as much national as local. The cathedral lay within England’s financial, legal and commercial heart. It was often a focus for state pageantry. The Bishop of London, whose seat it was, exercised influence in the chambers of power.

This was where William Byrd’s elder brothers, Symond and John, received their education as choristers, before entering the mercantile life of the City. It is likely that William followed them into the choir, and had he not shown an extraordinary talent he might have followed them also into the business world which had surrounded him from birth. It was a world into which at least two of his sisters married.

The Byrd family

William Byrd’s forebears appear to have sprung from the Tudor middle classes. It is probably not wide of the mark to think of them at first as engaged in farming or trade, and after their move to London as tradesmen or merchants who were freemen of the City.1

These Byrds may have originated in Cheshire, like some other families with the name, though we cannot be sure.2 The first Byrd mentioned by Robert Cooke, who recorded the family’s genealogy, was Richard, of Ingatestone in Essex.3 It was probably in the fifteenth century that Richard’s grandson, a Thomas, moved to London. Cooke described Richard, and each successive head of the family resident in London, as a ‘gentleman’. By 1571 the Byrds had assumed a coat of arms. To indicate its unofficial nature, Cooke added a ‘canton ermine’ in the upper left corner.4

The Byrds had ties with Kent as well as Essex. The second marriage of the musician’s great-grandfather, John,5 produced a son who became the penultimate abbot of Boxley (p. 211). The musician’s grandfather, William, was ‘of the parish of boxlye in ye countye of Kent’ when he died in 1540.6 Lands at Boxley were held in 1554 by John Bird, presumably the uncle of Symond, John and William.7 A branch of the family appears to have lived at Roydon in Kent, fifteen miles from Boxley.8 It is hard to say whether these connections were of importance in the career of William Byrd the musician, but like his teacher, Thomas Tallis, who probably came from Kent, he had friends with musical tastes in the county.

William’s father was named Thomas, and his mother was Margery. Until 1573 a Thomas Byrd was listed in the rolls of the Fletchers’ Company, to which Symond Byrd belonged,9 and it may have been he who was buried in 1575 at All Hallows Lombard Street, where Symond was married in 1567 and his sister Martha was married in 1568.10 It is tempting to think it was Thomas’s widow who, as ‘Uxor Burde’, was assessed in 1582 for a subsidy payment in Langbourn Ward, a small part of which lay in the parish of All Hallows; but the identity of ‘Uxor Burde’ is uncertain.11

The musical Byrd brothers

Two documents mention William Byrd’s age.12 One, referring to to him as ‘58. yeares or ther abouts’, is in his own hand, but was dated 2 October 1598 by someone else.13 The other, his will, bears his signature, is dated 15 November 1622, and says he was in his eightieth year (which may mean ‘had already turned eighty’).14 The first was written when Byrd was mentally vigorous, and yields a date of birth (1539 or 1540) making his youthful compositions seem less precocious than they would if the date derived from Byrd’s will were accepted.15 The latter has been attractive as making it easier to accept at face value entries in two memoranda rolls of 1554. These describe his brothers, both older than he, as choristers of St Paul’s at that time.16 But John, the younger of the two, is now known to have been apprenticed in 1548–49 (p. 84), and new information makes it possible that the brothers’ names were copied from a list compiled about 1548 (p. 21).

This reassignment to an earlier date means there is no list of choristers of St Paul’s for the period when William Byrd might have been there.17 Hitherto, because his name was not in the surviving lists, it seemed likely that he was at the Chapel Royal. Now it seems probable that he was at the cathedral like his brothers.

The recruitment of choristers

There is nothing to show how boys were selected for the choir of St Paul’s. Statutes drafted by John Colet when he was Dean of the cathedral (1505–19), but apparently never adopted formally, refer to the master of choristers recruiting boys of good character from respectable families, without saying how he was to do it.18

The master of the choristers was the cathedral’s almoner (‘elemosinarius’), and the choristers were often referred to as ‘pueri elemosinarii’, or ‘poor boys’, though not all the boys whose names we know came from notably needy families. One of them, Thomas Tusser, while never wealthy, claimed to be ‘Of linage good, of gentle blood’.19 The choristers were however maintained, in part at any rate, by monies donated for charitable and other purposes. Before the chantries at St Paul’s were abolished, the almoner received 6s 8d annually from Gilbert de Bruera’s chantry for some unstated purpose, while the chantry of Thomas Ever provided £1, 10s to the poor choristers for their exhibition (support). Ralph Baldocke’s chantry provided £1, 10s towards the exhibition of two poor chorister students, and that of John Poulteney (or Powlteney) provided one pound to the choristers for their livery.20 Support might continue after the boys left the cathedral, and Ever’s chantry provided money for ‘poore and nedy … chorysters of Paules to be furtheryde to learnynge in the universites’.21

John Redford was the almoner until his death in 1547. A manuscript preserved by Symond Byrd (p. 227) contains nine pieces of Redford’s organ music.22 The youthful William Byrd’s keyboard music was influenced by Redford’s, and it may be that this manuscript was one of the sources from which he learned about it. The manuscript also contains most of a play by Redford and a fragment of another, and several sets of his verses. One frequently quoted couplet, professing to be the complaint of the choirboys, runs:

Of all the creatures _/ lesse & moe

we lytle poore boyes _/ abyde much woe.23

Towards the end of Redford’s career his eventual successor, Sebastian Westcote, perhaps acted as his deputy. Redford’s will describes Westcote as ‘one of the vicars of powlis’, and names him as ‘soule Executour’.24

Redford and Westcote had warrants for the impressment of boys from other choirs, as did Westcote’s successor, Thomas Gyles.25 Promising boys might all the same be transferred to St Paul’s without resort to impressment. Tusser, who was one of Redford’s choristers, said it was ‘by friendships lot’ that he progressed to the cathedral from the collegiate chapel of St Nicholas, at Wallingford Castle in Berkshire.26 ‘Friendship’s lot’ may have had something to do with the selection of Thomas Byrd’s sons, yet beyond the likelihood that Thomas was a member of the Fletchers’ Company there is no information about his social or business relationships. The Thomas Byrd who, in 1551–52, was among the Englishmen involved in exporting from and importing to Antwerp, may or may not have been the chori...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Map of London
• Byrd family pedigree
• MUSICIANS · 1
• MERCHANTS
• MUSICIANS · 2
• MAGNATES
• APPENDICES
• Bibliography
• Index