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Oxford, Christ Church Music MSS 984–8: An Index and Commentary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
Robert Dow, the original owner of Oxford, Christ Church (Och) MSS 984–8, was the eldest son of Robert Dow (1517–1612), citizen and Merchant Taylor of London. According to the 1568 Heraldic Visitation of London, Robert junior was fifteen at that time, and so was born in 1553; he had four brothers, John, Henry, Thomas and Richard, aged twelve, ten, five and two and a half years respectively. Since both John and Henry attended Merchant Taylors’ School, it is probable that Robert did likewise, though we cannot be certain of this since no accurate register of pupils was kept until Robert Dow senior instituted the School's Probation Books in 1607. Another not unreasonable expectation would be that the young Robert went up to St John's College, Oxford, given his father's munificience towards that College and its strong links with the Merchant Taylors’ Company. However, such an assumption would be unwarranted, and indeed, no Oxford college has any official record of him as an undergraduate. Fortunately in the British Library there are three holograph letters in Latin from Dow to Lord Burghley, dated 20 September, 4 October and 8 November 1573, written ‘Oxoniae (Oxonij), in Collegio Corporis Christi’. Since he does not sign himself ‘discipulus’ or ‘alumnus’, it is hardly surprising that there is no mention of his name in the College's Registers, and therefore the most likely explanation for his presence at Corpus Christi is that he was a gentleman-commoner, though this cannot be verified. Whatever his status, we know that Robert Dow definitely proceeded B.A., for the Oxford University Register of Congregation and Convocation 1564–82 has the following entry for 12 October 1573 recording his supplication for that degree:
Supplicat etc. Robertus Dowe scholaris facultatis artium quatenus in studio dialectices quatuor annos posuerit generalis creatus fuerit bacchalaurio xlma respondent ceteraque omnia perfecerit quae per nova statuta requiruntur ut haec ei sufficiant ut admittatur ad aliquem librum logices legendum. Concessa [est] modo determinet proxima xlma 7.
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References
Notes
1 The father was admitted to the Court of Assistants of the Merchant Taylors on 25 September 1572, and immediately served the office as Warden. After another term as Warden in 1576, he became Master of the Company in 1578. From c. 1580 until the end of the century he was active as collector of the tonnage and poundage in the port of London. In December 1596 Dow gave £50 towards the new library building in St John's College, Oxford, as well as £16.13s.4d. for the purchase of books on canon and civil law. In 1600 he presented to St John's one manuscript and a number of legal books, and a year later he gave the College £100. During the first decade of the seventeenth century, Dow was a generous benefactor to Christ's Hospital and particularly encouraged the teaching of music. His good works were catalogued by Anthony Nixon in London's Dove: or a Memoriall of the life and death of Maister Robert Dove (London 1612) (STC 18588). Although it is some years since the distinction between Robert Dow father and son was first drawn by Philip Brett in his doctoral thesis The Songs of William Byrd (Cambridge University, 1964, 19–23), confusion over their identity has not yet been entirely dissipated; see David C. Price, Patrons and Musicians of the English Renaissance (Cambridge, 1981), 37.Google Scholar
2 Visitation of London 1568 with additional pedigrees 1569–90, the arms of the City Companies, and a London Subsidy Role 1589, ed. H. Stanford London and Sophia W. Rawlins, The Publications of the Harleian Society, 109–10 (London, 1963), 41–2.Google Scholar
3 Charles J. Robinson, A Register of the Scholars admitted into Merchant Taylors’ School from A.D. 1562 to 1874 (Lewes, 1882), i: 1562–1669, pp.v, 9, 18. Further information is supplied by E.P. Hart, Merchant Taylors’ School Register 1561–1934 (London and Reading, 1936).Google Scholar
4 London, British Library, Lansdowne MS xvii, nos. 77, 80, 84. The fine calligraphy of these letters demonstrates conclusively that Och 984–8 were not only Dow's property, as the ‘Sum Roberti Dowi’ on the verso of the first leaf of each book tells us, but also that he himself was the scribe, a fact that scholars have hitherto been reluctant to affirm.Google Scholar
5 Thomas Fowler, The History of Corpus Christi College with Lists of its Members, Oxford Historical Society, 25 (Oxford, 1893).Google Scholar
6 Ibid., 434 et seq.Google Scholar
7 Univ. Oxon. Arch. Reg. KK9, f.154.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., f.139v.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., f. 161v [3 or 4 March 1574].Google Scholar
10 See Register of the University of Oxford, Vol.11 (1571–1622), ed. Andrew Clark, iii: Degrees, 36, which erroneously states that Dow took his B. A. from All Souls.Google Scholar
11 For my part I have always devoted all my concentration and attention to Civil Law, having doubtless been dedicated to this even in my cradle, so that one knows not whether this knowledge is more profitable or pleasurable. For this pursuit of mine the best college at Oxford is All Souls. In it there will shortly be a vacant position for me to take by storm. A letter of our Royal Majesty to the Warden and Fellows counts for much and, to obtain this, father thinks that you and you alone can be a tremendous help, so that we need nobody's help in addition. If you aid this petition, the more notable I, upon whom you confer anything, become—the position is too important to be sought by an unknown—the more mindful of it you are to consider that I shall be, and the more grateful my father.Google Scholar
12 For this reason I have sought a letter of our Royal Majesty all the more earnestly, not because I lack confidence in myself, but because everyone puts so much trust in the same.Google Scholar
13 But to come to the point: your commendation, it is true, was very useful to me, but the Royal Majesty's letter sided with my adversary and this so blunted my assault and attempt that I was compelled to give up my suit. Nevertheless, I acknowledge your kind letter and the devotion which has shone forth in my support.Google Scholar
14 Charles Trice Martin, The Archives in the Muniment Rooms of All Souls College (London, 1877), 304, Letter 34. The Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, sede vacante, nominated George Goringe to the first place in the Faculty of Law and Robert Dow to the second.Google Scholar
15 Report on the Manuscripts of Lord de L'Isle and Dudley preserved at Penshurst Place, I, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 77 (1925), 268–9.Google Scholar
16 Oxford, All Souls College, Codrington Library, MS 402(a), ff.62v-63:… Robertus Dowe Artium Bacalareus et in Legibus Scholaris de Comitatu Middlesex et diocesi Londinii in veros et perpetuos socios dicti Collegii electi et assumpti'.Google Scholar
17 Henry was buried in the north transcept of Christ Church Cathedral, where a pillar bears a commemorative inscription; this, and the elegies on a brass plate that once lay beneath it, are reproduced in H.B. Wilson, The History of Merchant Taylors’ School (London, 1814), 1163–4.Google Scholar
18 London, British Library, Add. MS 22583, f.78v.Google Scholar
19 Op. cit. (note 7), KK9, f.249v.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., L10, f.4Google Scholar
21 STC 22551; f.Dv–D2v: ‘Clarissimi Equitis Philippi Sidneii Memoriae sacrum'.Google Scholar
22 'After him, your king was the Hungarian Stephen, the single glory of all the kings produced by our times, a man I myself saw and was lucky enough to converse with.’ Stephen Báthory, Prince of Transylvania and a highly intelligent and cultured man, was elected King of Poland in 1575 and proved to be a gifted soldier and powerful monarch.Google Scholar
23 'Nor was such a ruler to be far sought, had not the fates removed from earth in the month of October Philip Sidney, who was the legitimate, natural successor to the dead Stephen, had he not been taken from us first.'Google Scholar
24 Among the many other tributes to Sidney was Thomas Lant's Sequitur celebritas & pompafuneris [of Sir Philip], a long roll which describes in English and Latin ‘the manner of the whole proceeding of his funerall’ with 34 engraved copperplate illustrations. Lant, who was not only a herald and draughtsman but also a one-time servant of Sidney's, ‘collected and gathered’ the contents of a parchment roll of 57 rounds and canons (dated 1580) now in the Rowe Music Library of King's College, Cambridge; see Vlasto, Jill, ‘An Elizabethan Anthology of Rounds', The Musical Quarterly, 40 (1954), 222–34. The third piece in this Cambridge anthology is the same ‘Hey down, sing ye now after me’ that Dow included at the end of Och 988; both sources share common differences with the printed version given in Ravenscroft's Pammelia (1609). Can this be taken as further evidence of Dow's involvement with the Sidney circle?Google Scholar
25 See James M. Osborn, Young Philip Sidney 1572–1577 (New Haven and London, 1972).Google Scholar
26 Charles Trice Martin, op. cit. (note 14), 305: Letters of Kings, Archbishops etc., no.46.Google Scholar
27 This information, and much more besides, was kindly supplied by Mr. J.S.G. Simmons, Deputy Archivist of All Souls, to whom I owe a debt of thanks.Google Scholar
28 Univ. Oxon. Arch. Hyp. B12, ‘Inventories’ D-F.Google Scholar
29 See Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642 (Oxford, 1971), 136–7 et passim for a brief analysis of its contents.Google Scholar
30 Ker, N.R., Records of All Souls College Library 1437–1600, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, New Series, 16 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 103, 158.Google Scholar
31 Warwick Edwards suggests Gilbert Talbot (1552–1616); see The Sources of Elizabethan Consort Music (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1974), 108.Google Scholar
32 This selective biography was compiled with the help of the following: Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714 (Oxford, 1891–2); John and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge, 1922); Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss (London, 1813–20); S.L. Ollard, Fasti Wyndesorienses: The Deans and Canons of Windsor, Historical Monographs Relating to St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, 8 (1950); Shelagh M. Bond, The Monuments of St George's Chapel, Windsor, ibid., 12 (1958).Google Scholar
33 See Callard, John, A Catalogue of Printed Books (pre-1751) in the Library of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, Historical Monographs Relating to St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, 15 (1976), 211 and 231.Google Scholar
34 Op. cit. (note 31), 106.Google Scholar
35 Giles was appointed Master of the Choristers at Windsor in 1585, and Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal in 1597, posts that he held concurrently until his death. The reference to ‘the king's chappell’ in Baldwin's gloss again proves that the pieces were added during or after 1603.Google Scholar
36 Three pages of this manuscript are reproduced in facsimile in My Ladye Nevells Booke (London, 1926; repr. New York, 1969).Google Scholar
37 P.C.C. 63 Fenner (PROB 11/176).Google Scholar
38 Foster, op. cit. (note 32), 57Google Scholar
39 John Neale Dalton, The Manuscripts of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, Historical Monographs relating to St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle (1957).Google Scholar
40 Shelagh M. Bond, The Chapter Acts of the Dean and Canons of Windsor, 1430, 1523–1672, ibid, 13 (1966), 75.Google Scholar
41 Edmund H. Fellowes and Elisabeth R. Poyser, The Baptism, Burial and Marriage Registers of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, ibid. (1957), 194.Google Scholar
42 P.C.C. 12 Lee (PROB 11/176).Google Scholar
43 See Bond, op. cit. (note 40), 183.Google Scholar
44 Ibid., 217.Google Scholar
45 In the collation the excised leaves are indicated by the use of a minus sign, and the one removed gathering in Och 988 is placed in square brackets.Google Scholar
46 Edward Heawood, Watermarks mainly of the 17th and 18th Centuries (Hilversum, 1950; corrected edition, 1957).Google Scholar
47 For a discussion of this and other contemporary music papers, see Iain Fenlon and John Milsom, ‘“Ruled Paper Imprinted”: Music Paper and Patents in Sixteenth-Century England', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 139–63.Google Scholar
48 Probably Dean Aldrich, Dr. Burney and G.E.P. Arkwright.Google Scholar
49 He was one-time Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, a man much admired for his Latinity, and an important figure in Elizabethan administration.Google Scholar
50 AAAiiiv-AAAiiii. The whole poem is quoted in Morrison Comegys Boyd, Elizabethan Music and Music Criticism (Philadelphia, 1962), 312–13.Google Scholar
51 Translated in ibid., 313.Google Scholar
52 See David G. Mateer, ‘John Sadler and Oxford, Bodleian MSS Mus. e. 1–5', Music & Letters, 60 (1979), 281–95.Google Scholar
53 As was the custom, Dow employed the italic hand for Latin and Italian texts, and secretary hand for English.Google Scholar
54 This is the largest single concentration of White's motets in any source, and suggests that scribe and composer may have been acquainted, a notion borne out by the intimate tone of some of the commemorative couplets appended to the pieces. These, together with Dow's other annotations, are reprinted and translated in Boyd, op. cit., 313–17.Google Scholar
55 See Brett, Philip, Consort Songs, Musica Britannica, 22 (London, 1974), where dramatic contexts are suggested for many of the songs.Google Scholar
56 The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford, 1962), 351.Google Scholar
57 Och 988 records the exact date of Tallis's death and the place of his burial.Google Scholar
58 Nos.94 and 96 are so close to the printed versions that Dow must have copied them from the 1588 edition; see Byrd, William, Madrigals, Songs and Canons, ed. Philip Brett, The Byrd Edition, 16 (London, 1976), p.vi.Google Scholar
59 The ‘title-page’ bears the legend ‘Vinum et Musica łaetificant Cordas', a pun on Ecclesiasticus xl. 20: ‘Vinum et musica laetificant cor'.Google Scholar
60 Campion was a Fellow of St John's College before leaving Oxford on termination of his duties as junior proctor in 1569; Briant matriculated plebei filius at Hart Hall in 1574; Sherwin was a Fellow of Exeter College from 1568 to 1575.Google Scholar
61 Elizabeth Story Donno (ed.), An Elizabethan in 1582, Hakluyt Society (London, 1976), 77. There was another ‘lybel’ about Campion on 5 February.Google Scholar
62 When these lines appeared in print in 1582, they were considered so seditious by the authorities that their publisher lost his ears.Google Scholar