1 The John Marsh Journals: The Life and Times of a Gentleman Composer (1752–1828), ed. Brian Robins (Stuyvesant, NY, 1998). See also my review in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 125 (2000), 306–14. The amateur musical activities of another late eighteenth-century family, the Sharps, as portrayed by Zoffany in his well-known painting of 1781, have been ably charted by Brian Crosby in his ‘Private Concerts on Land and Water: The Musical Activities of the Sharp Family, c.1750–c.1790‘, RMA Research Chronicle, 34 (2001), 1–119.Google Scholar

2 The Diary of a West Country Physician A.D. 1684–1726, ed. Edmund Hobhouse (London, 1934; 2nd edn 1935). Hobhouse naturally concentrates almost entirely on the diaries, and prints only a very small selection of accounts. For fuller details of the latter, some grouped thematically in units each concerned with a single item of domestic expenditure (wine, clothing, horses, pictures, etc.), see ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 22 (1936–8), 78–81, 100–2, 147–51, 172–5, 199–203 and 230–2; 23 (1939–42), 40–1, 100–3, 134–40, 164–6, 182–5 and 345–7.Google Scholar

3 I am much obliged to Niall Hobhouse, of Hadspen House, Castle Cary, Somerset, for his kindness in allowing me to inspect the original manuscripts in the summer of 2004. For Edmund Hobhouse (1888–1974), a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, see Munk's Roll, vi: Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London Continued to 1975, ed. Gordon Wolstenholme (Oxford, 1982), 247.Google Scholar

4 This section of the diary runs from 25 March 1709 (Lady Day, then normally reckoned to be the beginning of the year) until 24 March 1710. Whether or not Morris went on in another book, or simply (though most improbably) abandoned the diary at that point, is not known. But, having in that same year's accounts declared that he can see no reason why ‘the Christian Epoch’ should begin at any time other than ‘the Day of the Nativity, or Circumcision’, all later diaries (and account books too) treat the year as starting on 1 January.Google Scholar

5 Photocopies of the three remaining volumes are held by the Somerset Record Office (in Taunton), the diaries on microfilm and the account books on microfiche. The original manuscripts are all very narrow, upright folio volumes bound in vellum; they measure between 6 and 6½ inches in width and between 14½ and 16½ inches in height. The missing volume, we may suppose, was similar. The days of the week are indicated by the standard astrological signs and, from 1718 onwards, the daily weather too is summarized by the diarist in pictograph form. Fortunately a list of the books (though not alas the music) purchased between 1698 and 1708 may be recovered from Edmund Hobhouse, ‘The Library of a Physician circa 1700’, The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 13 (1932), 89–96 (pp. 90–2); for a random selection of other things, see ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts'.Google Scholar

6 Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Essays in Memory of Charles Cudworth, ed. Christopher Hogwood and Richard Luckett (Cambridge, 1983), 1–17 (esp. pp. 8 and 12–14).Google Scholar

7 On 3 August 1708 Morris paid 9s. for ‘six brass candlesticks for the use of the musick club room at the Deanery’, but it is not clear why the club was then meeting there rather than in Close Hall. This reference from the missing account book is in ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 23, 101. An obviously similar music club meeting in the college of the vicars choral in Hereford was evidently already well established; see Chevill, Elizabeth, ‘Clergy, Music Societies and the Development of a Musical Tradition: A Study of Music Societies in Hereford, 1690–1760’, Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Susan Wollenberg and Simon McVeigh (Aldershot, 2004), 35–53. Also dating from the early 1690s was another (and probably rather smaller) provincial music society based in Stamford; see White, Bryan, ‘“A pretty knot of Musical Friends”: The Ferrar Brothers and a Stamford Music Club in the 1690s’, Music in the British Provinces 1690–1914, ed. Rachel Cowgill and Peter Holman (Aldershot, 2007), 9–44.Google Scholar

8 As appears from a diary entry for 4 June 1723, when they ‘had a very good full Consort, but no Auditors’.Google Scholar

9 Though the performers were normally men, as was usual in all such clubs, the ladies too might very occasionally be heard (as on 6 December 1720, when ‘Miss Catharine Layng [daughter of the archdeacon of Wells] & a Young Woman, who was a Limner [i.e. a portrait painter] in Herefordshire who had an extraordinary fine Voice, & a very good manner, Sung'). The ‘young Ladies of Wells and Shepton’ mentioned by Hobhouse (The Diary of a West Country Physician, 39) as having performed on 6 August 1719 were actually ‘young Ladds’, and their music on that occasion was, says Morris, ‘very mean’; in his transcription of the diary itself, however, Hobhouse has it right (ibid., 71). When choral items were included, the treble parts would most probably have been taken by two or three cathedral choristers.Google Scholar

10 There is a nineteenth-century copy (and also a modern typescript transcript) of the Vicars' Bill in Chancery in the Wells Cathedral Archives. For more on Claver Morris's relations with Bishop Hooper, and this episode in particular, see William M. Marshall, George Hooper, 1640–1727, Bishop of Bath and Wells (Milborne Port, 1976), 122–4.Google Scholar

11 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 133–4, for details. Nearly four years earlier, in October 1722, Morris had ‘pay'd out of our Stock’ £1 os. 3d. towards the cost of burying Mr Hill, the local harpsichord-maker.Google Scholar

12 The costs of taking his Oxford doctorate are spelt out in great detail in the accounts (see ibid., 147–8). A loose sheet dated 8 July 1692 and certifying that Claver Morris was now a doctor of medicine of the University of Oxford is tucked in at the front of the first volume of accounts.Google Scholar

13 See The Life of Richard Kidder, D.D., Bishop of Bath and Wells, Written by Himself, ed. Amy Edith Robinson, Somerset Record Society, 37 (1924), 134–44. The bishop and his wife were both killed by a falling chimney stack in the great storm of November 1703.Google Scholar

14 For a detailed history of the house (and earlier dwellings on the same site), see Bailey, Derrick Sherwin, The Canonical Houses of Wells (Gloucester, 1982), 178–83; for the photograph I am indebted to Peter Penfold of the school's bursarial staff.Google Scholar

15 Worth something in the region of £750,000 in present-day terms. For more on the value of money during this period, see headnote to Appendix.Google Scholar

16 In 1708 she was sent away to school in Salisbury for the best part of two years; while there she was taught by the cathedral organist, Anthony Walkeley, a former vicar choral of Wells who was well known to Claver Morris. Some years later (in April 1720) Morris claims to have ‘sorted Toxey Walkeley's Sonatas’ which, following the composer's death (on 16 January 1718), had been handed over to him by his brother, Joseph Walkeley (of Bristol).Google Scholar

17 ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 23, 139. References drawn from the account books (but not obviously so) are hereafter distinguished by an asterisk in parentheses: (∗).Google Scholar

18 See Spink, Ian, Restoration Cathedral Music 1660–1714 (Oxford, 1995), 360; and for Utrecht celebrations elsewhere, H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Music and Drama at the Oxford Act of 1713‘, Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain, ed. Wollenberg and McVeigh, 199–218 (pp. 199–200).Google Scholar

19 The latter made him free of the city, and thus a member of its common council. An earlier application (in 1705) had evidently been rejected (information from Paul Hyland).Google Scholar

20 Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783, The New Oxford History of England (Oxford, 1989), 436. For a good short account of the pros and cons of enclosure, see Williams, Basil, The Whig Supremacy 1714–1760 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1962), 107–9; also Jeremy Black, Eighteenth-Century Britain 1688–1783 (London, 2001), 35–8. On the mechanics of enclosure, see William E. Tate, The English Village Community and the Enclosure Movements (London, 1967), esp. Chapter 10.Google Scholar

21 Roy Porter, England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1998), 194.Google Scholar

22 The number of such parliamentary acts escalated rapidly during the century, from a mere seven in the period 1702–20 to 67 in 1721–40, and a staggering 1,247 over the next 40 years. These are the figures given in Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 108. In Somerset there were apparently only four such acts in the first 70 years of the century.Google Scholar

23 Earlier social functions of a similar nature (generally referred to in the diaries as ‘our Mutual Entertainment’ and sometimes as ‘The Moon Feast‘) were evidently held on a monthly basis.Google Scholar

24 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 26. At one point, Morris also records his wife's height, and, quite regularly at the beginning of each year's accounts, the height of each of his two children. It is interesting too to note that his fee for professional services rendered always reflects the social standing of his patients; thus an ordinary man or woman in the town would be charged 2s. or 2s. 6d. per visit, whilst members of the gentry might expect to pay as much as 3 guineas or more.Google Scholar

25 His London supplier of both music and instruments was Edward Lewis at the Harp in St Paul's Alley. In Bath Morris dealt mainly with a bookseller by the name of Hammond.Google Scholar

26 For details see my article ‘Instruments, Strings, Wire and Other Musical Miscellanea in the Account Books of Claver Morris (1659–1727)‘, Galpin Society Journal, 60 (2007), 29–35.Google Scholar

27 It is clear from Morris's description of them (as ‘6 sonatas of 3 parts for violins and 6 for flutes') that this must be the set listed as op. 4 in Owain Edwards, ‘Corbett, William’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 29 vols. (London, 2001; hereafter New Grove II), vi, 446 (where the date of publication is given as c. 1713). Likewise with Reali's op. 2 set of Sonate da camera e basso, which Morris acquired in September 1711. According to Alberto Basso in his Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, 13 vols. (Turin, 1985–90), x, 261, however, these ten sonatas were published in Venice in 1712. The apparent discrepancy can no doubt be accounted for by the anomalies of the Venetian calendar. What is astonishing in so many cases is just how quickly after publication Morris – isolated (one might think) in Wells – had acquired copies. He kept up with the national (and European) news through newspapers which were available to him at the Mitre, the Crown and the local coffee house and paid for by subscription. The Crown (in the Market Place) still stands, but the Mitre (in Sadler Street, more or less directly opposite Brown Gate or the ‘Dean's Eye‘) does not.Google Scholar

28 Wells Cathedral Archives, Library of the Vicars Choral, MSS 5–9 in particular.Google Scholar

29 ‘Dr. Claver Morris’ Accounts’, Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, 23, 100.Google Scholar

30 Nathaniel Priest, organist of Bristol Cathedral from 1710 to 1734, was one of the two sons of Josias Priest for whose dancing school (in Chelsea) Purcell was formerly thought to have composed his opera Dido and Aeneas. His brother (another Josias) was currently organist of Bath Abbey. Clark may well have been the man of that name who (in a somewhat dubious printed source of 1744) is said to have been a violinist and music master to the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton; there is, however, no mention of him in the archives there. John Friedrich Dinglestadt (d. 1745) either was, or was soon to become, one of the Bristol waits (for whose wages he signed in 1720–1). For information on both Clark and Dinglestadt I am indebted to Dr Jonathan Barry of the University of Exeter (Department of History).Google Scholar

31 For William Douglas, a pupil of John Grano, see A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, ed. Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim and Edward A. Langhans, 16 vols. (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1973–93), iv, 258–9. According to Burney (A General History of Music, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period, ed. Frank Mercer, 2 vols., London, 1935, repr. New York, 1957, ii, 994) he was ‘commonly called the Black Prince’, while his teacher, John Grano, Burney describes as ‘a kind of mongrel dilettante’. Both Clark and Douglas (who ‘Sounded Two Sonatas very finely') were given hospitality (i.e. put up for the night) by Morris, who also tells us that, after the concert was over, ‘M^r Nooth [one of the Vicars Choral] came & Supp'd with them, & we sate up ‘till one a clock'. Such late hours after an evening's music-making were by no means uncommon in the Morris household; sometimes indeed he and his guests sat up until 2 or 3 a.m. Grano himself Morris heard on a visit to Bath on 22 May 1724, when ‘in the New Dining-Room at the Three Tuns’ he entertained Morris and a small group of friends ‘with his Trumpet, German-Flute & Small Flute [i.e. recorder]‘. Four years later Grano was committed to the Marshalsea Prison for debt, and while there he kept a diary which has recently been edited by John Ginger and published as Handel's Trumpeter: The Diary of John Grano (Stuyvesant, NY, 1999).Google Scholar

32 For the actual date of publication see Johnstone, ‘Music and Drama at the Oxford Act of 1713‘, 205–7. An autograph copy of Laurus cruentas has recently (summer 2006) been acquired by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and is now catalogued as MS Mus. d. 271.Google Scholar

33 Tilmouth, thinking perhaps that Hobhouse had it wrong, turns this into Dahuron (a French flautist active in London during this same period). But Dalaron(e) it is, and while there is no one of that name to be found in either New Grove II or Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik (2nd edn, Kassel, 1994–), as ‘Delaroon’ he turns up again in February 1720, and appears then to have been resident, or at any rate temporarily active, in Bath. A ‘Saxon Organist’ whose name, unfortunately, is not given is also mentioned as having been present at the 1709 festival.Google Scholar

34 And, once again, Morris provided hospitality. (On 15 November Morris had written to Joseph Walkeley asking him ‘to send Dingleston with his Bassoon to improve our Consort on Tuesday next’.) Later on in the diary Dingleston is more commonly (and now correctly) referred to as Dinglested (or Dinglestedt). On 16 November 1722, five days before he came over for that year's St Cecilia Musick, Morris had called in at a house in Shepton to collect a ‘Sackbut & 2 Cornets’ which were ‘to be try'd by M^r Dinglestedt’.Google Scholar

35 Elsewhere, as at the annual Sons of the Clergy festival in St Paul's Cathedral, the usual method of co-ordinating such forces was for the ‘conductor’ or person in charge of the performance to stand amid the troops and beat time with a roll of paper in his right hand. According to New Grove II (s.v. ‘Conducting‘) a pedal-operated device like that used by Claver Morris in Wells is described by Johann Beer in his posthumously published Musicalische Discurse (Nuremberg, 1719).Google Scholar

36 Another West Country musician who, from 1721, regularly takes part on these occasions (and stays chez Morris) is a certain Mr Spittle. Identified at one point as a trumpeter, it is clear that this was not the only instrument he played; he also acted as a music copyist. Like Dinglestadt, he too was (or later became) one of the Bristol waits, and I am told (by Jonathan Barry) that, as Augustus Spittel, his signature appears in the corporation vouchers of 1729–30 and 1732–3. For more on Spittle see below, note 64.Google Scholar

37 Though the composer is not actually named, it appears from the accounts that there was another even earlier performance on 25 December 1718, and indeed it may soon have become a tradition. The Morrises were generous with their hospitality, and on Christmas Day each year they had most of the vicars choral and a couple of ‘quiristers’ (four in 1718), together with a small party of friends, round for dinner (then a midday meal). Then, after the Broderip ‘Song’ or ‘Christmas Anthem’ had been performed, they all went to church and later returned for the evening ‘consort’ (and supper). And sometimes, as in 1722, ‘the Company stay'd till after 1'. In 1724 the evening ‘consort’ involved two Albinoni concertos, two more by Valentini, and ‘Bassani's 1st Motette set to M^r Chreyghton's Words’. The Creightons, father and son, had dominated Wells cathedral life for the best part of a century, and it must be Robert Jr, precentor and canon residentiary for 60 years (1674–1734), who is referred to here; he also composed anthems, and one short canonic piece of his (I will arise and go to my Father) is included in a recently published collection of Restoration anthems edited by Keri Dexter and Geoffrey Webber for the Church Music Society (Oxford, 2003).Google Scholar

38 He had lessons from a Mr Hall (seemingly in London) in the mid-1680s.Google Scholar

39 The bassoon stop was evidently not installed until 1721, as appears by an unpublished diary entry for 19 September of that year when, Morris tells us, many came to hear it. An earlier entry (for 5 September) refers to ‘the first time of using the Organ, after the Pitch of it was tuned a lesser third’ (i.e. a minor third) lower, but Morris, in his first reference to the altered pitch of the instrument (10 February 1719), says that it was played on then too. Four years earlier (on 1 September 1715) he had evidently given £1 1s. 6d. ‘towards the Improvement of the Organ in Close-Hall’.(∗) With nine stops (including those added by Swarbrick) it must presumably have had two manuals.Google Scholar

40 The decision to erect a gallery in Close-Hall was taken after a rather jolly meeting of the music club on 27 December 1709, but there is no later mention of the organ being moved there. L. S. Colchester, in his unpublished ‘Notes on the History and Development of the Vicars’ Close, Wells' now in the cathedral archives, claims the organ was in the gallery, but there is no real evidence for this. The 1790 reference to the state of the instrument (also in Colchester) evidently comes from a manuscript which was then (in 1974) owned by the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society.Google Scholar

41 Much the fullest account of Swarbrick and his work so far published is Betty Matthews, ‘Thomas Swarbrick – The End of a Line’, Aspects of Keyboard Music: Essays in Honour of Susi Jeans, ed. Robert Judd (Oxford, 1992), 95–112. But this is ignored in New Grove II (which still lists him as Thomas Schwarbrook). For more up-to-date information I am indebted to Dominic Gwynn.Google Scholar

42 When Broderip died (on 31 January 1727) Millard stood in as cathedral organist until the election of his successor (William Evans) three months later.Google Scholar

43 Renatus Harris is generally thought to have retired to Bristol in 1721 or thereabouts, and his wife died there in July 1724 The year after his parents' death, John Harris went into partnership with his brother-in-law, John Byfield. In 1726 they built an important instrument for St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, and a couple of years later they transferred the business back to London, leaving Swarbrick (we assume) in charge of the western front. Of the five London papers to notice the death of Renatus Harris, only one (the Evening Post of 7–10 November) provides the actual date (which has hitherto been unknown).Google Scholar

44 In Kensington Palace there is evidently a ‘press’ which was converted from a vertical harpsichord-with-organ in 1763, and an actual surviving instrument made by Woffington in Dublin in 1785 is now in the National Museum of Ireland (information kindly supplied by Dominic Gwynn).Google Scholar

45 This was neither the first nor the last attempt to substitute metal plectra for quill. In December 1730, William Barton took out a patent for ‘Pens of Silver, Brass, Steel, and other Sorts of Metall’ which would, he claimed, not only ‘improve the Tone of the said Instruments’ but ‘last many Years without Amendment’; see Boalch, Donald, Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440–1840, 3rd edn, ed. Charles Mould (Oxford, 1995), 12. This reference too I owe to Dominic Gwynn.Google Scholar

46 Both diaries and account books record work done on his harpsichord between October 1718 and January 1720, and again between November 1723 and December 1724, but there is no more specific evidence than that quoted here.Google Scholar

47 ‘The Yeoman of Kent’ (as Professor Robert Hume kindly informs me) is the subtitle of Thomas Baker's Tunbridge-Walks (1703). Other named plays also performed in Wells were Edmund Smith's Phaedra and Hippolytus (by boys of the local grammar school in 1712), (∗) Addison's Cato (also by schoolboys in 1715), (∗) Congreve's Love for Love (‘by Poor's Company’ (sic) in July 1725 and again the following summer), and Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko (in July 1726). Though neither of the two travelling theatre companies cited here is mentioned in Sybil Rosenfeld, Strolling Players & Drama in the Provinces 1660–1765 (Cambridge, 1939), Lewis's troupers were evidently based in Bristol (see Barry, Jonathan, ‘The Cultural Life of Bristol 1640–1775‘, D.Phil, dissertation, University of Oxford, 1985, 188); and so too, it appears, was the other team. Mr Power (correctly named by Morris in July 1726) was the manager of the Duke of Grafton's Servants, a theatrical group which performed in Bristol, and constantly attempted to set up a theatre there in the first two decades of the eighteenth century (information kindly provided by Dr Jonathan Barry).Google Scholar

48 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 56; also my article ‘Dean(e), Thomas’ in New Grove II, vii, 91. Dearie's presence in Bath at this time is otherwise unknown. He was also among the performers who took part in the concert at the opening of the new organ in Shepton Mallet on 22 September (see above). Though it says London in the diary, the accounts have him returning to Bath.Google Scholar

49 See note 31 above.Google Scholar

50 For the first two, see A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Highfill, Burnim and Langhans, xiii, 364, and xv, 247; also iv, 485–6, for Dubourg. Very little is known about Beswillibald, who, with various weird and wonderful spellings of the name, played as a double bassist for Handel and Geminiani, and must, somehow, be related to the singer Giorgio Giacomo Berwillibald, who took part in the 1716 London revival of the pasticcio Lucio Vero and is described in the papers as ‘Servant to his Serene Highness the Margrave of Brandenburg’. Some years later (and unmentioned by Deutsch), David Beswillibald subscribed for six copies of Handel's Rodelinda (1725), six of Scipione (1726), three of Alessandro (1726) and five of Admeto (1727). Shojan also took a single copy of the first three of these works; also Galliard's Hymn of Adam and Eve (1728) and, in 1730, two copies of the first set of sonatas for violin and continuo by Michael Christian Festing.Google Scholar

51 This would have been Quae est ista, the sixth of Alessandro Scarlatti's Concerti sacri published by Estienne Roger in Amsterdam (1707–8) and scored for SAT, two violins and continuo. Claver Morris acquired his copy in June 1713, but the only one now extant is in the Royal Library in Brussels. I am grateful to Bart Op de Beeck for providing me with both title and details of scoring.Google Scholar

52 For Johannes Schenck, the famous viola da gamba player, see New Grove II, xxii, 473–4. It is not clear which of his several published works were performed on this occasion, but from the fact that Walter was a violinist and Morris describes them as sonatas, we may perhaps hazard a guess that it was some if not all of Schenck's op. 7 which so delighted them. If, on the other hand, the music played really was for two viols, then it is more likely perhaps to have been some of the Select Lessons for the Bass Viol of 2 Parts printed by Walsh in 1703. My thanks to Peter Holman for this suggestion, and for the reference to Brian Boydell's book which follows in note 53.Google Scholar

53 Female violinists were very rare at this date; indeed, the only one known to have performed publicly during this period was a pupil of Dubourg's by the name of Elizabeth Plunkett (1725–44), for whom see Boydell, Brian, A Dublin Musical Calendar 1700–1760 (Dublin, 1988), 287, and A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Highfill, Burnim and Langhans, xii, 37.Google Scholar

54 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 15–16, for details; also p. 66. It was not only the clandestine nature of the affair but also the hurt of being denied the pleasure of presenting a much-loved daughter's hand in marriage that so upset him. Later on, once the wound had healed, Morris and his son-in-law (John Burland) appear to have become the best of friends.Google Scholar

55 This should of course be My song shall be alway (HWV 252), the third of the so-called ‘Chandos’ anthems. The parts (in nine books) had just been copied by ‘M^r Spittle’ (for whom see notes 36 above and 64 below). That this was by no means the only music by Handel to have been performed in these parts long before it became publicly available is a matter to which I shall return later in this article.Google Scholar

56 For biographical details see New Grove II (s.v. ‘Alborea’ and ‘Fiocco'). Ten years earlier, in August 1714, Morris had purchased a volume of Fiocco motets, presumably the Sacri concentus, op. 1, by Joseph-Hector's elder brother, Jean-Joseph, and seven years later, in 1731, Joseph-Hector succeeded Willem de Fesch as organist of Antwerp Cathedral. Interestingly, there is a good deal of music by Jean-Joseph Fiocco and his father (Pietro Antonio) in the library of York Minster, some of it adapted to English words by Valentine Nalson (1683–1723), a clergyman (subchanter at York) who, like Robert Creighton in Wells, also composed; see Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 402–6, and David Griffiths, ‘Music in the Minster Close: Edward Finch, Valentine Nalson, and William Knight in Early Eighteenth-Century York’, Music in the British Provinces, ed. Cowgill and Holman, 45–59 (esp. pp. 52–4).Google Scholar

57 Compare the figures cited above for the St Cecilia's Day festival in 1720.Google Scholar

58 There was also rather a crowd on 11 August when, once again, they had Evans's ‘Camp Hoboys joining with us, in the Performance of our Musick’. Two years earlier, on 4 September 1722, the club had entertained ‘15 or 16 Officers of the Foot-Soldiers lately come from Ireland’.Google Scholar

59 The standard regimental history is D. Scott Daniel, 4th Hussar: The Story of the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, 1685–1958 (Aldershot, 1959). For the careers of General Evans and Colonel Brown, see Dalton, Charles, George the First's Army 1714–1727, 2 vols. (London, 1910–12), passim. Whereas Horse Guards were allocated a kettle-drummer and trumpeters as part of the establishment, the paid musicians for a mounted troop of dragoons were one or two side-drummers and a single oboist.Google Scholar

60 For much help and friendly advice in what is, for me, unfamiliar territory, I am indebted to Dr Alan Guy of the National Army Museum, Stephen Wood, and especially Dr John Houlding, author of Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army 1715–1795 (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar

61 In 1726 some of Claver Morris's relations on his late wife's side were fined a huge sum (£1,200) for smuggling, which, as Hobhouse (The Diary of a West Country Physician, 23) points out, just goes to show ‘the extent of the contraband trade then carried on and patronised by quite respectable citizens’ (including, one might add, Morris himself).Google Scholar

62 See Hawkins, Sir John, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music, 5 vols. (London, 1776; repr. of the 1853 edn, 2 vols., New York, 1963), ii, 806n. and 860. John Sonmon's portrait of Blathwayt as a child seated at the harpsichord currently hangs in the Music Faculty at Oxford, and is said to have been given to the university by Blathwayt himself. Another portrait painted in Rome in 1707 is to be seen at Dyrham Park, now a National Trust property, near Chippenham. P. de Blainville's fascinating account of the Blathwayts' Grand Tour was published in The Grand Tour: Letters and Accounts Relating to the Travels through Europe of the Brothers William and John Blathwayt of Dyrham Park 1705–1708, trans. and ed. Nora Hardwick (Bristol, 1985).Google Scholar

63 For more on John Blathwayt's continuing musical interests and, more particularly, his Italian operatic experiences whilst on the Grand Tour, see Gibson, Elizabeth, The Royal Academy of Music (1719–1728): The Institution and its Directors (New York, 1989), 53–61. Several years later, he was the dedicatee of Charles Avison's first set of Six Concertos, op. 2 (1740). According to Bennett Mitchell Zon, ‘Avison, Charles’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), ii, 1027–8 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/925, accessed 13 October 2007), Blathwayt supported him whilst he (Avison) was ‘in the service of the Newcastle merchant Ralph Jenison, MP for Northumberland’.Google Scholar

64 ‘M^r Spittle’, several times mentioned in the diary, is clearly the same Augustus Spittel, most likely a violinist, who surfaces in Salisbury 20 years later; see Donald Burrows and Rosemary Dunhill, Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris 1732–1780 (Oxford, 2002), 169, 229 and 261–2; also note 36 above. He first appears (in the accounts) as a copyist when, on 8 November 1717 ‘at M^r Harrington's’ (of whom much more anon), Morris paid him 10s. 9d. ‘for Pricking 2 of Stephani's Mottets’. Later that same year he also copied for Morris ‘1 more of Stephany's Mottets, with M^r Clark's Symphonys, & Interludes; & Hendle's Anthem in Score’. Though Spittle's labour was evidently paid for by Mr Harington, Morris ‘gave him a Guinea’ nevertheless. On 1 August 1720, Morris also paid Spittle a guinea ‘For Handel's Anthem in 8 parts, (My Song shall be) prick'd out in 9 Books’ and, three years later, another guinea for six concertos by one ‘Backlehamble’ (sic), a composer whom I have so far been unable to identify. As we have already seen, the Handel anthem was tried out by the music club in Wells on 2 August.Google Scholar

65 That Lampe was obviously subject to regimental rules should not, however, be taken to imply that he was necessarily in military service and subject to formal military discipline. He was almost certainly a civilian simply hired (by General Evans) to do a particular job, as also were his three oboe-playing colleagues.Google Scholar

66 The concerto (RV 335) ‘commonly call'd the Cuckow’ was quite extraordinarily popular in early eighteenth-century Britain, and was, says Burney (A General History, ed. Mercer, ii, 445), ‘the wonder and delight of all frequenters of country concerts’ in the days of his youth. The two had been published as a pair by Walsh just six months previously (and advertised as having been performed ‘by Monsieur Duburge [sic] at his late Consort'). The ‘Extravagant’ is actually op. 4 no. 5 (RV 347), as Michael Talbot kindly informs me.Google Scholar

67 His will (see The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 48) requests ‘a Consort of Musick of three Sonatas at least in the Room where my Body is placed before it be carried [out] of my House to be Interred’. For Hearne see the Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. Charles Edward Doble et al., 11 vols. (Oxford, 1885–1921), ix, 295 (under the date 7 April 1727). The ‘M^r Broad’ mentioned here may well have been the musician who, the following year, lost out to Nathaniel Priest in a disputed election for the post of organist at All Saints, Bristol (information from Jonathan Barry).Google Scholar

68 And just occasionally (as in 1710, 1716 and 1717) Claver Morris paid for the hire of their horses.Google Scholar

69 Also present at the 1709 festival was the Revd Thomas Naish, subdean of Salisbury Cathedral; see The Diary of Thomas Naish, ed. Doreen Slatter, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society (Devizes, 1965), 66. ‘M^r subdean Naish’ is also mentioned in Claver Morris's diary, seemingly as one of the performers on the occasion (as was John Harington too).Google Scholar

70 Originally they were six, but one (Gostlett) died (aged 24) in 1706. Their father, John Harington (1627–1700), sometime MP for Somerset and captain of a county troop of horse for Oliver Cromwell, had sired no fewer than 14 children, the last ten of them by Helena (née Gostlett), his fourth wife; for details see Poynton, Francis John, Memoranda, Historical and Genealogical, Relating to the Parish of Kelston, in the County of Somerset, 4 vols. (London, 1878–85), esp. ii, 30–4; also, though it is pretty thin on the period which we are concerned with here, Ian Grimble, The Harington Family (London, 1957). The Pedigree of the Harrington Family (London, [1931]) was directly culled from Poynton.Google Scholar

71 On 3 August; the second volume was not published until January 1726.Google Scholar

72 I have not so far succeeded in identifying Mr Perry of Durham, though John Harington had a friend by the name of Perry who is mentioned by Morris in connection with the 1709 St Cecilia's Day festival in Wells; there is, however, no mention at that stage of his being ‘of Durham’. Mr Harrison was probably the Revd John Harrison, vicar of St Mary Magdalen Church in Oxford from 1716 until his death five years later. Dinglestadt must have travelled over from Bristol.Google Scholar

73 On another occasion (5 April 1723) ‘M^rs Harington & the Family at Kelston lock'd from me my Splatterdashes [i.e. puttees or leggings to protect one's lower legs from mud], & made me stay there this day also’. It was the end of a three-day visit. The day before the company ‘perform'd a great deal of excellent Italian Musick’, and on the 5th it was ‘Concertoes, & much Vocal Musick, exactly well’.Google Scholar

74 In the mid-1730s Ashe and his family moved to Salisbury, where he (and later his son Robert) were to become heavily involved in their local musical society. For details, see Burrows and Dunhill, Music and Theatre in Handel's World, passim. Ashe, Delarone and Spittle had also taken part in a Kelston concert on 25 February; so too a ‘M^r Stagge’ at whose house in Bath the meeting with Geminiani was later to take place.Google Scholar

75 On an earlier occasion (8 January 1723), also at Kelston, nine of Valentini's concertos had been performed.Google Scholar

76 On the chronology of the Chandos anthems and the other works mentioned here, see Beeks, Graydon, ‘Handel and Music for the Earl of Carnarvon’, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge, 1985), 1–20; also Donald Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal (Oxford, 2005), 144–66 and Table 6.1 in particular.Google Scholar

77 Charles Henry Collins Baker and Muriel I. Baker, The Life and Circumstances of James Brydges, First Duke of Chandos, Patron of the Liberal Arts (Oxford, 1949).Google Scholar

78 Legend has it that Handel was an occasional visitor to Keynsham, and that he played the organ in the local church (of St John the Baptist) where there evidently is, rather surprisingly, a brass offertory plate inscribed ‘S. Johns Church Keynsham G. F. Handel 1750'. He is also supposed to have given them a bell. Both the Harington house at Kelston and the Brydges house at Keynsham have long since been destroyed. According to Lady Caroline Brydges (granddaughter of the duke), writing (it appears) in the summer of 1751, there were ‘about 14 of the common people that sing in the Church [at Keynsham] all Handel's Anthems & with out any instruments'; for further details see Beeks, Graydon, ‘A Curious Handel Performance at Keynsham’, Newsletter of the American Handel Society, 13/2 (August 1998), 5–6.Google Scholar

79 Though the action was brought by the vicars choral, it would appear that the bishop was the actual driving force behind it. According to Morris, two of their number (Messrs Nickells and Nooth) came to see him on 30 October 1725 and told him ‘that they & others of the Vicars would if I pleas'd refuse to Join in the Action they were commanded by Bishop Hooper to Commence (with their Brethren) against me, […] [but] I desir'd them they would join in it, & not incurr the Bishop's Displeasure’. See also The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 123–5, under the dates 22 October, 1 November and 15 November 1725; it is clear from the diary itself that things turned quite nasty in the spring of the following year.Google Scholar

80 For the names of the beneficiaries and how much each got, see ibid., 134.Google Scholar

81 A rather more elaborate monument was later erected, and, surmounted by a bust, may still be seen on the east wall of the cloister. Its Latin text, together with an English translation, can be found ibid., 46–7 (Appendix A), and is a noble testament to a life which, though it did not quite attain the biblical three score years and ten, was nevertheless lived to the full, and to considerable effect in the local community. For the bust see Scrase, Tony, Wells: A Pictorial History (Chichester, 1992), Plate 81; Plate 80 provides another (and somewhat earlier) view of the Claver Morris house.Google Scholar

82 Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 85 (1959), 17–30.Google Scholar

83 See The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754–1765, ed. David Vaisey (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar

84 I am indebted to one of my two anonymous referees for bringing this important article to my notice.Google Scholar

85 See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 36.Google Scholar

86 See Hobhouse, ‘The Library of a Physician’, 90; among other music apparently purchased by Morris during this period were items by Byrd, Croft and Handel (see ibid., 95). There is, however, no sign of any music by Byrd or Croft in the surviving accounts, and the Croft ‘Song for his Degree’ mentioned in the diary was in any case not written until 1713. In his chapter on ‘Music in Wells’ (p. 39) Hobhouse also mentions three other composers ([Angelo] Maria Fiore, Petz (sic) and Torelli) whose music he claims Morris to have owned; if so it must have been acquired between 1698 and 1708, and have been listed somewhere in the now-missing volume of accounts. The Fiore would almost certainly have been his Trattimenti da camera a due stromenti (Lucca, 1698), and the Pez possibly his Duplex genius (Augsburg, 1696) but much more probably one or other of the two volumes of sonatas and airs for two flutes and bass published by Walsh early in 1707 (items 231 and 242 in William C. Smith, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by John Walsh During the Years 1695–1720, London, 1968). The Torelli could have been any one of his opp. 1–6.Google Scholar

87 For what little is known of the composer, grandfather of Richard Langdon (later organist of Exeter Cathedral), see John S. Bumpus, A History of English Cathedral Music, 2 vols. (London, 1908), ii, 344–5. Like Claver Morris, Langdon was an arch High Church Tory (as is evident from the text of two of his catches in Oxford, Christ Church, MS Mus. 1219 (f)).Google Scholar

88 See Smith, A Bibliography of the Musical Works Published by John Walsh, 129 (item 432).Google Scholar

89 For Reali (who does not make it into New Grove II), see Basso, Dizionario enciclopedico universale, x, 261; also Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Venetian Instrumental Music from Gabrieli to Vivaldi (3rd edn, New York, 1994), 194.Google Scholar

90 In the last of the many Consorts of Musick recorded in the diary and given by Claver Morris at his own home (on Monday, 11 July 1726), all 12 of Tibaldi's trio sonatas were played, whilst many of the company ‘stay'd till past 1 a clock’. See The Diary of a West Country Physician, ed. Hobhouse, 134, for what they ate and drank on the occasion.Google Scholar