The madrigalists and virginalists of Elizabethan and Jacobean England have been known and admired ever since the great work of Fuller-Maitland, Barclay Squire, Dolmetsch, van den Borren and Fellowes (to mention only the most important); yet until now the equally accomplished and even more extensive school of lutenist composers has never been systematically studied. The nearest approach to such a study was made by Richard Newton in an unpublished B.Litt. thesis and in a paper derived from the thesis which he read to the Musical Association in 1939, entitled ‘English Lute Music of the Golden Age’. Although his study represents much thorough research, only the bare outlines of his findings have appeared in print.