The three large-scale performances of oratorios which celebrated the openings of organs in St. Peter's Church, Liverpool on 30 April, 1 and 2 May 1766, in St. Thomas's, Liverpool on 7–10 August, 1770, and in St. John's, Manchester on 29–31 August 1770, were succeeded by a long-continued though at times irregular series of festivals at Liverpool and a somewhat shorter series at Manchester. These series, which established both places as the leading festival centres in northern England, appear closely related to Manchester's and Liverpool's late eighteenth-century industrial and commercial expansion. Indeed, they may well be placed among the cultural first-fruits of the Industrial Revolution and they almost certainly represent attempts to satisfy a growing desire for cultural standing and prestige among the rising generation of northern manufacturers. The re-establishment of the Liverpool festival on a triennial basis after 1823 (following a musically lean period during the French wars) and the two music-meetings held in Manchester in 1828 and 1836 formed part of a new wave of enthusiasm for festivals that swept over England in the peaceful and prosperous 1820s.

On 30th July 1674 the will of Pelham Humfrey was proved in the Court of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. Humfrey, who remains perhaps most elusive among major composers of the Restoration period, had died at Windsor some two weeks earlier. The location of the will in the Archives Department of the City of Westminster Public Library has provided the longest known example of his handwriting. Manuscripts which have hitherto been considered as possibly being in Humfrey's hand may now be confirmed or rejected as autographs with confidence. The only other unquestionable source of his hand is the minute book of the Corporation of Music in which there are six examples of his signature written between 1672 and 1674. All but one of these are signed exactly as he signed his will; the one differs only in that the christian name is written ‘Pelm’.

This set of manuscripts has come to be known as the Gyffard part-books because it appears to have belonged at an early date to one Philip Gyffard, whose identity is uncertain. Wood mentions a Thomas Gifford who incorporated Doctor of Physic at Oxford on May 20th, 1642, formerly (1636) of the University of Leyden, Holland, but there is no particular reason for supposing that he is the man. On f. 112 of the Triplex book (17803) there is scribbled ‘this is Philip’, and in the same book on f. 242v ‘this is mi boke thomas Charles philip… ‘, and again on f. 243 ‘this is . . [?] . . Gyffard’ and ‘thomas Charles’.

The British Museum manuscript Additional 15117 is well known to scholars and students and many pieces from it have been referred to or transcribed. The collection is usually described as simply a miscellaneous collection of songs and instrumental pieces ranging in date from the 1560s to about 1620. The British Museum catalogue itself suggests that the manuscript contains a very diverse and rather arbitrary collection of music. In the discussion which follows I suggest that the manuscript repays consideration as a complete collection, one compiled possibly over quite a brief period of time and reflecting a single interest: an interest in the music used in and associated with the popular theatre. Any conclusions one is tempted to draw about the total plan and intention of the collection from a study of individual pieces and their relation to one another must, of course, be tentative. However, several of the pieces in the collection - some of them well known from other sources - exist in rather unusual versions or forms and this requires explanation. The cumulative evidence of the conclusions one is led to draw about individual pieces does seem significant and therefore worth recording here even if only as hypothesis.