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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
An overlooked pamphlet of Thomas Pierce's civil-war Latin polemic appends four unascribed English verse-texts dated 1647-9. Pierce's contemporary Anthony Wood ascribed them to him, and named musical setters: William Child, Nicholas Lanier, and Arthur Phillips. Ejected for royalism from Magdalen College, Oxford, Pierce returned as its Restoration President. In 1649, though, why would Lanier, Master of the King's Music, have set a then-ousted don's ‘Funeral Hymn’ for Charles I?
1 GB-Ob MS Wood D. 19. (4.) ff. 31, 81v-82, 97v, 98-99. Other comments on musicians crop up elsewhere, e.g. Wood's Athenae Oxonienses and Fasti: quality of all tends to vary with the informants, not often named.
2 GB-Lbl 808.e.29. (4°; seemingly unique): STC gives it no number but a side-reference under C2740. An on-line photographic copy has been available since 2015: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4CJkAAAAcAAJ. Two feeble three-part rounds are ascribed to ‘Mr. Thomas Pierce’ in Catch that Catch can ed. John Hilton (1652), 96: ‘Hey hoe, behold, I will shew a pye’ and ‘Horse to trot, I say’. The first recurs with a variant or two in editions of 1658, 1663, 1667 and The Musical Companion (1673). Wood mentioned (f. 97v) how through Dr (Benjamin) Rogers he had seen other settings, three-part; one entitled ‘Come, Hymen, come’. He left Pierce's part in these, music or words (or both) unclarified.
3 The Life and Times of Anthony Wood ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford, 1891), i, 420: 9 November 1661 ‘Dr. <Thomas> Peirce chose into Dr. <John> Oliver's place … For 10 yeares that he raigned (for he use to stile himself “prince”) the College was continually in faction and faction he fostered . . . But at last they got him out for the deanery of Salisbury . . . more fit for the pulpit than government, being high, self-conceited, proud.’
4 John Derek Shute, ‘Anthony A Wood and his Manuscript Wood D (19) 4 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford: An Annotated Transcription’ (D.Phil. in Musicology thesis, International Institute for Advanced Studies, Clayton, Missouri, 1979, is valuable though at times faultily transcribed).
5 Though without direct affiliation or college residence, Child had been admitted B.Mus. (Oxon) 8 July 1631.
6 De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens (1608–1687) ed. J.A. Worp, IV 1644–1649 (’S-Gravenhage, 1915), 130, no. 3904; Lanier at Antwerp, 1 March 1645 (NS dating), to Huygens, secretary to the Staatholder, the Prince of Orange:
Good Sir, I know, you are so well stored with most excellent Italian compositions, that were it not to obay you, I should shame to present you these. But I most humbly desier you to consider indulgently, that they come from one, old, unhappye and in a manner in exile, plundred not only of his fortune, but of all his musicall papers, nay, almost of his witts and virtue, and hath nothing left him now, but the happiness to be sincerely ever . . .
7 Certain that ‘Lanier's self-portrait was painted at Oxford’, Michael I. Wilson dated it 1644: Nicholas Lanier Master of the King's Musick (Aldershot and Brookfield VT, 1994), 198–9, plate 29. However the face in it appears little less youthful than in the treatment by Van Dyck (now at Vienna), dated by Wilson himself to 1625. One even earlier of 1613 has emerged: Benjamin M. Hebbert, ‘A New Portrait of Nicholas Lanier’, Early Music, 38/4 (2010), 509–22.
8 Malcolm Rogers, William Dobson 1611–46 (London, 1983), no. 46, 88–90.
9 Wilson, Nicholas Lanier, 200–1. It verges on outright impossible to place other members of the trio in London, 1646.
10 Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series 1641–1643, 66, letters patent dated 30 July 1641.
11 Jeremy Wood awards Gerbier office as master of ceremonies from April 1641 (ODNB). The previous incumbent, Sir John Finet, did not die until 12 July, according to Roderick Clayton (ibid. under ‘Cotterell’), who accepts George Vertue's erroneous identification of the Lanier figure in the triple portrait as Gerbier: ‘At about this time in Oxford, William Dobson painted himself in jovial company with Gerbier and Cotterell. Soon . . . these friends parted acrimoniously . . . Gerbier fled abroad . . . Cotterell continued courtly and military service.’ Gerbier is no candidate at all for this portrayal, made untenable by his surviving likenesses (based on Van Dyck). He was discredited by mid-1641, when his diplomatic duplicity in the Spanish Netherlands was exposed.
12 After Oxford surrendered, Cotterell left precipitately for Antwerp without lingering in London, it seems: Lanier had long preceded him there. Relevant for first introductions is a portrait by Dobson predating Oxford; probably of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, a previous Master of Requests at court, and father to Cotterell's friend and literary associate William Aylesbury. Rogers (1983), no. 76, 32–3.
13 Dobson portrayed Cotterell as a serving officer, too: Rogers (1983) no. 33. He executed two other works for Cotterell, nos. 34–35. One, an allegorical ‘history picture’, could be as early as 1641–2.
14 A warrant of 19 October 1639 confirmed him with annual livery, taking the place of Bartholomew Montagne, Records of English Court Music III (1625–1649) ed. Andrew Ashbee (Snodland, 1988), 102 (RECM). RECM V (1625–1714) (Aldershot, 1991), 17, 19 gives his salary for this post as £60 from the year ending Michaelmas 1640, and at £30 for a half-year in 1642. Its cessation may well mark his departure.
15 Michelle A. White, Henrietta Maria and the English Civil War (Aldershot and Burlington VT, 2006), 77–8.
16 RECM VIII (1485–1714) (Aldershot, 1995), 135–6.
17 ‘Mr. Henry Lawes, who furnishing me with some [texts], directed me for the rest, to send into Germany to Mr Laneere, who by his great skill gave a life and harmony to all that he set . . .’ Poems Written by the Right Honorable William Earl of Pembroke . . . (1660), preface ‘To the Reader’, Lbl E.1924.(3.).
18 C.V.R. Blacker and David Pinto, ‘Desperately seeking William: portraiture of the Lawes brothers in context’, Early Music, xxxvii/2 (2009), 157–74.
19 ‘Jo. Wilson D. Musicæ Ætat. Suæ 59. 1655 | Ro. Fisher Pinxit.’ He was in his post by March 1656.
20 Wood D. 19. (4.) f. 97v.
21 Francis F. Madan, ‘A New Bibliography of the Eikon Basilike’; Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications New Series vol. III (1949) (Oxford, 1950).
22 Short Title Catalogue (Wing), respectively C2737A, C2740. The precise date is in George Thomason's copy. After Charles had refused to plead in court hearing, his defence was cut off short.
23 This has a false imprint, The Hague, but owns to its real sponsor, the indefatigable royalist publisher Royston in London. Its description in STC omits the Greek part in titling, and miscalls it duodecimo (12° instead of 2°).
24 Ob Wood 364.(11.).; Madan (1950), 99, no. 102.
25 Wood D. 19. (4.) f.98r.
26 George Vertue later harvested Wood, noting ‘a Funeral Hymn to the Royal Martyr, 30. Jan. 1648. writ by Tho. Pierce & set to Musick. by. Nich. Laniere. at Oxford’: Lbl Additional MS 23070 p. 63 (f. 54). The addition ‘at Oxford’ is probably presumption, not privileged information. Madan's other precursor to draw independently on Wood for Pierce, and on that basis list musical setters, was John Rouse Bloxam, A Register of the Presidents, Fellows, Demies, Instructors in Grammar and in Music, Chaplains, Clerks, Choristers, and other Members of Saint Mary Magdalen College in the University of Oxford, from the Foundation of the College to the Present Time Vol. 1 The Choristers (Oxford, MDXXXLIII), 48–9. William Prideaux Courtney followed Bloxam, DNB 1st edition. Its successor ODNB does not mention Pierce's verse efforts.
27 Lbl 808.e.29, as spotted by Madan. This revised Rationes is given only a title paragraph, without place of imprint or date, suggesting a piece produced solely for Pierce.
28 The given date ‘xvii Calend. Feb.’ is presumably intended for ‘a.d. xvii (etc.)’: Warwick died 15 January 1683 (NS). This alters by a year the date for the pamphlet suggested by Madan, or possibly longer of course.
29 ΕΜΨΥΧΟΝ ΝΕΚΡΟΝ. Or the Lifelesnes of Life On the hether side of Immortality (for R. Royston; London, 1659) STC (Wing) P2182; also reprinted later in his collected sermons, still giving the epitaph; though that does not appear on Peyto's own tomb (with his wife: parish church of Saint Giles, Chesterton, Warwickshire). Nor incidentally does Warwick's tomb at Chislehurst (Bromley, London) use Pierce's ostentatious Latin epitaph.
30 Madan no. 65: ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΑ | THE WORKES | OF | King Charles | THE MARTYR | . . . (by James Flesher for R. Royston; London, 1662), 458 ‘Epitaph’.
31 Hammond was one of the king's chaplains during his confinement at Carisbrooke Castle in 1647. A former rector of Penshurst who maintained association with the Sidneys into the 1640s or beyond, he is linked to Pierce's patroness, Dorothy Spencer née Sidney, Countess of Sunderland (widowed 1643). His Will bequeathed books to Pierce and a sum of money to Pierce's son Robert. His epitaph in the parish church of Saint Mary and All Saints, Hampton Lovett, Worcestershire, cannot manage more than the first 32 lines out of 94 by Pierce.
32 To follow it, Pierce quoted late-classical Greek and Latin supporting authorities to bolster his case for autocracy; seemingly not found in any other version from 1649 onwards, Latin or English.
33 This in fact probably was Wood's source, even if in an earlier form. He stated that a verse section of Pierce's pieces for setting was ‘printed at the end of’ the version of Rationes known to him: D.(19.)4. f. 98r-v.
34 Pierce continued issuing small items like this pamphlet until his death: cf Courtney, DNB. ‘At his funeral there was given to every mourner a copy of his book entitled “Death considered as a Door to a Life of Glory [anon.] Printed for the Author's private use”, n.d. [1690?].’ The British Library copy of that is annotated to credit it to Pierce: Lbl 699.g.35.
35 George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie used square brackets around passages heightened by italic, to equate to one function of more modern quotation marks: the differentiation or opposition of two phrases as alternative terms, as in quotations from another language, or in definitions.
36 For a solo setting, setter and versifier unnamed, see source-lists below.
37 Lbl E.398.(12.); noted by G. Thorn-Drury, N&Q Tenth Series 1 (January–June, 1904), 250; listed as STC (Wing) L3239A with a presumption of Richard Lovelace's authorship. This pamphlet has a date mainly cut away, but is bound with items of 1647. Overcautiously, Thorn-Drury did not rule out a case for a date of 1649: see also his edition of Parnassus Biceps (London, 1927). The Poems of Richard Lovelace ed. C.H. Wilkinson (Oxford, 1930), 276–86 took account of Thorn-Drury's work.
38 ‘Bright Soul, instruct poor mortals how to mourn’, Rationes, 30. ‘Bright Soul! instruct us Mortals how to mourn’ (unascribed), STC (Wing) E465; extant at US-Sm (Bridgewater 133296) and GB-Occc: called a ‘broadside’, this single sheet may instead be a libretto for a clandestine commemorative service. Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Eng 1624, pp. 131–2 (He 24 no. 36) is concordant and seems derivative.
39 ODNB, by L.M. Middleton, rev. David S. Knight, and Grove 6, by John Caldwell and Alan Brown.
40 He thus counts from this point as a servant in the dowager queen's household, alongside Lanier.
41 ODNB.
42 The First Set of Psalmes of III Voyces Fitt for private Chappells or other private meetings with a continuall Base either for the Organ or Theorbo newly composed after the Italian way . . . (London, 1639).
43 ODNB under John Dobson, and Royston (who seems to have been generally untouchable).
44 John Aubrey, ‘Brief Lives,’ chiefly of Contemporaries . . . between the Years 1669 & 1696 ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford, 1898), ii, 288. Wood took up his phrase in Athenae Oxonienses.
45 A sign of how Pierce explored the epithet ‘martyr’ was that his first translation of Rationes as first circulated ostentatiously used Greek ‘makarites’ to describe Charles, but added the even more inflated ‘megalomartyr’ for the revised version. See texts given at end.
46 ODNB ‘Royston’:
In 1665 Dr Henry Yerbury complained that ‘scandalous libels [had been] published to his defamation by Rich. Royston, of London, the King's stationer, who will not discover the author’ (CSPDom, 5.168). This, no doubt, refers to Thomas Pierce's True Accompt of the Proceedings (1663), which was an account of how Pierce, as head of Magdalen College, tried to expel the catholic Yerbury from the fellowship. The book was published without author's or publisher's names.
Wood's account of Pierce's machinations in forging a purported attack on himself is found on the flyleaf and title page of his copy, N.G. Dr. Pierce his preaching exemplified in his practice (1663); Ob Wood 515. (28a.).
47 Thomas Stanley's Psalterium Carolinum, based on Eikòn Basiliké, is chief, as set by John Wilson (1657). The reissue (1660) may have been largely of the first book, a libretto, with a cancel title page and new dedication to Charles II; with or without the musical partbooks (books 2–5, voices and basso continuo). In his songbook (f. 147), Wilson set for solo bass the lament by James Butler, Marquis of Ormond: ‘Thou great and good! Could I but rate’, English Song 1625–1660 ed. Ian Spink (London, 1971), MB 33, no. 30.
48 See Pepys, ‘as much of natural eloquence as most men that ever I heard in my life, mixed with so much learning’, 6 April 1663; Evelyn, ‘a little over-sharp, and not at all proper for the auditory . . . at Whitehall’, 18 March 1678.
49 His translated Rationes can fall into dog-Latin. Its original and revision consistently render ‘auctoritas’ and its inflexions as ‘authoritas’ (etc.): an astounding slip in an ostensibly educated man. Cf Courtney, DNB. ‘He deprived Thomas Jeanes of his fellowship, ostensibly for a pamphlet justifying the proceedings of the parliament against Charles I, but really for criticising the latinity of his “Concio Synodica ad Clerum” (Wood, Fasti, ii. 220).’
50 From 1650, notorious royalists were restricted from moving above five miles from home, recalling similar previous limits put on papists. It did prevent Pierce's friend Hammond from visiting close family.