Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Vautor, Thomas
VAUTOR, THOMAS (fl. 1616), musician, was apparently a household musician in the family of Anthony Beaumont, of Glenfield, Leicestershire; and filled the same post to Sir George Villiers after his marriage with Anne Beaumont in 1592. On 11 May 1616 Vautor supplicated for the degree of Mus. Bac. at Oxford, which was granted on condition of his composing a choral hymn for six voices; he was admitted on 4 July. At this time George Villiers, the son of Vautor's patrons, was rising in the king's favour, and in 1619 he was created Marquis of Buckingham, upon which Vautor dedicated to him a collection of twenty-two madrigals, entitled ‘The First Set; being Songs of diverse Ayres and Natures for Five and Sixe parts; Apt for Vyols and Voices.’ Among the pieces are two fa-las, a ‘Farewell to Oriana’ (Queen Elizabeth), an elegy on Prince Henry, and another on Sir Thomas Beaumont of Stoughton, Leicestershire. These had evidently been composed at an earlier period; and Vautor mentions in the dedication that ‘some were composed in your tender yeares, and in your most worthy father's house.’ Nothing further is recorded of Vautor, and no other compositions by him are known, either in print or manuscript. None of Vautor's music has been reprinted; but two specimens of the verses, ‘Blush not rude present’ and ‘Sweet Suffolk Owl,’ are included in Mr. A. H. Bullen's ‘Lyrics from the Songbooks of the Elizabethan Age.’ His collection is very rare. Anthony Wood was not aware that he had published anything; and Hawes, in reprinting Morley's ‘Triumphs of Oriana’ (1814), did not include Vautor's ‘Farewell to Oriana’ among the supplementary numbers. A list of the twenty-two pieces is given in Rimbault's ‘Bibliotheca Madrigaliana.’
[Vautor's collection of madrigals in the British Museum; Boase and Clark's Register of the University of Oxford, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 148, where he is inaccurately called John Vauler; Foster's Alumni Oxon. p. 1539; Davey's History of English Music, pp. 215, 224.]