histriones of the Middle Ages, with their marescallus, were still represented by a body of trumpeters under a serjeant.[1] But the personal taste of Henry VIII for music had brought a stream of new performers to court, and this had continued under Elizabeth. Many of them were of foreign extraction, and certain families, such as the Laniers, the Ferrabosci, the Bassani of Venice, or rather, as their name denotes, of Bassano in the Veneto, the Lupi of Milan, formed little dynasties of their own at court, father, son, and grandson succeeding each other, in the royal service through the best part of a century. At the end of her reign Elizabeth was entertaining at least seven distinct bodies of musicians, whose members numbered in all between sixty and seventy. For wind instruments there were, besides the trumpeters, the recorders, the flutes, and the hautboys and sackbuts; for string instruments the viols or violins and the lutes. There were also an organist attached to the chapel and possibly players on the virginals.[2] The most important of these were the lutenists, who sang as well as played, and often composed their own songs, and appear to have been of higher standing than the mere instrumentalists. One of them was specially designated as the Lute of the Privy Chamber.[3] It seems probable that some of the superfluous Sewerships for the Chamber were conferred on them, and Alfonso Ferrabosco may have been about 1575 a Groom of the Chamber.[4]
Finally, there were a number of offices, called in Elizabethan parlance 'standing offices', each under a Master or other head of its own, which can only be regarded as on the border-*line of the Household. These were the Great Wardrobe, the Revels, the Tents, the Toils, the Works, the Armoury, the Ordnance, and the Mint. They were financed separately from the Household, and had their various head-quarters in London away from the palace. But their officers were
- ↑ Cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 50.
- ↑ Lafontaine, 45. Numerous records of the musical establishment are collected by Lafontaine from the Lord Chamberlain's Records, and by W. Nagel, Annalen der englischen Hofmusik (Beilage zu den Monatsheften für Musikgeschichte, Bd. 26), and more completely in the Musical Antiquary (Oct. 1909-Apr. 1913) from the T. C. Accounts. The fee lists are not to be relied upon.
- ↑ This was Mathias Mason. The lutenists also include Robert Hales (1586-1603), Henry Porter (1603), also described in the same year as a sackbut, and Philip Rosseter (1604-23), on whom cf. ch. xv.
- ↑ John Heywood was certainly a Sewer of the chamber to Henry VIII (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul's), and Edward VI had a group of singers holding these posts (Lafontaine, 9), but there is no definite evidence of a similar arrangement under Elizabeth. On Alfonso Ferrabosco, cf. ch. xiv (Italians).
