altered from time to time; during the greater part of Elizabeth's reign it stood at 10. Each had an annual fee of £3 6s. 8d. They were lodged within the Castle, in a chamber north of the chapel, and next to a building founded by James Denton in 1520, known as the 'New Commons'. This is now merged in the canons' houses, but a doorway is inscribed 'Edes pro Sacellaenorum et Choristarum conviviis extructae A. D. 1519'. There were also an epistoler and a gospeller.[1] The music was 'useyd after ye order and maner of ye quenes chappell'.[2] One of the clerks, whose position corresponded to that of the Gentlemen of the household Chapel Royal, was appointed by the Chapter of the College to act as Organist and Master of the Children. The College was privileged, like the Chapel Royal itself, to recruit its choir by impressment. A commission for this purpose, issued on 8 March 1560, merely repeats the terms of one granted by Mary, which itself had confirmed earlier grants by Henry VIII and Edward VI.[3]
The Master at Elizabeth's accession was one Preston.[4] But he was deprived, as unwilling to accept the new ecclesiastical settlement; and the first Master under whom the choristers appear to have acted at Court was Richard Farrant. He had been a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from about 1553, but was replaced on 24 April 1564, doubtless on his appointment as Master at Windsor.[5] On the following 30 September the
- ↑ E. Ashmole, Institution of the Garter (1672), 127; R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, Annals of Windsor, i. 426, 477; Report of Cathedrals Commission (1854), App. 467; V. H. Berks, ii. 106; H. M. C. Various MSS. vii. 10.
- ↑ Tighe-Davis, ii. 45, from Stowe's account 'of the Castell of Wyndsore' (Harl. MS. 367, f. 13).
- ↑ Nichols, i. 81, and Collier, i. 170, print a copy in Ashm. MS. 1113,
f. 252, from the Elizabethan commission preserved at Windsor, as follows:
'Elizabeth R.
Whereas our castle of Windsor hath of old been well furnished with singing men and children, We, willing it should not be of less reputation in our days, but rather augmented and increased, declare, that no singing men or boys be taken out of the said chapel by virtue of any commission, not even for our household chapel: and we give power to the bearer of this to take any singing men and boys from any chapel, our own household and St. Paul's only excepted. Given at Westminster, this 8^{th} of March in the second year of our reign.'
A further copy from Ashm. MS. 1113 is in Addl. MS. 4847, f. 117. Copies or notes of the three earlier commissions are in this MS. and in Ashm. MS. 1124. In Ashm. MS. 1132, f. 169, is a letter of 18 April 1599 from the Chapter to Sir R. Cecil defending their conduct in taking a singing man from Westminster. - ↑ Gee, 230, in a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia (1571), 688, 'Magistri Musices . . . Prestonus in oppido Vindelisoriensi'. Can this Preston be the playwright (cf. ch. xxiii)?
- ↑ Rimbault, 1; Stopes, Shakespeare's Environment, 243.
