John Bull – First Gresham Professor Of Music
We have no evidence of a direct connection between Sir Thomas Gresham and Hampton Court Palace, but we do have evidence that Sir Thomas’s father, Sir Richard Gresham, supplied tapestries and drapes to Cardinal Wolsey for his new palace at Hampton Court, around the time of Sir Thomas’s infancy.
Around the time that Thomas Gresham was born, c1519, Henry VIII was still a relatively young monarch, about 27 years old, although he had already been king for some 10 years.
Henry VIII is reputed to have been a fine tennis player as a young man and also reputed to have been a fine musician. There is a rich tradition of late medieval nobles being enthusiasts of both music and tennis. Philip The Bold of Burgundy, some 150 years before Henry VIII, being a notable example and subject of a recent performance symposium:
Henry VIII: King, Tennis Player & Composer
Indeed, around the time of Thomas Gresham’s birth, a wonderful manuscript of polyphony was produced, known colloquially as the Henry VIII Manuscript. In British Library circles it is known as MS 31922. If you think “circa 1519” is a bit vague for the birth of Thomas Gresham, dig “circa 1510-1520” for the Henry VIII manuscript. Probably c1518.
The manuscript contains 109 pieces, including 20 songs and 13 instrumentals attributed to Henry VIII. If you have a DIAMM (Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music) registration you can peruse the whole book on-line here.
Question for the audience: would anyone care to name one or more of Henry VIII’s compositions?
No, not Greensleeves. But we shall come back to Greensleeves.
We have no reason to doubt the attribution of the Manuscript’s 33 pieces to Henry VIII. Some of those pieces are adaptations of existing works and others were doubtlessly written in collaboration with tutors, although Henry alone gets the credit.
Probably the best known of Henry VIII’s compositions is Pastime With Good Company. Let’s give that one a go.
Pastime with good company
I love and shall until I die;
Grudge who lust, but none deny,
So God be pleased, thus live will I.
For my pastance,
Hunt, sing, and dance.
My heart is set:
All goodly sport
For my comfort,
Who shall me let?
Youth must have some dalliance,
Of good or illé, some pastance;
Company methinks then best
All thoughts and fancies to dejest:
For idleness
Is chief mistress
Of vices all.
Then who can say
But mirth and play
Is best of all?
Company with honesty
Is virtue vices to flee:
Company is good and ill
But every man hath his free will.
The best ensue,
The worst eschew,
My mind shall be:
Virtue to use,
Vice to refuse,
Shall I use me.
Oxford Camerata under Jeremy Summerly (a visiting Gresham professor of music) have recorded Pastime With Good Company – you can hear that recording by clicking here or below:
Henry VIII’s composing days, to the extent that we have a written record of them, seem to have petered out by 1520 and his mortal coil was shed in 1547. Which brings us to the inconvenient truth – it is utterly implausible that Henry VIII composed the song, or even heard the tune of Greensleeves.
Greensleeves
Greensleeves was first registered at The London Stationer’s Company on 3 September 1580 by Richard Jones: “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves”. It was the first but not the only ballad with Greensleeves in the title to be registered that month. Actually, in broadside ballad registration terms, a veritable epidemic of this new term, Greensleeves, broke out in early September 1580 and continued quite relentlessly for several years.
We cannot be sure whether any of the surviving lyrics were part of that initial 1580 bout of registration, but there is a very early surviving version of the song from 1584 in an anthology, A Handful of Pleasant Delights. In that book the song is entitled:
A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves. To the new tune of Green Sleeves.
We’ll be working from the 1584 version.
While it is entirely possible that tunes akin to the tune we now know as Greensleeves and lyrics akin to the 1580s lyrics might have been around for a while ahead of publication, it is unlikely that anything we might recognise as Greensleeves was around much before 1580.
My early music teacher, Ian Pittaway, explains the history of the piece on his website, click here or below.
The musical structure of the piece, which is grounded in the melodic, almost jazz-like progressions known as passamezzo antico and romanesca…
[Explain here/demonstrate what that means]
…which emerged in Italy in the first half of the 16th century, but this type of “ground” really caught on as part of the English style in the 1570s.
You can learn about and hear several examples of mid-16th century European composition in Christopher Page’s fascinating 2017 lecture: The Guitar in Tudor London – click here for all of the Gresham resources on that lecture or below to see the lecture:
While mid 16th century musical development will have come too late for Henry VIII, it is likely that Sir Thomas Gresham will have heard music in that style, during his several long stays in the low countries between 1543 and 1567. In particular, in the 1560s, when Gresham was Ambassador Plenipotentiary to Duchess Margaret of Parma, Antwerp and Brussels were melting pots of European culture. Burgon, in his Life and Times of Thomas Gresham, translates from a contemporary account of Antwerp by Lodovico Guicciardini, Description dc Tout le Pais Bas, &c. 1568:
It was not uncommon…to meet with a lady who could converse in five, six, or even seven different languages…
…on every side, and at all hours, were to be seen signs of festivity and merriment ; there was a constant succession of gay assemblies, nuptials, and dances ; while music, singing, and cheerful sounds prevailed in every street.
Sounds like my kind of town.
Whether it was this steeping in European music culture that inspired Thomas Gresham to endow music professorship, we’ll never know. Burgon thought it explained the choice of music for a professorship, whereas John Guy, in the most recent biography of Thomas Gresham, suggests that music (as a subset of astronomy) was part of the standard curriculum at Oxford and Cambridge in the late Tudor period and therefore not especially noteworthy.
We’ll also never know whether Thomas Gresham, who died in 1579, ever heard Greensleeves. It is, in my view, extremely unlikely that he heard either the specific tune or one of the lyrics that we now think of as Greensleeves, but it is highly likely that Thomas Gresham would have heard some progressive music of that kind, whether he liked it or not.
But what of the lyrics? I realised, when preparing this event, that I had never really listened to or thought about the words of Greensleeves. Of course I knew that the song was about a man who has courted a lady and not got anywhere, but I hadn’t REALLY thought about the words. I’m guessing that most of you have given this matter similarly little thought.
Your song sheets have got the first two and the last three verses of the 1584 version of the song. I have omitted the twelve middle verses, which I’ll explain when we get there.
Feel free to join in the chorus.
VERSE ONE
Alas, my love, ye do me wrong, To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you so long, Delighting in your company.
CHORUS
Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but Lady Greensleeves?
VERSE TWO
I have been ready at your hand, To grant whatever you would crave, I have both waged life and land, your love and goodwill for to have.
CHORUS
Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but Lady Greensleeves?
The next twelve verses describe in great detail the gifts that the unsuccessful suitor has heaped upon the lady in question. To paraphrase:
- “kerchers to thy head”,
- “board and bed”,
- “petticoats of the best”,
- “jewels to thy chest”,
- “a smock of silk”,
- “a girdle of gold”,
- “pearls”,
- “a purse”,
- “gilt knives”,
- “a pin case”,
- “crimson stockings of silk”,
- “pumps as white as was the milk”,
- “a gown of the grassy green”,
- “sleeves of satin” for “our harvest queen”,
- “garters decorated with gold and silver”,
- “a gelding”,
- “servant men clothed in green”,
- “dainties to eat”…
- …”and a cuddly toy…didn’t she do well?
I described these inventory list verses to my young singing teacher, Lydia White, who said:
That is SO ick…
The word Ick had not featured in my vocabulary until that moment, but I hardly needed to look up the definition to know what it means.
The singer/suitor, it seems to me, is utterly unsuited to the business of courtship. he knows how to let the lady and the listeners know how wealthy he is and how badly he feels he has been treated, without any self-awareness or understanding of what love is. He is pathetic and pitiful. Let’s sing the last three verses, which includes some language that sounds strangely modern, but I have not tinkered with the words – just a little with the spelling:
Let’s sing the rest of the song now.
VERSE FIFTEEN
Thou couldst desire no earthly thing, But still thou hadst it readily; Thy music still to play and sing, And yet thou wouldst not love me.
CHORUS
Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but Lady Greensleeves?
VERSE SIXTEEN
And who did pay for all this gear, That thou didst spend when pleased thee?
Even I that am rejected here, And thou distainst to love me.
CHORUS
Greensleeves was all my joy, Greensleeves was my delight, Greensleeves was my heart of gold, and who but Lady Greensleeves?
VERSE SEVENTEEN
Well, I will pray to God on high, That thou my constancy must see, And yet that once before I die, Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.
OUTRO
Greensleeves now farewell, adieu,
God I pray to prosper thee;
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me.
The Famous Victories Of Henry V
The difficulties we have attributing authorship of Tudor works is not confined to songs. It also applies to many plays. As does the desire to leap to the conclusion that someone famous must have written any interesting piece.
There is a famous scene in Shakespeare’s Henry V in which the Dauphin has sent a sarcastic gift of tennis balls to the new monarch, which snowballs the plot, via regal anger, to the Battle of Agincourt and English victory.
An anonymous earlier play, “The Famous Victories of Henry V”, includes that exact plot line – indeed many of the plot lines that unfold in Shakespeare’s second Henriad – Henry IV Parts One and Two plus Henry V.
The Famous Victories was probably written c1583. It must have been written by/before 1588, as there are accounts of William Knell and Richard Tarlton appearing for Queen Elizabeth’s Men in this play; both of those actors died in 1588. The play was first entered in the Stationers’ register in 1594, while the earliest surviving version was published in 1598. Here is a link to a full transcript of the play.
In “The Famous Victories”, the ton of tennis balls story arises in a long, pivotal ninth scene, set at Westminster Abbey, just after the coronation of Henry V. King Henry rejects his old friends, including Sir John “Jockey” Oldcastle – the Falstaff character – then turns his attention to seeking the Archbishop of Canterbury and others’ counsel on seizing the French crown. Henry’s counsellors sound hawkish, before introducing the Archbishop of Bourges who has brought with him an offer of money, the hand of Princess Katherine (which Henry desired) and a gift from the Dauphin:
ARCHBISHOP: And it please your Maiestie,
My Lord Prince Dolphin greets you well,
With this present.[He deliuereth a Tunne of Tennis Balles.]
HENRY 5: What a guilded Tunne? …
I pray you my Lord of Yorke, looke what is in it?
YORKE: And it please your Grace,
Here is a Carpet and a Tunne of Tennis balles.
HENRY 5: A Tunne of Tennis balles?
I pray you good my Lord Archbishop,
What might the meaning therof be?
ARCHBISHOP: And it please you my Lord,
A messenger you know, ought to keepe close his message,
And specially an Embassador.HENRY 5: But I know that you may declare your message …
To a king: the law of Armes allowes no lesse.
ARCHBISHOP: My Lord hearing of your wildnesse before your
Fathers death, sent you this my good Lord,
Meaning that you are more fitter for a Tennis Court
Then a field, and more fitter for a Carpet then the Camp.
HENRY 5: My lord prince Dolphin is very pleasant with me:
But tel him, that in steed of balles of leather,
We wil tosse him balles of brasse and yron,
Yea such balles as neuer were tost in France,
The proudest Tennis Court shall rue it, …
I, and thou Prince of Burges shall rue it.
This earlier play returns to the tennis ball motif several times later in the play. But in truth the dialogue is unexceptional. Shakespeare tackles the tennis ball story in Act One Scene 2 of Henry V, deploying his exceptionally rich command of language:
FIRST AMBASSADOR
Thus, then, in few.
Your highness, lately sending into France,
Did claim some certain dukedoms, in the right
Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third.
In answer of which claim, the prince our master
Says that you savour too much of your youth,
And bids you be advised there’s nought in France
That can be with a nimble galliard won;
You cannot revel into dukedoms there.
He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,
This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,
Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim
Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
KING HENRY V: What treasure, uncle?EXETER: Tennis-balls, my liege.
KING HENRY V: We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have march’d our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb’d
With chaces. And we understand him well,
How he comes o’er us with our wilder days,
Not measuring what use we made of them.
We never valued this poor seat of England;
And therefore, living hence, did give ourself
To barbarous licence; as ’tis ever common
That men are merriest when they are from home.
But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,
Be like a king and show my sail of greatness
When I do rouse me in my throne of France:
For that I have laid by my majesty
And plodded like a man for working-days,
But I will rise there with so full a glory
That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,
Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.
And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turn’d his balls to gun-stones; and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them…
Scary.
In the Famous Victories play, at the end of Scene 12, King Henry reprises his verbal volleys about the tennis balls [did you see what I did there?], ahead of a rather corny Scene 13 in which French soldiers talk incomprehensibly in mock French.
In Shakespeare’s Henry V Act 4, Scene 4, Pistol encounters a surrendering French soldier:
PISTOL Yield, cur.
FRENCH SOLDIER Je pense que vous êtes le gentilhomme
de bonne qualité.PISTOL Qualtitie calmie custure me. Art thou a gentleman?
What is thy name? Discuss.FRENCH SOLDIER Ô Seigneur Dieu!
PISTOL O, Seigneur Dew should be a gentleman. Perpend
my words, O Seigneur Dew, and mark: O Seigneur Dew, thou diest on point of fox, except, O Seigneur, thou do give to me egregious ransom.FRENCH SOLDIER Ô, prenez miséricorde! Ayez pitié de
moi!PISTOL Moy shall not serve…
I’m glad to report, following several further rounds of corny misunderstanding, that Pistol spares the poor French soldier for the modest fee of 200 gold coins.
The nonsense phrase that Pistol utters is a reference to another hugely popular tune and song of the late Elizabethan era, Caleno Custure Me. Another song steeped in mystery and evidence-free theories, as analysed debunked and transformed into sensible analysis by Ian Pittaway here or below.
Caleno Custure Me was first registered at Stationer’s Register in 1582 but the earliest surviving version, like Greensleeves, is in A Handful of Pleasant Delights. It’s quite a lengthy song if you sing all the verses – this abbreviated version works well. Feel free to join in the Caleno Custere Me lines once you get the hang of this simple but charming tune.
VERSE ONE
When as I view your comely grace, Caleno Custure Me;
Your golden hair, your angel’s face, Caleno Custure Me.
VERSE TWO
With in myself then I can say, Caleno Custure Me;
The night is gone, behold the day, Caleno Custure Me.
VERSE THREE
Then how dare I with boldened face, Caleno Custure Me;
Presume to crave or wish your grace? Caleno Custure Me.
VERSE FOUR
And thus amazed as I stand, Caleno Custure Me;
Not feeling sense, nor moving hand. Caleno Custure Me.
VERSE FIVE
My soul with silence moving sense, Caleno Custure Me;
Doth wish for thee with reverence. Caleno Custure Me.
VERSE SIX
Long life, and virtue you possess:, Caleno Custure Me;
To match those gifts of worthiness. Caleno Custure Me.
REPRISE
When as I view your comely grace, Caleno Custure Me;
Your golden hair, your angel’s face, Caleno Custure Me.
Theatrical Performance At Hampton Court Palace
Before we move on to the only Shakespeare play that has a discernible Gresham connection, mentions tennis and has a music element for us to enjoy, I’d like to explore the notion that Hampton Court Palace hosted theatrical performances in Elizabethan times.
It is well documented that Shakespeare and The King’s Men (formerly The Lord Chamberlains Men) performed at least half-a-dozen plays at Hampton Court Palace over the Christmas & New Years period of 1603-1604. Queen Elisabeth had died earlier in 1603. By then the Tudor period was over.
I knew that troupes of players had put on Court performances in Elizabethan times and suspected that the idea of such performances in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace would not have been brand new in Christmas 1603.
Could I find evidence of theatrical performance at Hampton Court Palace in Elizabethan times?
My cursory searches drew a blank. I decided to consult Chat GPT on the matter. I won’t bother you with the largely nonsensical answers that the automaton tried out on me. But it did suggest that I seek advice on sources from experts in the history of Hampton Court Palace and suggested one sources itself: Philip Henslowe‘s diary.
Possibly I should have thought of that source myself. Philip Henslowe was father-in-law to actor-manager Edward Alleyn and I am an alum of Alleyn’s School. But I thought of that diary as a Jacobean artefact and I hadn’t twigged that Henslowe started keeping his records in 1591.
The evidence I was hoping for still took some finding, but an Edwardian analysis of the diary, Diary of Philip Henslowe, W W Greg, A.H. Bullen, 1904, references an Act of the Privy Council on 7 March 1592/93 (Volume 24, p102):
Thirty quid was a splendid haul for a three night gig in those days. Three pounds in takings for a night at The Rose Theatre was close to a top.
As for additional research materials, I must thank Lesley Ronaldson, Sarah Slater and Sandy Rhodes at Hampton Court Palace for their help in digging out sources and information for me. Several of the sources listed in the appendix below are thanks to them.
The early 1590s was a confused and confusing time for the theatrical companies. The Earl of Leicester’s Men had been disbanded soon after Leicester’s death in late 1588. Bubonic plague caused considerable disruption in 1592 and even more so in 1593. Companies were merging and cross-fertilising with each other just to survive. In late 1592 Lord Strange’s Men and The Admiral’s Men were united under Henslowe’s management.
We don’t know which plays Lord Strange’s men put on at Hampton Court Palace that Christmas of 1592/3, but we do know from Philip Henslowe’s diaries that their repertoire over that disrupted period mostly comprised:
- Tamburlaine The Great & The Jew Of Malta by Christopher Marlowe;
- A Knack to Know a Knave by Anon;
- a lost play about Sir John Mandeville;
- Jeronimo (aka The Spanish Tragedy) by Thomas Kyd;
- Henry VI (part of parts unspecified) by William Shakespeare.
The 1592 revels at Hampton Court Palace almost certainly will have starred Richard Burbage and William Kempe, who both joined Lord Strange’s Men in 1592 plus Edward Alleyn, who married Henslowe’s daughter that year. It is even possible that William Shakespeare performed in that season, but his role with Henslowe’s companies at that time is undocumented and unclear.
Thomas Gresham, Tennis, Hamlet & Walsingham
Neither do we know which plays were put on at Hampton Court Palace by Shakespeare’s lot for the new King James Christmas 1603. But there is a strong suspicion that Hamlet would have been one of them. It was new at the time and might well have seemed pertinent to the newly-succeeded King and his Danish Queen.
Those of you who endured my lockdown webinar about tennis around the time of Thomas Gresham – still available by clicking here or below:
…might recall that the only reference to tennis in any biography of Sir Thomas Gresham refers to 1561 correspondence from Sir William Cecil, whose son, Thomas, took sanctuary at Thomas Gresham’s place in Antwerp having got himself into a spot of bother in Paris.
“I see, in the end,” said the disapproving father in a letter to the errant youth’s tutor, Windebank on 4 November 1561, “my sone shall come home lyke a spendyng sott, mete to kepe a tenniss court.”
Cecil was not referring to a grand court like that at Hampton Court Palace, of course, nor even to the more modest (yet still quite grand) court in his own home on The Strand. He was referring to the lowly tavern and gambling den sort of tennis court, for which trades folk sought (but were often denied) licences.
The really intriguing thing about that footnote of a story is that it found its way, some 40 years later, into a sub-plot in Hamlet. I spent some time in my 2020 Gresham piece exploring some of the wilder theories on this topic, not least the notion that Edward de Vere or John Florio might have written Shakespeare’s works.
As I said in that piece:
What is widely believed and is almost certainly true is that the character of Polonius in Hamlet was based on William Cecil and the character of Laertes, Polonius’s ne’er-do-well son abroad, based on the young Thomas Cecil. Scholars have suggested the Cecil connection for a great many reasons. For our purposes, Act Two Scene One of Hamlet has the sole mention of tennis in Hamlet, in a context that is reminiscent of the sole mention of tennis in Thomas Gresham’s biographies.
There are other clues to Polonius being based William Cecil. In Act One Scene Three, Polonius sets out “a few precepts” for Laertes ahead of his travels – for all the good they did in the matter of encouraging Laertes to behave himself. William Cecil wrote a treatise of precepts “to his son”, which was published subsequent to Hamlet but its existence would almost certainly have been known to the same insiders whose gossip about the Cecil family was in Shakespeare’s orbit.
While William Cecil’s daughter, Anne, did not have an entirely Ophelia-like story, she did have a tempestuous marriage/relationship with Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford and she did die tragically young.
Ophelia sings several songs in Act 4 Scene 5, known as “Ophelia’s mad scene”. The first of those songs, “How Should I Your True Love Know” is based on an Elizabethan ballad tune, Walsingham. The tune is by our old friend, Anon, the origins of the tune and various lyrics steeped in mystery.
Here is a relatively simple lute version of that tune:
The root lyric is believed to be this couplet:
As I went to Walsingham, to the shrine with speed
Met I with a jolly palmer, in a pilgrim’s weed
The Walsingham lyric, from there, in its various versions, takes the form of dialogue between pilgrims, one seeking their missing loved one and the other responding.
HOW SHOULD I YOUR TRUE LOVE KNOW?
Let’s have a go at the song, using the Ophelia lyrics from Hamlet, but rather than having Ophelia in her derangement sing both parts, we’ll try the question and response as a duet:
OPHELIA: ‘As you came from the holy land of Walsingham
Met you not with my true love by the way you came?’
PALMER: ‘How should I your true love know from another one?’
OPHELIA: ‘By his cockle hat and staff and his sandal shoon’
PALMER: ‘He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone
At his head a grass green turf, at his heels a stone‘White his shroud as the mountain snow, larded with sweet flow’rs
Which bewept to the grave did go with true love showers’
I must say, if that’s what a jolly palmer sounds like, I’m glad I have never met with a miserable palmer.
Because Walsingham was a popular pilgrimage site until the monasteries were disestablished in the 1530s, some music historians assumed the song to be early Tudor. But there is no evidence of the tune until the late Tudor period, at which time many major composers had a go at producing versions and variations on the tune.
William Byrd produced a piece for virginals (keyboard), 22 Variations entitled “Have with Yow to Walsingame”.
Not to be outdone, John Bull (who was the first Gresham Professor of Music), produced 30 Variations on Walsingham.
John Dowland had a modest go at a version of the tune for the lute…
The on-line transcription of my blog has links to good recordings of those several instrumental versions.
Rather than inundate you with variations and versions of Walsingham, we’d like to close with three pieces, one example by each of those three composers, all three relevant to today’s event.
William Byrd – Earl Of Salisbury Pavan
While William Cecil, Thomas Cecil and Anne Cecil all found their way into a tennis-related subplot of Hamlet, one famous member of the Cecil family, Robert Cecil, was omitted. Robert Cecil was a powerful man even before his father’s death in 1598, at which point he took over from his late father as Lord Privy Seal. His power and status increased under James 1st, ennobled in James’s accession year and made Earl of Salisbury in 1605.
The story goes that Salisbury protected William Byrd when threatened with eviction from his home at Stondon Massey.
Whether that story is true and whether it was for that reason that Byrd dedicated this pavan to the Earl of Salisbury we’ll never know, but the piece is very charming and beautiful nonetheless, on pretty much any instrument. As one further tennis connection, by the way, one of the Earl of Salisbury’s grand homes, Hatfield House, today houses a rather splendid real tennis court.
William Byrd’s domestic difficulties were probably connected with his recusant Catholicism, or at least his patronage by people, such as the Petre family in neighbouring Ingatestone, who were notable recusants.
John Bull – Dr Bull’s My Selfe
John Bull, the first Gresham professor of music, claimed similar persecution for his beliefs, when he fled England, for Flanders, in 1613, although it seems far more likely that his misdemeanours were carnal rather than theological. Sadly much of Bull’s music was lost or fliched by other composers when he fled, although we do still have his wonderful Walsingham variations, some extraordinary canons, the suggestion that he might well have written the national anthem, plus a splendid little piece known as Dr Bull’s My Selfe, a piece dedicated to his favourite person – a very early example of a selfie – in this case a musical one.
John Bull had a naughty boy track record from the outset as Gresham Professor of Music. He was indicted for criminal damage at Gresham House soon after taking up his Gresham College chair in 1597. We do not know the outcome to that case.
We do know that he was required to give up his chair in 1607, most likely on the grounds that he had to get married in a hurry, just a couple of weeks before his eventual bride gave birth.
His flight to Flanders six years after that appears to be a result of incurring the wrath of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, this time with Bull having been accused of adulty. Abbot had recently said of Bull:
“the man hath more music than honesty and is as famous for marring of virginity as he is for fingering of organs and virginals.”
Let us put to one side the Archbishop’s unfortunate choice of words to modern ears. It does seem that John Bull found it hard to “keep himselfie to himselfie”.
I am probably over-using my imagination when I listen to Dr Bull’s My Selfe, but I envisage Bull using this short piece as his theme tune at the start of each of his Gresham Lectures. It has a theme tune ring to it.
John Dowland – Now Oh Now I Needs Must Part (The Frog Galliard)
Legend has it that John Dowland was mightily miffed when his application to be lutenist to the court of Queen Elizabeth was turned down in 1594. So he might well have been similarly miffed when John Bull was selected to be the first Gresham professor of music ahead of Dowland in 1597. The following year Dowland took up a highly-paid post at the Court of Christian IV of Denmark, who subsequently also took on John Bull in the latter’s flee to Europe years.
Dowland is said to have believed that it was his recusant religious beliefs that stood in his way with Queen Elizabeth, but that particular matter did not seem to hold back several other performing arts types.
More likely it was because the Queen liked upbeat performance pieces and upbeat performers. Dowland was reputedly downbeat in character and is best known for his melancholy songs, with titles such as “Flow my tears”, “I saw my Lady weepe” and “In darkness let me dwell”.
Dowland’s first book of songs came out in the Gresham College inaugural year, 1597. Now Oh Now I Needs Must Part, from that book, is a personal favourite of mine.
The instrumental version is known as The Frog Galliard for reasons rumoured to be connected with one of Queen Elizabeth’s suitors, François, Duke of Anjou and Alençon, whom she referred to as “her Frog”.
Coincidentally, François, Duke of Anjou, the youngest son of Henry II of France, was named after his late uncle François, Duke of Brittany, a Dauphin who died in mysterious circumstances in 1536 following refreshments after a rigorous game of tennis “pré[s] d’Ainay“. This is yet one more example of a great French tradition of regal deaths in the aftermath of tennis, going back as far as the untimely demise of Louis X “The Quarrelsome” in 1316, as reported in several of my earlier pieces on tennis e.g. Horrible Histories.
Also coincidentally, the courtly intrigue surrounding the potential match between Queen Elisabeth and François “The Frog”, which played out for some five years between 1574 and 1579, seems to have kicked off in the immediate aftermath of one of The Queen’s visits to Thomas Gresham at Osterley, in February 1574:
Feb 18,Thur OSTERLEY, Middlesex; Sir Thomas Gresham.
Court news. Feb 20, La Mothe [French ambassador Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon] to Catherine de Medici [François, Duke of Anjou’s mum]:
“Francis Walsingham told me he had never seen the Queen so well disposed to marriage as at present, and he thought everything could be accomplished by a private interview. He said the Duke should regard the Queen’s heart as a strong castle which he might boldly carry by storm. He would lend any assistance in his power.”
Feb 20,Sat HAMPTON COURT.
On February 20 two Revels Officers hired ‘two geldings to Osterley and to Hampton Court to know my Lord Chamberlain’s pleasure, and back again to St John’s’. St John’s Clerkenwell, the Revels Office.“The Elizabethan Court Day by Day” by Marion E. Colthorpe, licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. 1574.
It seems that Thomas Gresham was not averse to a bit of theatre. In the above instance, presumably lending or giving some props to the revels. On at least one occasion it is documented that Gresham hosted theatrical entertainments at Osterley.
On one occasion [at Osterley]]there was a play by Thomas Churchyard, who wrote entertainments in the 1570s for several of the Queen’s progresses, as at Bristol and Norwich.
In Churchyard’s Challenge (1593) he lists his printed works, but without dates.
One item is: ‘The devices of war and a play at Osterley, her Highness being at Sir Thomas Gresham’s’. The play is not extant.“The Elizabethan Court Day by Day” by Marion E. Colthorpe, licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. 1576.
Returning to Now Oh Now I Needs Must Part/The Frog Galliard, while the song and tune has no known connection with Shakespeare, when I appeared in and helped produce Twelfth Night at Alleyn’s School 45 years ago, our Deputy Headmaster/Director, John “Squeaky” Newton, insisted on us using this song/tune as a theme for the production. This piece has long had a place in my heart and makes a suitable closing number.
VERSE ONE
Now, O now, I needs must part, Parting though I absent mourn. Absence can no joy impart Joy once fled cannot return.
While I live I needs must love, Love lives not when Hope is gone. Now at last Despair doth prove, Love divided loveth none.Sad despair doth drive me hence, This despair unkindness sends. If that parting be offence, It is she which then offends.
VERSE TWO
Dear, when I am from thee gone, Gone are all my joys at once. I loved thee and thee alone, In whose love I joyed once.
And although your sight I leave, Sight wherein my joys do lie, Till that death do sense bereave, Never shall affection die.
Sad despair doth drive me hence, This despair unkindness sends. If that parting be offence, It is she which then offends.
VERSE THREE
Dear if I do not return Love and I shall die together, For my absence never mourn, Whom you might have joyed ever.
Part we must, though now I die. Die I do to part with you. Him despair doth cause to lie, Who both lived and died true.
Sad despair doth drive me hence, This despair unkindness sends. If that parting be offence, It is she which then offends.
Encore? – In Darkness Let Me Dwell:
To cheer everyone up, an even darker Dowland number, but in a rock and roll stylee. In Darkness Let Me Dwell…or perhaps more accurately, In Darkness Let Me Paint It Black:
VERSE ONE
In darkness let me dwell, the ground shall sorrow be,
The roof despair to bar all cheerful light from me,
The walls of marble black that moistened still shall weep,
My music hellish jarring sounds to banish friendly sleep:
VERSE TWO
Thus wedded to my woes, and bedded in my tomb
O let me living die till death doth come, till death doth come.
My dainties grief shall be, and tears my poisoned wine,
My sighs the air through which my panting heart shall pine,
VERSE THREE
My robes my mind shall suit exceeding blackest night,
My study shall be tragic thoughts sad fancy to delight,
Pale ghosts and frightful shades shall my acquaintance be:
O thus, my hapless joy, I haste to thee.
Further Reading & References
Specific References
Philip the Bold: Wine Tennis & Song
A Handful of Pleasant Delights
The Famous Victories Of Henry V
The Life Of King Henry The Fifth by William Shakespeare
Calen-o Custure Me: a Tudor love song with garbled Gaelic?
Diary of Philip Henslowe, W W Greg, A.H. Bullen, 1904
Act of the Privy Council on 7 March 1592/93 (Volume 24, p102)
“The Elizabethan Court Day by Day” by Marion E. Colthorpe, Folgerpedia, 2017,
John Bull, the first Gresham professor of music – Wikipedia entry
General Further Reading
Ian Harris’s Ogblog Tetralogy On The Origins Of Tennis:
- Ancient Arithmetic: The Possible Origins Of The Tennis Scoring System, Part One Of Four Pieces On Tennis History;
- Horrible Histories: The Primordial, Honourable & Ignoble Arts Of Tennis Handicapping, Part Two Of Four Pieces On Tennis History;
- Odds Oddities: 18th & 19th Century Tennis Handicaps & Traditions – Some Stranger Than Others, Part Three Of Four Pieces On Tennis History;
- Scoring Synchronicity: How Real Tennis Scoring Was Adopted For Lawn Tennis Scoring – Then Lawn Tennis Handicapping Methods Wormed Their Way Into Real Tennis, Part Four Of Four Pieces On Tennis History.
Tennis: A Cultural History, Heiner Gillmeister, A&C Black, 1998 or Tennis A Cultural History (Second edition), Heiner Gillmeister, Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2017
Real Tennis Today and Yesterday, John Shneerson, Ronaldson Publications, 2015
Willis Faber Book Of Tennis & Rackets, Lord Aberdare, Hutchinson, 1980
The Annals Of Tennis, Julian Marshall, “The Field” Office, 1878
Colloquia Familiaria by Desiderius Erasmus, c1518
Antonio Scaino, 1555, Trattato del Giuoco della Palla (Treatise of the Ball Game)
La Maison Academique – 1659 – the first French book on games
A Treatise on Tennis By a Member of the Tennis Club, now attributed to Robert Lukin, 1822
Dialogus Miraculorum, by Caesarius of Heisterbach, early 13th century
The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore by Amar Annus and Mari Sarv, January 2015
Second Frutes, by John Florio, 1591
De Corrupti Sermonis Emendatione, Mathurin Cordier (Corderius), 1536
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England from the Earliest Period, Joseph Strutt, 1801
Anyone For 18th Century Tennis, Sarah Murden, All Things Georgian. February 2018
Tennis section of The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes (1st edition published 1890).
Lawn Tennis, James Dwight, Wright & Ditson (Boston), 1886
Wright & Ditson Lawn Tennis Guide, 1894
Racquets, Tennis & Squash, Eustace Miles, D Appleton & Company (New York), 1903
Capping With Handicopes, Roger Pilgrim, Tennis & Rackets Association, 2010
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