FRANCIS TREGIAN THE YOUNGER AS MUSIC COPYIST: A LEGEND AND AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

Abstract

FOR MANY YEARS it has been widely accepted that four manuscripts written in a similar style were copied by the younger Francis Tregian during a decade of imprisonment for recusancy in the Fleet prison, where he died, it was believed, about 1619. The best known of these is no doubt the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, the first of the manuscripts to be attributed to Tregian; acceptance of the attribution then led later scholars to believe that the three other manuscripts were also his work. Yet closer scrutiny shows the Tregian legend to be based on very little solid evidence. Detailed analysis of the manuscripts themselves casts further doubt on Tregian's involvement with their copying. The physical evidence indicates that the manuscripts were not the work of a single copyist, but were more likely products of a scriptorium closely attached to the royal court. In addition to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Music MS 168 [FVB]), the manuscripts generally attributed to Tregian are British Library Egerton MS 3665 [Eg. 3665], New York Public Library MS Drexel 4302 [Dr. 4302] and the second layer of Oxford, Christ Church, Mus. MSS 510-14 [Ch. Ch. 510-14]. The purpose here is to question this long-held assumption, which I shared until physical analysis of the manuscripts themselves raised serious doubts about their accepted origins and it became necessary to re-examine the solidity of the evidence for the theory.' Since the earliest studies to propose Tregian as copyist are all concerned with FVB, it will be useful to preface a brief discussion of them with a list of the titles or notes in the manuscript which refer, or have at various times been thought to refer, to the Tregian family (see Table I). The life of Tregian's father, Francis Tregian senior, who was also a recusant, played a major part in the early stages of this theory.2 The family name Tregian was first mentioned in connection with FVB by William Chappell, in 1855:3