The Literary Works of the Gentlemen of the Elizabethan Chapel Royal: Politics, Religion and Print

Abstract

The Gentlemen of the Elizabethan Chapel Royal worked at the ecclesiastical heart of the English court. Their religious beliefs, when discussed by historians and musicologists, are usually characterised as ranging from crypto-Catholic conformity to the a-confessionalism of individuals keen to survive seismic religious change. This article revises orthodox images of the Gentlemen of the Elizabethan Chapel Royal as religious ‘conservatives’ drawn to royal employment by the ceremonialism of services, and instead emphasises their energetic theological interests and the strength of Protestant doctrinal opinion among their ranks. Their striking construction of public identities in printed religious works also illustrates the ways in which a group of ‘middling’ courtly churchmen and singing-men negotiated their own identities alongside and against that of their place of employment. 1 1 This article was awarded proxime accessit in the Court Historian Essay competition, 2023. The author also thanks Dr Alexandra Gajda, Dr Ellen Patterson, Professor Peter McCullough, Ms Helena Rutkowska, the attendees of the IHR Tudor-Stuart seminar and the reviewers at The Court Historian for their helpful comments and suggestions at various stages of this research. This work was funded by the AHRC and Merton College, Oxford.