'Unlawful song': Byrd, the Babington plot and the Paget choir

Abstract

IT has long been recognized that the most revered composer of the Elizabethan era, William Byrd, held staunchly to his Catholic faith against the principles of a Protestant state. More importantly, musicologists have long argued that Byrd expressed his non-conformist views in some of his most exquisite music.1 For all this time, though, there have been few claiming that Byrd's loyalties could really have been divided between his religion and his nation. If they consider seriously the question of Byrd's loyalty at all, most tend to see him as a legitimate (conscientious) objector. Thus when Christopher Harrison posed the question ‘Was William Byrd a traitor?’, it was greeted as something of a provocation.2 Significantly, Harrison took such a step only after exposing a link between the composer and the Catholic activists Lord Thomas Paget and his brother Charles. As Harrison showed, Byrd had close contacts with the Pagets. For a time, Byrd lived in Harlington parish, within two miles of one of the Paget estates.3 They were separated when, after narrowly escaping arrest during the so-called Throckmorton plot (a Catholic-led scheme to free the long-imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots), Thomas joined his brother and co-conspirator Charles in France to work in exile for the Catholic cause in England. Although the French refused to honour an English request for their extradition, both Pagets were nonetheless formally attainted for treason shortly after Mary's execution. Even from the Continent, they would continue to develop their musical connections with Byrd and other composers, associating themselves most notably with Thomas Morley and Peter Philips, two of the most famous of Byrd's younger contemporaries.4