The Eton Choirbook: Its Institutional and Historical Background
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THE ETON CHOIRBOOK: ITS INSTITUTIONAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Magnus Williamson submitted to the University of Oxford for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1997 (revised for publication by the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, 2009) ii PREFACE TO THE 2009 REVISION A copy of the following thesis, submitted for the degree of D.Phil. at Oxford University, was deposited in the Bodleian Library in 1997.1 Prepared under the joint supervision of Professor John Caldwell and Professor Andrew Wathey, and examined by Dr Margaret Bent and Professor John Harper, the thesis was a two-pronged study of the Eton Choirbook (GB-WRec MS 178; henceforth MS 178). An extended chapter on the physical structure of the MS itself was combined with studies of the institutional history and intercessory apparatus of Eton College, from the foundation of the college until shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I. The following, revised, version is in all essential regards identical to the thesis as approved and deposited in 1997. A small number of changes made here rectify internal inconsistencies within the 1997 draft of the thesis: certain citation forms (for example RISM sigla) have been regularised; typographical errors have been corrected; the MS collation (after p. 194) has been re- ordered and rendered in an easily printed format (unlike its 1997 precursor which was in the rather impractical form of a cellotaped rotulus); and the grainy monochrome thumbnail illustrations given in 1997 have been replaced with colour images. In all other regards, every effort has been made to preserve the pagination, layout and text of the 1997 draft, so that this 2009 copy can serve as a more-or-less exact duplicate of the less readily available deposit copy, should anyone wish to make vicarious reference to the thesis as approved in 1997. Apart from cosmetic changes, therefore, no attempt has therefore been made to amend or delete elements that one might now wish to retract or revise – numerous as they might be. Following the revised abstract, however, are a number of addenda and corrigenda (cross-referenced by page number) that take into account bibliographical developments since 1997, and in which I have taken the opportunity to qualify statements made in 1997; more far-reaching revisions will be undertaken in the introduction to the facsimile edition of MS 178 which will be published by the DIAMM in 2010. Magnus Williamson Newcastle University, July 2009 1 GB-Ob shelfmark MS. D.Phil. c.15398. iii REVISED ABSTRACT The Eton Choirbook (Eton College Library, MS 178) is one of the most important English musical codies surviving from the century before the Reformation. Its significance derives from its size and quality; from its value as a source of unica; and from its unbroken association with its host institution, one of the foremost royal foundations of the late Middle Ages. The aims of this thesis were to examine in detail the circumstances in which it was made; to establish the reasons for its compilation, when and how it was made, and the most likely sponsors; to consider its role within the devotional life of the college, to determine the reasons for its survival and for its present physical state; and to profile the careers and interests (as far as could be traced) of those who used it. In Chapter One, the established historiography of MS 178 was considered in the light of what was then recent research, particularly Kate Selway’s doctoral thesis in which she re-interpreted the role of Henry VI’s collegiate foundations within the context of Lancastrian court politics. Selway’s hypothesis facilitated a new reading of the evolution of Eton College from a substantial, but not spectacularly large, mixed-purpose chantry college into an altogether more ambitious foundation which drew heavily upon the example of William Wykeham’s twinned foundations at Winchester and Oxford. This in turn enabled the college statutes, and in particular the changing profile of ritual provision from one draft of the statutes to another, to be considered anew within the context of shifting royal priorities. Our appreciation of the ritual function of MS 178 depends upon a parallel understanding of the wider intercessory role of Eton College as a chantry foundation: votive antiphons were but one component within a comprehensive and integrated economy of intercession which lay at the heart of the college’s raison d’être. In Chapter Two, the devotional and liturgical duties of the collegiate community were examined alongside a re-evaluation of the physical layout of the chapel (as elucidated by Andrew Martindale) and the available evidence concerning the spatial location and ritual functions of organs within the chapel. Chapters Three and Five addressed a persistent lacuna in our knowledge of MS, namely the absence of any reference to it within the institutional archives until nearly three decades after it was copied. The identities of the scribe and the donor, the reasons behind the choirbook’s copying, as well as its subsequent fate therefore needed to be inferred from the history of the choir itself. The choral foundation as established by Henry VI and his advisers was a product of the 1440s (indeed it was arguably conservative even by the standards of its time), and yet, even in reduced circumstances following its dissolution and partial restitution in the 1460s, the college evidently iv succeeded in maintaining a thriving tradition of liturgical polyphony by the 1490s if not earlier. Determining how this was achieved required a micro-historical consideration of the development of the choir and its members. How did the choral foundation adapt to meet the requirements imposed by the musical repertories of the later fifteenth century? Did chaplains, fellows and scholars participate in the singing of polyphony, alongside choristers and clerks? To what extent did practice on the ground match or exceed the founder’s intentions as expressed in the foundation statutes? At the heart of the thesis, Chapter Four considered the paleographical evidence of MS 178 itself: its physical attributes, its constituent repertory, the order in which the choirbooks was assembled, and the likeliest means and motivations behind its copying. The surviving paleographical data susggets that MS 178 was copied by one scribe during the course of four chronologically distinct phases. The final chapter investigated the fate of the MS between the 1520s and the late 1550s, with reference to the prior history of the choral foundation and to the evidence within the MS of physical alteration and deteroriation. Following the conclusion, in which the wider historiographical significance of the MS was considered, were a number of appendices. These included extracts from the college statutes and from singers’ wills in the college register, an (inconclusive) examination of the career of the composer John Browne, biographical registers of clerks, choristers, chaplains and other selected members of the college, and some raw data concerning the college’s finance and administration. v Addenda and corrigenda (2009) CHAPTER ONE Bibliographical note: since 1997, two major reference sources have been revised. Although the main text has not been amended accordingly, these should be referred to in preference to the earlier editions cited in 1997: ODNB: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 61 vols. (Oxford, 2004), which comprehensively supersedes the old DNB. NG2: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition (Oxford: 2001) Page 25, n. 9 see John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996) 32 On Waynflete see V. Davis, William Waynflete: bishop and educationalist (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1993), especially pp. 35-57. 28 Since the thesis was completed, there has been a quickening of interest among historians in the wider topic of collegiate foundations and their pious and political purposes. See, for instance, C. Burgess and M. Heale (eds.), The Late Medieval College and its Context (York: York Medieval Press, 2008). On one very prominent late-medieval royal collegiate foundation, St George’s, Windsor see: St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. Richmond and E. Scarff (Windsor: Dean and Chapter of St George’s Chapel, 2001); and St George’s Chapel Windsor in the Fourteenth Century, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005). In the latter, see especially C. Burgess, ‘St George’s College, Windsor: Context and Consequences’, pp. 63-96, regarding the political/dynastic role of the college. For an outstanding study of a contemporary chantry foundation with school attached, see J. Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme: life, devotion and architecture in a fifteenth-century almshouse (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 45-9 The evolution of Henry VI’s designs for Eton College have been coherently elucidated by John Goodall in ‘Henry VI’s Court and the Construction of Eton College’, in Windsor: Medieval Archaeology, Art and Architecture of the Thames Valley, ed. L. Keen and E. Scarff, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 25 (Leeds, 2002). Goodall discerns clear Continental influence in the then unprecedentedly extensive use of diaper brickwork in the cloister range, as well as in the cuspless window tracery vi throughout the domestic ranges. A part of the unexecuted architectural design for the college buildings as intended in the ‘King’s Will’ of 1448, appears to be drawn upon a vellum sheet which once formed the cover of London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 252 (J. Goodall, ‘Is this the earliest English architectural drawing?’, Country Life (15 November 2001), pp.70-71). 48, n. 66 On the chronology and dissemination of Perpendicular architecture, see also C. Wilson, ‘“Excellent, New and Uniforme”: Perpendicular Architecture c. 1400-1547’, in Gothic: Art for England 1400-1547, ed. R. Marks and P. Williamson (London: V & A, 2003) and J. Goodall, ‘The Aerery Porch and its Influence on Late Medieval English Vaulting’, in Saul, St George’s Chapel, pp.