Plainsong and Medieval Music, 15, 2, 000–000 © 2006 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0961137106000350 Printed in the United Kingdom An English composer in royal and aristocratic service: Robert Chirbury, c. 1380–1454* ALEXANDRA BUCKLE ABSTRACT. Four compositions in the first layer of the Old Hall Manuscript (GB-Lbl, Add. MS 57950), are attributed to R. Chirbury (or R. Cherbury/Chyrbury). This article argues that the Robert Chirbury who ended his days as Dean at the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick was this composer. His career included stints at the Chapel Royal and probably also earlier employment in the London diocese, as well as service in the household of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Moreover, this individual can be differentiated from similarly named men in the Register of the London St Nicholas Fraternity of Parish Clerks, and the assertion that the composer was employed at St George’s, Windsor can be discounted. The first layer of the Old Hall Manuscript (London, British Library Add. MS 57950) attributes four compositions to R. Chirbury (or R. Chyrbury).1 He is one of twentyfour named individuals in this source, which is the earliest known collection of a body of works by named English composers. Chirbury’s music dates from around 1400 to 1410 and, according to Peter Lefferts, ‘belong[s] to that large body of unpretentious, utilitarian polyphony for [the] Mass, in three voices notated in score, whose roots in England go back to the early 1300s or before’.2 Three of Chirbury’s works are entirely free-composed; one is based on a plainsong cantus firmus. All are dominated by the treble and exhibit chains of six-threes.3 His compositional style is therefore a clear *I would like especially to thank Roger Bowers, who has helped me unremittingly in every stage of this article. I also acknowledge the generous help I have received with the writing and the drafting of this article from Margaret Bent, David Fallows, David Skinner, Peter Lefferts, John Caldwell, Stephen Rice and Peter Wright. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for supporting my research through a Doctoral Award. 1 The surname ‘Chyrbury’ and ‘Chirbury’ is used twice each in the Old Hall Manuscript. The latter will be used throughout this article. In three out of the four pieces by Chirbury, the initial R is visible: Credo, 3vv, OH no. 61 (‘Chyrbury’); Sanctus, 3vv, OH no. 102 (‘R. Chyrbury’); Sanctus, 3vv, OH no. 108 (‘R. Chirbury’); Agnus Dei, 3vv, OH no. 132 (‘R. Chirbury’). Andrew Hughes and Margaret Bent, The Old Hall Manuscript, 3 vols., Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 46 (Rome, 1969–73). 2 Peter M. Lefferts, ‘Chirbury’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Personeneil 4 (hereafter MGG) ed. Ludwig Finscher, rev. edn (Kassel, 2000), 946. I am grateful to Peter Lefferts for supplying me with the original English of his entry. 3 Sanctus (OH no. 108) uses as a cantus firmus the chant which normally appears as the seventh in the collection of chants offered for the Sanctus in Graduals of Salisbury Use, for adoption not at will but in accordance with the liturgical rank of the day. 2 Alexandra Buckle successor to the large collection of cantilena-style English Mass Ordinary settings of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, many of which are freely composed and for three voices.4 Indeed, the fourteenth-century Mass items in continental sources are also similar in style to Chirbury’s compositions and this body of material.5 The identity of this composer has attracted considerable scholarly attention for over half a century, although to date no comprehensive overview of his life, or summary of previous work, has been undertaken.6 This article attempts to provide a chronological biography for Robert Chirbury through a combination of new research, and a fresh examination of previous scholarly work. Multiple identities: St Nicholas Fraternity of Parish Clerks, London Until now, the acceptance of a single individual as Robert Chirbury, singer of the Chapel Royal, Old Hall composer, and Dean of St Mary, Warwick, has been undermined by the seeming multiplicity of individuals bearing this name. However, two candidates who appear in the Register (or ‘Bede Roll’) of the Fraternity of St Nicholas may be rejected as having nothing to do with the composer, singer or dean of the same name. The Bede Roll, the register of the brotherhood of London parish clerks, was compiled with a liturgical use in mind; now housed in London’s Guildhall Library (MS 4889), it was originally used to remember the living and deceased members of the 4 5 6 Ernest H. Sanders, Frank Ll. Harrison and Peter M. Lefferts, English Music for Mass and Offices (I), Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 16 (Monaco, 1983); Ernest H. Sanders, Frank Ll. Harrison and Peter M. Lefferts, English Music for Mass and Offices (II) and Music for Other Ceremonies, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 16 (Monaco, 1986). Giulio Cattin and Francesco Facchin, French Sacred Music, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 23, 2 vols. (Monaco, 1989–91); H. Stäblein-Harder, Fourteenth-Century Mass Music in France, Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 29 (Rome, 1962). Chirbury’s name was first mentioned in 1901 by William Barclay Squire. Subsequent biographical notices have been put forward by Frank Harrison, Brian Trowell, Denis Stevens, Andrew Hughes, Roger Bowers, Margaret Bent, Andrew Wathey and Peter Lefferts. See Barclay Squire, ‘Notes on an Undescribed Collection of English 15th Century Music’, Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 3 (1901), 342–92; Frank Ll. Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958), 22, 228, 230; Brian Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, Ph.D. diss., 2 vols. University of Cambridge (1959), 2:270; Denis Stevens, ‘Robert Chirbury’, in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, supplementary vol. 10, ed. Eric Blom and Denis Stevens, 5th edn (London, 1961), 72–3; Andrew Hughes, ‘English Sacred Music (Excluding Carols) in Insular Sources, 1400–c.1450’, D.Phil. diss., University of Oxford (1964); idem, ‘The Old Hall Manuscript: A Reappraisal’, Musica Disciplina, 21 (1967), 110; Roger Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions Within the English Church: Their Constitution and Development, 1340–1550’, Ph.D. diss., University of East Anglia (1975); Andrew Wathey, Music in Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England: Studies of Source and Patronage (New York and London, 1989), 191; idem, ‘Dunstable in France’, Music and Letters, 68 (1986), 4, n. 14; Lefferts, ‘Chirbury’, in MGG; Margaret Bent, ‘Chirbury’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. J. Tyrell and S. Sadie, 2nd edn, 29 vols. (London, 2001), 697–8, which is a near-exact reprint of Bent’s 1980 Grove entry on the composer (Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie, 20 vols. (London, 1980), 285). A cursory search of others with the surname Chirbury (Cherbery, Cherbury) in the catalogues of the Public Record Office and similar archives threw up none fitting these dates or description. It therefore seems to have been an unusual surname at this time. It suggests an ancestral association with South Shropshire, a county in which the Beauchamps owned property: the village of Chirbury is situated in South Shropshire at an important junction of routes and is three miles from Montgomery, eighteen miles south-west of Shrewsbury. An English composer in royal and aristocratic service 3 Fraternity during the intercessions at Mass. The Fraternity attracted a larger membership than the core group of parish clerks. There are nearly 7,000 individuals recorded in the text. Of this total, around 900 are identified as ‘clerks’ and the majority of others are laity. The Bede Roll seems to have been first compiled in 1449, and entries continue until 1521 when the admissions for that year stop abruptly as the remainder of the manuscript is lost. The entries can be securely dated up to and including the year 1453, but thereafter problems arise. Originally the entries had been formed of three distinct lists of names: one for the living, one for the deceased, and a separate but supplementary list of deceased parish clerks. This initial arrangement was abandoned in 1454 when the format changed to an annually compiled, inclusive list of all admissions and deaths.7 Changes of hand, interpolations and interrupted lists have all resulted in misleading and incorrect readings of the register.8 The recent publication of a modern edition of the Bede Roll has greatly simplified research concerning the Fraternity’s members and facilitated much of what follows. A ‘Robertus Cherbery’ was admitted to the Fraternity some time between 15 May 1455 and 5 May 1456.9 Previous writers assumed this admission referred to the composer, who could not therefore be identified with the Dean of St Mary, Warwick, who died in 1454.10 However, the fraternity candidate is listed in the column headed ‘Nomina Secularium’, that is, in the list of lay financial supporters with no professional claim to membership. As Robert Chirbury the composer was known to be a priest (accounts usually refer to him as Dominus Robertus Chirbury), he would not have appeared in this column and thus should not be confused with the Fraternity’s Robertus Cherbery.11 Similarly, the Old Hall composer cannot be identified with a ‘Dominus Johannes Chirbery’, who appears on the first folio of the Register, despite the title implying that this member, like the composer, was a priest.12 This John appears in the list of those who were already members of the Fraternity in 1449 but significantly outlives the composer, not dying until 1490.13 In short, both ‘Chirburys’ in the Fraternity register – Robertus Cherbery and Johannes Chirbery – were clearly persons other than the composer. Robertus 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Largely taken from N. W. and V. A. James, eds., The Bede Roll of the Fraternity of St Nicholas, 2 vols. (London, 2004) (hereafter Bede Roll), xviii–xx. The date of each list is actually given only from fol. 13 onwards, where a single date appears, which can be shown to be that of the year in respect of which the list begins. Dating all the previous lists is a complicated task. The list for 1459–60 turns out to have been interpolated out of chronological order on fol. 4r, which disorders the apparent dating of all the lists immediately following: Bede Roll, xx– xxvi. Bede Roll, 1:39, item 41. Not ‘after 1457’ as in Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 2:270. Robert Chirbury the dean was dead by 15 December 1454. See Warwick Record Office (hereafter WaRO), BA 2648/6 (ii), p. 254 and Charles Fonge, ed., The Cartulary of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, Warwick (Woodbridge, 2004), 415. A Matilda Cherbery was admitted to the fraternity at the same time as the secular Robertus Cherbery and was presumably his wife – another indication that this candidate was not the priest and composer. Bede Roll, 1:40, item 42. This suggestion is made in Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 2:270. Bede Roll, 1:1, item 3, 1:12, n. 25. He appears in 1:153, item 308 as ‘Dominus Iohannes Cherubury’. His will of 16 June 1488 was proved on 19 April 1490 (Guildhall MS 9171/8, fol. 5r); Bede Roll, 1:12, n. 25 4 Alexandra Buckle Cherbery was a lay benefactor who wished to invest in future prayers for his soul and that of his wife. Johannes Chirbery was a priest who outlived the Dean of Warwick by thirty-six years. Neither is a plausible candidate for the Robert Chirbury here under discussion. The Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick Robert Chirbury was installed in the deanery of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, on the death of John Hille, dean between 15 May and 31 July 1443.14 Chirbury appears in the 1448–9 account roll of the church, when he received a stipend of forty marks per annum (‘Domino Roberto Chirbury Decano ecclesie collegiate Beate Marie predicte pro pensione sua ad xl marcas per annum’).15 Chirbury died some time before 15 December 1454 when he was succeeded by William Berkeswell, a former chantry priest at Beauchamp’s chantry foundation, Guy’s Cliffe, Warwick.16 In the 1454–5 account roll, Chirbury is recorded as having been ‘sometime dean of the church’.17 He therefore died in 1454 and not 1456 as Stevens suggested.18 Several members of the Chapel Royal went on to hold benefices or positions at St Mary’s.19 William Excestre is but one example: a clerk in the Chapel Royal from 1374 to 1396, he was also appointed to a prebend at St Mary’s, Warwick on 12 October 1397.20 It is therefore not surprising to find a Chapel Royal member enjoying employment, or an honorary position, at Warwick after leaving the king’s employment. Chirbury was still a member of the Chapel Royal when he took the post of dean at Warwick. It seems that he was an absentee, non-resident dean before 1449 when he resigned his chaplaincy with the Chapel Royal and moved himself and his servants into a large and comfortable deanery, settling in as a resident dean and managing the college as a part-time job until death supervened in 1454. This may explain why Robert Chirbury is simply titled ‘clerk’ in Warwick deeds of February and May 1445, yet mentioned as dean in a manumission of January 1450 when he was fully resident.21 Chirbury was one of five men (four chaplains and one clerk) who left the Chapel Royal in 1449. This date marks political, military and commercial crises in England as a result of Henry VI’s inept rule. The English lost Normandy in 1449–50, which added to the king’s impoverishment. Parliament was dissolved temporarily on 16 July 1449 and the next parliament, which assembled in November 1449, faced a mounting crisis: 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Fonge, The Cartulary of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, Warwick, 397. Dorothy Styles, Ministers Accounts of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, 1432–85, Dugdale Society 26 (Oxford, 1969), 21. Fonge, An Edition of the Cartulary of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, Warwick, 415. Styles, Ministers Accounts, 43, 46. Denis Stevens, ‘Robert Chirbury’, 72–3. See Fonge, An Edition of the Cartulary of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, 397–458; Fiona Kisby, ‘Officers and Office-Holding at the English Court: A Study of the Chapel Royal, 1485–1547’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 32 (1999), 1–63. Fonge, An Edition of the Cartulary of St Mary’s Collegiate Church, 418. Ibid., 415. An English composer in royal and aristocratic service 5 the French war had resumed in May and military defeats followed as naval protection was so defective that it could not deter French raids on coastal towns.22 After 1449 the Chapel Royal continued to decrease in size from the peak of thirty-seven men to thirty-two in 1450/51 and thirty in 1451/2, remaining at that number until 1456.23 This decrease in numbers appears to reflect the financial shortage Henry VI was then facing. Robert Chirbury, the composer The identification of Robert Chirbury, Dean of Warwick with the composer R. Chirbury/Chyrbury is supported by the provenance of some fragments that provide concordances with the only attributed source of his music, the Old Hall Manuscript. In 1968 several fragments of polyphonic music were extracted from the binding of a ‘Legenda ad Usum Sarum’, printed by Caxton in Westminster in 1488 and owned by St Mary’s.24 All of the settings are Mass movements, which were probably composed around 1400. Fortunately, enough survives of two of the pieces to show that they concord with compositions which have survived complete in other manuscripts. Margaret Bent has identified these as two anonymous three-part Agnus Dei settings on folios 103v–104r and 104v–105r of the Old Hall Manuscript.25 These items’ similarity in style and proximity to the Agnus Dei by Chirbury on folio 104r in the same manuscript may not be insignificant.26 It is not known whether this service book was bound in situ or taken away to Westminster, Caxton’s residence. Printers at this time did not bind books, they merely supplied loose quires which the stationers or the owner could bind themselves. It is therefore probable that this item was bound at Warwick. It seems at least possible that the manuscript of polyphonic music from which the binding was made was also owned by St Mary’s, but by 1488 was considered old enough to be used as scrap. Perhaps these fragments were part of one of the seven books of polyphony mentioned in the 1464 inventory of the college, the most likely candidate being ‘Item j Organ book bounde with bordes of Witneys yeft of parchemyn having a quayer of paper pricked in the begynnyng’.27 A later addition to the inventory crossed the item out and wrote 22 23 24 25 26 27 ‘Final extinction of all English garrisons in Northern France (with the exception of Calais) followed by 12 August 1450.’ Ralph A Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI. The Exercise of Royal Authority 1422–1461 (London, 1981), 520. Wathey, Music in Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England, 127. GB-Lbl, Add. MS 49597. Margaret Bent, ‘New and Little-known Fragments of English Medieval Polyphony’, Journal of The American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), 137–56. GB-Lbl, Add. MS 57950, and Hughes and Bent, The Old Hall Manuscript, 387, 391. Hughes and Bent, The Old Hall Manuscript, 389. PRO, E 154/1/46, and Andrew Wathey, ‘Lost Books of Polyphony in England: A List to 1500’, RMA Research Chronicle, 21 (1998), 11. The fragments under discussion are made of parchment, so if they do relate to this particular entry in the 1464 inventory, they would refer to that of the organ book and not to the quire of paper found at the start of this manuscript. ‘Witney’ was presumably the William Witteney, who was Master of the Choristers at the college from 1409 to 1424: PRO, E 164/22, fols. 35v, 208r, and Wathey, ‘Lost Books of Polyphony’, 11. 6 Alexandra Buckle ‘deficit’ in the margin alongside the entry, showing that this item was indeed considered to be redundant or lost some time after 1464. Chapel Royal At Henry V’s accession in 1413 the Chapel Royal consisted of one dean and twentyone gentlemen.28 By Whitsuntide 1413, a few weeks after Henry was crowned on 9 April 1413, the number of gentlemen was extended to twenty-four.29 On 6 June 1415 advance wages were paid to the dean and twenty-seven gentlemen in anticipation of their accompanying the king on his invasion of northern France.30 October 1419 saw a further enlargement of the chapel forces when six men from St Paul’s Cathedral, London and elsewhere, were recruited to sing in the Chapel Royal.31 Robert Chirbury first joined the Chapel Royal on 20 January 1420.32 He was recruited with five other gentlemen (John Berewey, Robert Chamberleyn, John Testwode, John Fitzwilliam and John Broune) to join the Chapel Royal in Normandy during the campaigns against the French in January 1420. Chirbury’s appointment seems to have been as part of Henry V’s last batch of recruits in his expansion of the Chapel Royal. When Catherine was crowned Queen of England on 23 February 1421, the Chapel Royal was in attendance and livery was supplied to the substantial number of its personnel totalling the dean and thirty-two gentlemen, among whom was Robert Chirbury.33 Henry V’s reason for keeping such a large household chapel is not known, although conventional piety and sheer ostentation can be posited. The expanded Chapel Royal was not maintained after Henry V’s death. The new child king, Henry VI, did not require the same forces as an international warrior and statesman, so the council pruned the royal household, and with it the chapel, to a scale more appropriate to the needs of a baby. This financial prudence resulted in the sixteen choristers of Henry V’s chapel being reduced to only six during Henry VI’s minority.34 The thirty-two gentlemen were reduced to twenty, probably by the end of 1422, but certainly by Christmas 1425.35 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 PRO, E 101/405/22, fol. 31r, and Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4027–28. After 1408/9, there are few lists but the number seems to have remained at the same level from 1405/6 until Henry IV’s death in 1413. PRO, E 101/406/21, fol. 27r, and Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 2:242–3; Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4028. PRO, E 101/45/5, m. 11, and Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4028. PRO, E 403/643, mm. 2–3, 6; PRO, E 404/35/247, and Wathey, Music in Royal and Noble Households, 134; Bowers, English Church Polyphony, 9:105; Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4028. PRO, E 403/643, m. 16, and Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4028. PRO, E 101/407/4, fol. 36r, and Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 2:244–6; Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4029. Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4032. PRO, E101/408/25, fol. 1v, and Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4032. A similar reduction in chapel forces occurred several times at the Court of Burgundy. Both John, the Fearless (r. 1404–19) and his successor Philip III, the Good (r. 1419–67) initially disbanded the larger choirs they inherited from their predecessors only to later re-establish them in a fuller form when a more finically secure position had been reached and a higher mark of political supremacy achieved. Craig Wright, Music at the Court of Burgundy, 1364–1419: A Documentary History (Henryville, 1979), 55–6, 99, 107. An English composer in royal and aristocratic service 7 Chirbury is not mentioned in an unpublished list of Chapel Royal personnel that survives from 1425.36 A few battered leaves remain from this seriously damaged account book, which can be read only under ultraviolet light. Folio 16v is a complete list of the twenty gentlemen of the Chapel Royal personnel. This list includes five out of the six recruited men in 1419, and three of the six new recruits from January 1420. The next list thereafter survives from 1430/1, when Chirbury is also not listed among the twenty clerks of the Chapel Royal.37 There is then a paucity of records until 1436/7 when Chirbury reappears.38 As Chirbury’s name, listed as being in attendance when Catherine was crowned Queen of England on 23 February 1421, does not appear in the accounts of 1425 or 1430/1, he may have been one of the men affected by the reduction of the Chapel Royal personnel after the death of Henry V in 1422. London: before employment at the Chapel Royal Evidence that Chirbury may have been employed in London before his appointment to the Chapel Royal is found in his bequests to the College of St Mary, Warwick. A 1464 inventory for the college mentions two missals ‘not of playn Sarum use but of powles use corrected in part after Sarum, the gift of Robert Chirbury, late Dean of Warwick’.39 The Use of St Paul’s had been suppressed in favour of Salisbury in December 1414, by order of the Bishop of London, with the consent of the Chapter of St Paul’s.40 Although it is possible that these missals may have been handed down to Chirbury by an older relative or friend employed in the London diocese it is more likely that the ownership of these service books indicates some connection between Chirbury and the London diocese before the Use became redundant, most likely, as I discuss below, before 1420 when he joined the Chapel Royal.41 36 37 38 39 40 41 PRO, E 101/408/1, fol. 16v. This is now undated, but fol. 16r notes the succession of Walter, lord baron Hungerford by John, lord baron Tiptoft as Steward of the Household. E. B. Fryde, Handbook of British Chronology (Cambridge, 1996) states the year of this succession as March 1426. I am grateful to Roger Bowers for this information. 1430/1: PRO E 101/406/14, fol. 18, and Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 248. 1436/7: PRO E 101/408/24, fol. 44v, and Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 249. PRO, E 154/1/46, m. 1. This inventory also records ‘xj processionaries with ij of the yeft of Ser Robert Chirbury late dean’. Nicholas Sandon, The Use of Salisbury 1 (Newton Abbot, 1984), iv–vii; Harrison, Music in Medieval Britain, 50. The Use of Sarum had been imposed by a statute of 1441 by Thomas Bourchier, Bishop of Worcester, who ordained that St Mary, Warwick should follow it at all celebrations of Mass for each day, and in the manner of standing and sitting in the choir. See Charles Fonge, ‘An Edition of the Cartulary of St Mary’s Collegiate Church’, Ph.D. diss., University of York (1999), 415. (Details not contained in the book of the same name.) Walter Wodehall, a singer at St Paul’s Cathedral, London was ordered to join the Chapel Royal in France in 1419 and to bring with him another five men capable of singing polyphony (‘Waltero Wodehall uni organistarum cathedralis ecclesie sancti Pauli London ordinato per consilium Regis ad proficiscendum in comitiva aliorum quinque organistarum versus partes exteras in presentiam Regis ad serviendum Regi ibidem infra capellam suam’). PRO, E 403/643, mm. 2–3, 6, and Bowers, ‘Choral Institutions’, 4028. It is not known where he found the other five men or where the six in 1420, which included Chirbury, came from, but it is highly likely that most would have been from London or its environs. Chirbury’s ownership of service books of St Paul’s Use may have resulted from a working relationship in the diocese 8 Alexandra Buckle Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick It seems that Chirbury found employment in the household of Richard Beauchamp (1382–1439), the Earl of Warwick, some time between 1422 and 1425. Beauchamp was a close friend of Henry V and one of the seventeen members of the king’s council appointed on his death. The council comprised a capable group of men and most, like Beauchamp, had been in France with the late king throughout his campaigns. It was this very council that was responsible for reducing the numbers of men employed by the Chapel Royal during Henry VI’s minority.42 Beauchamp was an avid patron of music and in 1422 his household chapel consisted of twenty-two men and nine boys.43 As Beauchamp was close to Henry V during his life, it is likely that he would have known Chirbury before Henry’s death. Beauchamp was governor to Henry VI from 1429 to 1437, which inevitably meant there was much movement between the royal household and his. The entries in the 1431–2 account book of Beauchamp’s household attest to a strong link with the Chapel Royal.44 If Chirbury had been made redundant from the Chapel Royal following Henry V’s death, Beauchamp would have had the knowledge, inclination and ability to secure his employment for his own chapel. There is some evidence that he was thus employed. As well as visits from royal chaplains, royal trumpeters and royal valets, Beauchamp’s household account book records a ‘Dominus Robertus de capella Regis’ who was present on 9 June 1431. This man is probably synonymous with the ‘Robertus de Chapelle’, who was present regularly at meals during the year of the account.45 Among the chaplains of the Chapel Royal there are four possible members who may be identified as this Robert: Robert Chirbury, Robert Gilbert, Robert Chamberleyn and of London prior to his appointment to the Chapel Royal – perhaps at the place where he learned the art of composition, either as a chorister or young priest (see nn. 14 and 15). A Robert Chirbury was installed on 1 January 1426 as vicar of Presteign, Hereford by the Abbot and Covent of Wigmore and then resigned this on 1 April 1428 through his proctor John Staneway. This could feasibly be the same man as he was ordained and the dates are convincing, but as Hereford was near the South Shropshire village of Chirbury, this may denote a local; see Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 270. WaRO, CR 1886/ Bloom 373. While there is no evidence of the chapel in his remaining household accounts, there is no reason to suppose that the number lessened – if anything it would have grown to reflect the accruing reputation and prestige Beauchamp acquired. The only musicological attention paid to this is in Wathey, Music in Royal and Noble Households, 191, n. 14, and idem, ‘Dunstable in France’, 4, n. 14a, which note that Chirbury may be identifiable with the ‘Dominus Robertus de capella Regis’ who is present at meals during this account. WaRO, W1618/W19/5, fol. 83r, and Marie Veronique Clin-Meyer, ‘Le Registre de Comptes de Richard Beauchamp Comte de Warwick’, Ph.D. diss., Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1981). In 1431, a royal chaplain (‘j capellanus Regis’) is recorded as having taken dinner with Beauchamp’s household on 9 April (WaRO, W1618/W19/5, fol. 14v), 17 April (WaRO, W1618/W19/5, fol. 18v), and 16 October (WaRO, W1618/W19/5, fol. 112r). Other employees of the royal chapel were present on 22 November and from 24 to 30 November (WaRO, W1618/W19/5, fols. 131v–135r). The accounts also mention ‘iiij trumpets regis’, ‘j trumpet regis’, ‘iij valetti corone regis cum ij pagiis’, ‘iij capellani regis’, ‘j capellanus regis et iij garcionibus et pagiis’ and ‘iij officiarii regis’ at various dates. This manuscript is one of six household accounts relating to Richard Beauchamp from 1414–15 (GB-Lbl, Add. MS 24,513/185); 1417–18 (GB-Lbl, Egerton Roll 8773); 1421–22 (Longleat House, North Muniment Room, 6414); 1422 (WaRO, CR 1886/Bloom 373); 1427–8 ( GB-Lbl, Add. MS 32, 091/32–38). 42 43 44 45 An English composer in royal and aristocratic service 9 Robert Lower. Andrew Wathey maintains that ‘among the clerks this can only properly denote Robert Chirbury’.46 The other three Roberts are indeed far less likely candidates. Robert Gilbert was dean of the Chapel Royal and would therefore have been identified as ‘dean of the King’s Chapel’ (decanus capelle regis) and not merely as chaplain.47 Robert Chamberleyn was recruited at the same time as Chirbury, but unlike him was not a chaplain and so would not have been described as ‘Dominus’. He also remained in the Chapel Royal after Henry V’s death and continuously until 1454 and has no other apparent link with Beauchamp’s household.48 Dominus Robert Lower first appears in the 1421 account and similarly remained in the Chapel Royal after Henry V’s death, but had himself died or left by 1441/2 and perhaps by 1437/7 (although this list is incomplete). Lower also lacks any connection to Beauchamp. Robert Chirbury, by contrast, was seemingly made redundant from the Chapel Royal and was later appointed dean of Beauchamp’s collegiate foundation in Warwick. It is highly likely that the Robertus figure in Beauchamp’s household account is Robert Chirbury. Andrew Wathey has shown that there was an augmentation of Chapel Royal personnel some time between 1 October 1431 and 30 September 1433, when the number of gentlemen rose to thirty from the twenty of 1425.49 The employment of more gentlemen probably concurred with the second coronation of Henry VI in Paris on 16 December 1431, which was organized in part by Beauchamp. The council, it seems, drew on the chapel personnel of its immediate social circle at that time to supplement the royal chapel. The ‘Robert’ mentioned in Beauchamp’s 1431–2 household account was present at the time of Henry VI’s second coronation. Therefore, it seems Chirbury re-entered the Chapel Royal service for Henry VI’s second coronation and was one of the ten new clerks recruited some time between 1431 and 1433. If all of the suppositions made so far can be made to stand, we may surmise that Chirbury found employment in Beauchamp’s household after being made redundant by the Chapel Royal, but by 1431 had recommenced work for them, when he appears in Beauchamp’s household account as ‘Robert of the Chapel Royal’. Unfortunately, the hiatus in the accounts of the Chapel Royal personnel from 1431 until 1437 means that the exact date of his return cannot be ascertained. However, new evidence shows that Chirbury was certainly back in the employment of the Chapel Royal in 1435. Hastings and the Chapel Royal Robert Chirbury, ‘King’s Clerk’, was collated to the prebend of Holyngton in the royal free chapel of St Mary, in the castle of Hastings, on 25 October 46 47 48 49 Wathey, Music in Royal and Noble Households, 191, n. 14, and Wathey, ‘Dunstable in France’, 4, n. 14. David Baldwin, The Chapel Royal: Ancient and Modern (London, 1990), 410, 416. PRO, E 101/408/1, fol. 16v. PRO, E 361/6, m. 20d, and Andrew Wathey, Music in the Royal and Noble Households, 126. This increase may have been as early as 1429 as some evidence suggests that between 1429 and 1431 there may have been as many men as thirty-five gentlemen in the Chapel Royal. See PRO, E 361/6, m. 19, and Andrew Wathey, ‘Music in the Royal and Noble Households in Late Medieval England: Studies of Source and Patronage’, D.Phil. diss., University of Oxford (1987), 121. 10 Alexandra Buckle 1435.50 On 4 November 1435, a mandate was despatched which admitted him to the prebend and assigned him a stall in the choir and a place in the chapter. This is clear evidence that Chirbury was back working for the Chapel Royal by this date.51 Hastings College came under the crown’s control when Edward I became king. Every royal castle had its free chapel, which was served by chaplains appointed by the king.52 The king was the patron of Hastings College and enjoyed the right to nominate and present to the deanery and ten canonries whomsoever he liked. When this vacancy arose among the canons of Hastings, the king (or someone acting on his behalf during his minority) chose Chirbury to be the successor canon and prebendary thereof. It is possible to surmise that Beauchamp may have used his influence over royal patronage to benefit Chirbury, a former servant.53 On 10 June 1437, Richard Vincent was presented to this prebend, which was ‘void by the resignation of Robert Chirbury, one of the chaplains of the king’s chapel within the household’.54 This appointment, despite the lack of Chapel Royal lists until 1437, shows that Chirbury was a full-time chaplain of the Chapel Royal in 1435.55 Chirbury presumably resigned the canonry and prebend of Hastings College on receipt of, and in exchange for, a higher office. It seems that the king’s prerogative in placing men in collegiate chapels was part of the wider patronage he bestowed upon his musical servants. Such sinecures were usually assigned to chapel singers because they freed the singers to serve and travel with their master.56 A similar procedure occurred in foreign courts. At the court of Burgundy, Philip the Bold’s chapel members held many benefices throughout France.57 At Ferrara, Leonello d’Este provided for his singers with benefices as did Ercole d’Este, whose ‘fanatical pursuit of control over the dispensing of benefices to his singers’ was ‘one of the most important and enduring of his strategies for securing musicians’.58 Over time, some of these prebends fostered an exchange with various clerks of the royal household. For example, there was an established connection between 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1429–1436 (London, 1907), 491. To my knowledge, no previous scholar has mentioned Chirbury’s appointment to the prebend at Hastings. Ibid., 491. J. H. Denton, English Royal Free Chapels, 1100–1300: A Constitutional Study (Manchester, 1970), 114–15. The deanery and canonries of Hastings were held as non-resident absentee sinecures. It is probable that no dean or canon ever frequented his stall. They were servants whom the king delighted to honour, and whom he intended to keep with him; the work of running the services in the chapel of Hastings College was left to the vicars choral (who did reside). Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1436–1441 (London, 1907), 64. Thereafter Chirbury appears on an incomplete list from 1436/7: PRO, E 101/408/24, fol. 44v, and Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 249; in 1441/2: PRO, E/101/409/9, fol. 36, and Trowell, ibid., 249–50; in 1443/4: PRO, E 101/409/11, fol. 38, and Trowell, ibid., 250–1; in 1446/7: PRO, E 101/409/16, fol. 34v, and Trowell, ibid., 251–2. He last appears in 1447/8: PRO, E 101/410/1, fol. 29v, and Trowell, ibid., 253–4. Wright, Music at the Court of Burgundy, 66. Ibid., 60. Lewis Lockwood, Music in Renaissance Ferrara 1400–1505 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 49, 185. An English composer in royal and aristocratic service 11 St Martin-le-Grand and the clerks of the Wardrobe.59 There seems to have been a similar close connection between the Royal Free Chapel of Hastings and the clerks of the Chapel Royal.60 At least two other musicians employed by the Chapel Royal and with music in the Old Hall manuscript, John Cooke and Nicholas Sturgeon, held canonries at Hastings, a feature that strengthens the premise that Robert Chirbury of Hastings College was also the Chapel Royal singer and composer.61 It could point to an emerging tradition of eminent composers being awarded this benefice and is suggestive of this prebend being reserved for prestigious musicians of the Chapel Royal. St George’s Chapel, Windsor St George’s Chapel, Windsor, an entirely separate institution from the Chapel Royal, was, like the chapel at Hastings Castle, a royal free chapel. Nonetheless, as at Hastings, a certain overlap of personnel occurred between the chapel of St George’s, Windsor and the Chapel Royal. Between 1440 and 1460 several land holdings in and around Windsor were the subject of a long series of enfeoffments and a tenure dispute, involving Household and Exchequer personnel as feoffees with local landholders. Many clerks of the Chapel Royal participated in such transactions.62 Robert Chirbury, ‘Chaplain’, appears in such a land transaction with the dean and chapter of St George’s, Windsor. On Trinity Sunday 1442 a ‘Grant [was made] by John Noreys, Esquire, Henry Hansarde, Chaplain, Robert Cherbury, Chaplain, Robert Chaumberleyn, Adam Alforde and John Bythewode to John Seriaunt of Dorney, of a messuage in Pesecod strete’.63 Chirbury was later involved in another transaction.64 These charters indicate that Chirbury was still associating with old friends from his Chapel Royal days and do not disclose that he held an office or post at St George’s, as previous 59 60 61 62 63 64 Alexander H. Thompson, The English Clergy and their Organisation in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1947). As well as Chirbury, other clerks in the Chapel Royal collated to this prebend between 1416 and 1423 included Richard Blythe, John Couper, John Cook, Thomas Gyles and Gerard Hesyll. Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 264, 271–2, 278–9. The John Cooke, who held this prebend from 1417 to 1419, is possibly the John Cooke who was a former chorister of the Chapel Royal by 1402 and a chaplain with the Chapel Royal from 1413 to 1419. Such identification is very tentative; there were many contemporaneous men with the same name; see Roger Bowers, ‘John Cooke’, in MGG, 4:1526–7. Nicholas Sturgeon, Old Hall composer and a member of the Chapel Royal continuously from 1413 to 1452, was admitted to this same prebend on 18 November 1429, holding it until 7 August 1433. See Calendar of the Close Rolls, 1429–1435 (London, 1933), 219. These transactions are placed in context in Wathey, Music in Royal and Noble Households, 166. Windsor, St George’s Archives, XV. 45. 140, and J. N. Dalton, The Manuscripts of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle (Windsor, 1957), 199. Windsor, St George’s Archives, XV.45.197, and Dalton, The Manuscripts of St George’s Chapel, 203. On 4 June 1455, a charter ‘by John Norreys, Esquire, Robert Cherbury, Chaplain, Robert Chamberleyn and John Bythewode’ was granted ‘to Richard Walgrave of Clewar of a tenement in Pesecod Street’. Chirbury was dead by mid-December 1454, so the inclusion of his name on a lease of June 1455 was either a mistake or an oversight. When the lease next came up for grant on 4 June 1455 it seems that the members of the syndicate were dispersed and still unaware of Chirbury’s death a few months earlier. His name was erroneously included on the list of syndicate members as lessors. I would like to thank Roger Bowers for his help interpreting these charters. 12 Alexandra Buckle scholarship has asserted. Instead, they show that Chirbury was a member of a syndicate of Chapel Royal chaplains and clerks who entered into a property deal with the dean and chapter there.65 Chirbury: The Old Hall Manuscript composer The biographical information on Chirbury sketched here is chronologically problematic. His music is closest in style to Power’s easiest music in the first layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, which would be indicative of a date of completion between 1400 and 1410.66 It is certainly not remotely as advanced as that of the second-layer composers, notably Dunstaple and Sturgeon, who would rank as his contemporaries according to the chronological biography I have outlined above. However, with so little information available about the lives of the majority of the other named Old Hall composers it is hard to compare their career patterns with that of Chirbury. For Dunstaple, Power and Sturgeon, we have dates of death: Lionel Power in 1445, John Dunstaple in 1453 and Nicholas Sturgeon in 1454, the last two both very close in date to Chirbury’s own death. While Chirbury’s music is not as advanced as much of the other music in the first layer of the Old Hall Manuscript, particularly that of Pycard, Power, Cooke, and Byttering, there are subtle advances upon the mid- to late fourteenth-century style. One of his compositions (the Sanctus OH no. 108) is a plainsong setting in English discant: the cantus firmus is rhythmicized in longs and semibreves as well as breves, and the plainsong migrates through all the voices. In the three freely composed works there are changes of mensuration, a prevalence of tempus perfectum (with iambic as well as trochaic breve–semibreve patterns) over tempus imperfectum, the use of minor prolation, and dots of addition, the imperfection of a long by preceding and following semibreves, and the displacement syncopation of breves.67 These techniques show an understanding of the emerging style of fifteenth-century music. As already discussed, there is no indication as to where these compositions fall in Chirbury’s compositional output. His music seems to date among the earliest, with regard to style, in Old Hall and there are some small notational idiosyncrasies, which may indicate that these were the works of an 65 66 67 These two leases were purely private documents, and the concern only of lessor and lessee; their present location at St George’s neither indicates nor implies that any of the syndicate-members had any connection with the chapel at the time of their making. At some later date, however, this property on Pesecod Street came into the possession of St George’s, whereupon these old documents duly entered the chapel’s property archives as part of the historic title-deeds. Denis Stevens (‘Robert Chirbury’, 72–3) states that Chirbury ‘was a chaplain of Windsor in 1455’. Andrew Hughes (‘The Old Hall Manuscript: A Reappraisal’, 110) notes that ‘in 1442 and 1454 [Chirbury] is said to have been at St George’s, Windsor’. The charters do not imply that Chirbury was employed at Windsor or as a Chapel Royal member. He is last mentioned in the 1448/49 account of the Chapel Royal and does not appear in Chapel Royal lists for 1450/51 or 1451/52. For 1447/8: PRO, E 101/410/1, fol. 29v, and Trowell, ‘Music Under the Later Plantagents’, 253–4; 1450/1: PRO, E 101/410/6, fol. 39, and Trowell, ibid., 254–5; 1451/2: PRO, E 101/410/9, fol. 42, and Trowell, ibid., 255–6. See David Fallows and Alexandra Buckle, ‘Power’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Personenteil 13, ed. Ludwig Finscher, rev. edn (Kassel, 2005), 862–9. See Lefferts, ‘Chirbury’, and Bent, ‘Chirbury’. An English composer in royal and aristocratic service 13 unskilled composer.68 However, the compiler clearly considered Chirbury’s compositions worthy of inclusion in a royal or noble manuscript. Dunstaple died a year before Chirbury in 1453 and his birth date is most often estimated at 1390. Sturgeon died in the same year as Chirbury, and was admitted to Winchester College in 1399, and Oxford in 1401–2, thereby suggesting a birth date somewhere around 1385.69 While many composers of Chirbury’s generation died young, many contemporary composers lived to old age. If Chirbury’s career was at all comparable to those who died near his death date, a birth date of 1380 to 1390 could be posited. If at his death in 1454 he would have been between sixty-four and seventyfour, he was twenty when he wrote his surviving compositions, which seem to date from 1400–1410. Perhaps Chirbury composed early in his career and then stopped – a typical pattern for composers of his generation, and indeed composers throughout history. In summary, we can now form a relatively complete picture of the adult life of Robert Chirbury, composer, Chapel Royal singer and Dean of St Mary, Warwick. He was recruited to the Chapel Royal in 1420, where he remained until Henry V’s death in 1422. He was not in the Chapel Royal in 1425 and nothing certain is known of him between 1422 and 1435 when he recommenced service in the Chapel Royal. It seems likely that he was employed in the household of Richard Beauchamp before 1431. In 1431/2, when he may be identified with the ‘Dominus Robertus de capella Regis’ present in Beauchamp’s household account of this date, he was again a member of the Chapel Royal. He was certainly a member of the Chapel Royal in 1435, when he was collated to the prebend of Holyngton in the royal chapel within the castle of Hastings until 1437. In 1437 extant lists of the Chapel Royal resume and he is named as a chaplain continuously until 1448/49. From 1443 until his death in 1454, Chirbury was dean of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, first as an absent dean and later resident. By 1431, after Chirbury’s first stint at the Chapel Royal, he had formed a close connection with the household of Richard Beauchamp. This tie was evidently so close that it survived his return to the Chapel Royal and eventually supplied him with a comfortable retirement post at St Mary, Warwick. Robert Chirbury’s eventful career spanned service in the Hundred Years’ War, various periods of enlistment with the Chapel Royal, employment with one of the largest magnates of the period and tenure as Dean of St Mary, Warwick, a prestigious centre of English sacred music at the time. The case of Robert Chirbury is therefore a 68 69 ‘Violations of the similis ante similem rule, the indication of alteration with the numeral 2, and the necessity of breaking a note or ligature if simultaneous change of a syllable is to be maintained are otherwise rare in Old Hall.’ See Lefferts, ‘Chirbury’, and Bent, ‘Chirbury’. Bent has suggested that some of these idiosyncrasies may reflect editorial standardization of breves at section ends by the Old Hall scribe. Hughes and Bent (The Old Hall Manuscript, 3:71) comment of plicas that ‘a few longs are drawn with two stems of unequal length, like the long with ascending plica of Franconian notation, a form virtually extinct after occasional use in woks of Machaut. The form seems to be quite deliberate, but to interpret it as a plica in the older sense is in most cases quite out of the question and the most satisfactory result is obtained by treating the note as a normal long.’ (This occurs in works by Chirbury, Gervays, Leonel, Excetre, Tyes, anon. and Mayshuet.) A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500 (Oxford, 1959), 3:1810. 14 Alexandra Buckle fine example of the unusually varied life led by one late medieval composer of polyphony for royal and aristocratic household observance.