THE CHEQUE BOOKS OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL Transcribed and edited by Andrew Ashbee and John Harley Ashgate, September 2000 ISBN: 1 84014 664 8 2 volumes; hardback; 758 pages; £69.50

Poor Henry Everseed! He must have hated his job, since a 1620 petition from members of the Chapel Royal – that included both Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tomkins – complained of not only the “fowel disease in his groine” (a cause of considerable offence to “those that were constrained be means of their service to lye neere him”), but also his bouts of “drunckennesse”, after one of which he fell ran at a window “wher he tare his flesh w’th the broken glasse”. More seriously, “one night he came & vomited in a dish of pottage w’ch mr Harrison & others were eatinge.” Although such incidents as these are somewhat rare entries in the Cheque Books of the Chapel Royal, they do assure us that alcohol abuse and bad behaviour amongst musicians were perhaps not limited solely to the twentieth century.

the text itself makes this valuable reference material and fascinating reading, one of only a handful of documents in existence that provides an overview of an almost unbroken tradition that spanned over three hundred years.

There are, in fact, two Cheque Books, which document the management of the Chapel Royal from the early 1580s through to the second half of the nineteenth-century (a few entries also occur from the early twentieth), in an edition from the pens of Ashbee and Harley, here transcribed and edited properly for the first time. They act as valuable source material for students of seventeenth and eighteenth-century English music in particular, since many of the important figures from that period spent time in service to the King: Bull, Tomkins, Gibbons, Lawes, Purcell, Green, Boyce and Dupuis to name but a few. But although such references are somewhat scant – the cheque books were, after all, working documents – they provide a series of snapshots of personalities and characters in a manner that the history books do not, allowing the reader to develop a fairly intimate knowledge of the day-to-day life in the service of the King, an early (for want of better words) fly-on-the-wall documentary. In this respect, the second volume is perhaps less enlightening (and entertaining); certainly, it is more business-like, with clearly arranged ledgers of fees paid, but thereby runs another tale, one of underhand financial dealings, mismanagement and sleaze that, were they to occur today, would certainly be ripe pickings for the tabloid press.

Prefatory information is somewhat scant, with a mere thirteen pages devoted to exploring the functions the books served, and, although Ashbee and Harley provide a lucid account that explains somewhat confusing issues of membership to the Chapel Royal, both bibliographical and codicological information is scant. There are also issues of layout that need considering: the original order of entries in each of the Cheque Books is somewhat haphazard, making chronological reading a difficult task. Whilst one would certainly not have wished this order to be rearranged, some form of cross-referencing would have provided invaluable. These, however, are small problems, since the importance of the text itself makes this valuable reference material and fascinating reading, one of only a handful of documents in existence that provides an overview of an almost unbroken tradition that spanned over three hundred years.

John Woodford