Francis Tregian the Younger (c. 1574–1618) was a Cornish recusant. Once thought to have been the copyist of a handful of important music manuscripts, his musical activities are the subject of dispute.
Biography Francis Tregian was the son of Francis Tregian the Elder and Mary Stourton. He is thought to have been born in about 1574. (The birth year is derived from a household list drawn up in 1594 at the death of his teacher William Allen which referred to Tregian as being 20 years old: "molto nobile, di 20 anni, se colare di ingennio delicessimo dotto in filosofia, in musica et nella lingua latina." Not only is this the only document suggesting his age but it is also the only document associating him with music.) In 1577 his father was arrested for being a Roman Catholic and sheltering priests. He was imprisoned and dispossessed, and the Tregian family had to leave their manor house in Probus, Cornwall.
Tregian's mother and her children travelled 200 miles to London. She hoped that her brother John Stourton, 9th Baron Stourton, could intercede for her husband. She lodged in Clerkenwell with her mother, who had remarried after her father's death (her father had been executed). She eventually moved to her husband's prison.
The younger Tregian was sent to France sometime between 1582 and 1586. Despite a statute enacted in 1585 by Queen Elizabeth I which levied a penalty on religious dissidents who sent their children to school overseas, on 29 September 1586, he entered the English College in Douai, a stronghold of Roman Catholicism. As fees had to be paid in advance, Persons surmises that the elder Tregian arranged payment of fees in advance with the college's agent based in London. At the English College he probably undertook the typical course of study required of all beginning students which included Latin and Greek literature and grammar. Persons notes there was no evidence of Tregian's possible musical training at the English College. The younger Tregian apparently did well; he was chosen to give the congratulatory address to the Bishop of Piacenza on the latter's visit in 1591.
He obtained a position as chamberlain to Cardinal William Allen, and left for Rome on 11 July 1592 (It was once thought that Tregian encountered the composer Peter Philips who was serving William Allen in Rome. But Philips's stay in Rome was from 1582 to 1585, well before Tregian graduated the English College at Douai.) On Allen's death in 1594 Tregian appears to have gone to Brussels. A document from 1603 acknowledges Tregian as "being with the Archduke" there (the archduke being Archduke Albert).Persons cites: Public Record Office, London, "State Papers Domestic, James I" III, 77 as quoted by Pearl A. Boyan, Francis Tregian, London: Sheed and Ward, 1955. In an attempt to find a musical association, Persons notes that composer Peter Philips was the court organist to Archduke Albert from 1597 until after 1610 and that during the time Tregian was also associated with the Archduke, the two might have come into contact.
The situation of the Tregian family improved somewhat when James I came to the throne. The elder Tregian was released from prison and went into exile. It is known the younger Tregian was still in Brussels in 1606 when his father visited. Also in 1606 the younger Tregian returned to England to reclaim his father's estates. Existing documents show that he purchased an interest in his family estate, the manor house "Golden" together with surrounding lands, from Elizabeth Spencer for £6500 in 1607. The earliest record of his being convicted of recusancy is dated 7 July 1607 where the proceeds of his conviction are given to George Bland. The elder Tregian died in 1608. By September the Crown had seized two-thirds of the Tregian property as a fine for recusancy.
By 1608–1609 he was imprisoned in Fleet Prison in London. Documents as to the actual cause of his incarceration are lacking, but Persons, citing Boyan, appears to believe it was because he was unable to repay the large sums of money borrowed to repurchase the family estate. That, combined with his recusancy, were sufficient reasons for incarceration. In 1614, the people from whom he had borrowed money petitioned the House of Lords to sell the Tregian lands to repay their loans.
Persons, citing Boyan, mentioned a document that reads: "A warrant was issued by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall to inquire about the division of lands of the late Francis Tregian, Recusant, in May 28, 1619" indicating that he died prior to that date.Persons 1969 p.27 quoting Boyan, p.120. Ironically, living at Fleet Prison allowed Tregian a modicum of style and he maintained a library of "many hundred books" according to Alexander Harris, the prison warden. Probably due to unpaid debts, the library was dispersed and nothing is known about its eventual disposition. After Tregian's death his mother accused him of defrauding her by furtive financial transactions, and another "kynsman," John Arundell, accused him of financial impropriety. Thompson concludes that Tregian's imprisonment was probably much more about improper handling of finances than it was about recusancy.
How Tregian's name became associated with music Historiography There are four manuscript collections that have been associated with Tregian: The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in the Fitzwilliam Museum, the best-known of the anthologies.edited in 1899 by Fuller-Maitland and Barclay Squire, who suggested that the manuscript was compiled by the younger Francis Tregian; see Jonathan Wainwright, Musical Patronage in Seventeenth-century England: Christopher, first Baron Hatton , 1997:190. Egerton 3665, a manuscript in the British LibraryThe manuscript has been published in facsimile: The Tregian Manuscript, with introduction by Frank A. D'Accone ('Renaissance Music in Facsimile', viia), New York & London, 1988. Drexel 4302, The Sambrook Book in the Drexel Collection, in the New York Public Library. Music MSS 510-14A in Christ Church, Oxford
Intrigued by the supposed connection between these four manuscripts, Ruby Reid Thompson, archivist at the University of Cambridge, undertook a thorough examination of all four manuscripts, physically examining every one of their over 2,200 pages, including a detailed look at three of the manuscripts' watermarks (the custodians of the Fitzwilliam Museum did not permit watermark tracings of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book). In two articles (which are a preparation for her doctoral dissertation), Thompson provided an extensively researched historiography of how Tregian's name became so closely associated with music and why it persists despite lack of evidence and presentation of new information.
The origins of the association appear to have begun with William Chappell. Writing about the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in 1855, he mentioned the name Tregian based on six ambiguous abbreviations and only one instance of the name actually spelled out (no. 315, the "Pavana chromatica" has a marginal note to "Mrs Katherin Tregians Pauern" [i.e. Pavane]. Based on this casual association, Chappell does not mention Tregian being a composer or copyist, merely that he was associated with the manuscript.
Musicologist William Barclay Squire elaborated on Chappell's random notes. In 1889 for the article on "Virginal music" written for the first edition of George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Squire provided biographies of both elder and younger Tregians and introduced the idea that the younger Tregian might have copied the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. In 1893,J. A. Fuller Maitland and A. H. Mann, editors, Catalogue of Music in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1893), p. 104-19. Squire elaborated upon his 1889 biography of the younger Tregian, adding that he had studied "philosophy, music and Latin." Thompson quotes Squire: If it were not for the dates of the younger Tregian's death and of the composition of Dr. Bull's 'Jewel' , it might be conjectured that the MS was transcribed by the younger Tregian while a prisoner in the Fleet. If this is impossible, there can be but little doubt that it was written by some of his associates, possibly by one of his sisters, who were in England with him. Thompson then adds her own astute observation: Squire had apparently become locked into these lines of reasoning as the only explanation for the origin of the manuscript, and he did not consider any other. He was adamant in assigning the compilation of [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book] to a member of the Tregian family, in spite of the lack of archival corroboration. Squire continued to elaborate upon his supposed Tregian connection for the 1899 publication of music from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Recognizing that the John Bull piece was not the 1621 work removed the obstacle to hypothesizing that Tregian was the copyist. In the introduction to the edition, Squire wrote "...it may be conjectured with much plausibility that [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book] was written by the younger Tregian to while away his time in prison."The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, ed. W. Barclay Squire & J. A. Fuller Maitland (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1894–1899), p. v–ix. The editors added some scepticism, noting that handwriting samples would be needed to verify Tregian's handwriting. Because of the wide distribution of this 1899 edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book due to reprints,such as the inexpensive and easily available Dover edition: The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, New York: Dover, 1963. Squire's strongest endorsement of Tregian has gained near-acceptance as fact. In the second (1910) and third (1928) editions of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Squire mitigated his view of Tregian's responsibility, retreating from the claim that he had copied the work, but believing that it was still associated with him.
Thompson then examined the seven references mentioned by Chappell, noting that the one unambiguous reference to Mrs. Katherin Tregian could have been either to the younger Tregian's grandmother or aunt. Noting that the reference itself could be a dedication, Thompson noted that a number of works in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book are dedicated to various people, none known to be connected with the Tregian family. The presence of two instances of the marking "Treg" in titles as well as ambiguous abbreviations—and noting that all these annotations are missing in other manuscript versions of these works—leads Thompson to find a slim basis for Squire's declaration of Tregian being the copyist in 1899, and no surprise that he later retreated from the claim.
In 1951, Bertram Schofield and Thurston Dart's article on the then newly purchased manuscript Egerton 3665 declared that manuscript to be in the same hand as the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book: "The two hands are identical, even down to minute details of erasure, pagination, correction of mistakes and numbering of the content of the books." Noting that two of its pieces had composer attributions abbreviated as "F." and "F.T.", and then adding Drexel 4302 making a group of four manuscripts, Schofield and Dart paradoxically announced their idea of Tregian as copyist was "more probable than ever" while admitting there was "no final proof."