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Singing the Reformation in Windsor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2025
Abstract
Robert Testwood (c. 1490–1543), professional singer and evangelical mischief-maker, is the subject of many colourful anecdotes in Foxe’s Acts and monuments, including a scene in which Testwood mocks the veneration of the Virgin Mary by sabotaging a performance of a polyphonic motet in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. This act of sonic iconoclasm can be dated securely to mid-May 1538. It can be placed in a rich context of surveillance, propaganda, dissent and counter-dissent among the liturgical staff of St George’s as they navigated the changes of the early Reformation.
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- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
LP = Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, ed. James Gairdner, x, London 1887; ODNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; TNA = The National Archives
References
1 Roger Bowers, ‘Testwood, Robert’, ODNB, at <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/74656>; Williamson, Magnus, ‘Evangelicalism at Boston, Oxford and Windsor under Henry viii: John Foxe’s narratives recontextualized’, in Loades, David (ed.), John Foxe at home and abroad, Aldershot 2004, 31–45 at pp. 37–8, 42Google Scholar; Dana T. Marsh, ‘Music, church, and Henry viii’s Reformation’, unpubl. PhD diss. Oxford 2007, 128–37.
2 John Foxe, Ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the actes and monumentes of thynges passed, London 1570 (STC 11223), 1386–98; Ecclesiasticall history contayning the actes and monumentes of thinges passed, London 1576 (STC 11224), 1182–92; and Actes and monuments of matters most speciall, London 1583 (STC 11225), 1210–20; The acts and monuments online, ed. Mark Greengrass, David Loades and Thomas S. Freeman at <https://www.dhi.ac.uk/foxe/>.
3 John Foxe, Actes and monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, London 1563 (STC 11222), 625.
4 ‘written by Iohn Marbecke, who is yet a liue, both a present witnes, and also was then a partie of the sayde doinges, and can testifie the truth thereof’: Foxe, Actes (1570), 1399; marginal note: ‘Ex testimonio Ioan. Marbecki’; ‘these accounts further emphasize the importance of information received from local informants and personal participants … Foxe fully appreciated this and worked hard to obtain such information and to follow up on it’: Thomas S. Freeman, ‘Notes on a source for John Foxe’s account of the Marian persecution in Kent and Sussex’, Historical Research lxvii/163 (1994), 203–11 at p. 206.
5 BL, ms Lansdowne 389, fos 240r–276r, corresponding to pages 1386–99 in Foxe, Actes (1570); Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, Religion and the book in early modern England: the making of John Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’, Cambridge 2011, 169–70.
6 ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 245r–v.
7 TNA, SP 1/73, fo. 141r; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cromwell: a revolutionary life, New York 2018, 604–5.
8 Roger Bowers, ‘The cultivation and promotion of music in the household and orbit of Thomas Wolsey’, in S. J. Gunn and P. G. Lindley (eds), Cardinal Wolsey: Church, State and art, Cambridge 1991, 178–218 at p. 205.
9 ms Lansdowne 389, fos 244r, 243r.
10 Foxe, Actes (1570), 1387.
11 SP 1/104, fo. 71r. It is clearly shown in ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 240r, that Testwood arrived at Windsor ‘In the yere of our lorde .1534.’, not, as Foxe’s printed editions mistakenly claim, in 1544. LP also gives an incorrect year in this case: Testwood’s letter to Whalley was written in 1534, not in 1536 as LP 413, no. 997 claims. By May 1536 the investigation surrounding Plummer was long past, and Whalley was no longer living ‘In cheppe syde’ in London (SP 1/104, fo. 71v), but in Dover, where he had been paymaster for a year: SP 1/95, fo. 124r.
12 SP 1/84, fo. 165r.
13 SP 1/104, fo. 71r.
14 ms Lansdowne 389, fos 241r–242r.
15 SP 1/88, fo. 142r.
16 The defaced tabula, with a large strip roughly sliced out of the parchment, can still be seen in the archives of York Minster: Purvis, J. S., ‘A Leland discovery’, The Antiquaries Journal xxxi/3–4 (1951), 200–110.1017/S0003581500076447CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An image is in Aude de Mézerac-Zanetti, ‘Liturgical developments in England under Henri [sic] viii (1534–1547)’, unpubl. PhD diss. Durham 2011, 40.
17 Roger Bowers, review of Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the reform of sacred music in early modern England, Catholic Historical Review xcvi/3 (2010), 561–3 at p. 562.
18 ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 249r.
19 Roger Bowers, ‘The music and musical establishment of St George’s Chapel in the 15th century’, in Colin Richmond and Eileen Scarff (eds), St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the late Middle Ages, Windsor 2001, 171–214 at pp. 200–1.
20 An extremely detailed nine-year run of daily attendance records has survived for the Windsor lay clerks in the later fifteenth century: St George’s Chapel Archives, Windsor, V.B.II; Euan Roger, ‘St George’s College, Windsor Castle, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries’, unpubl. PhD diss. London 2015, 147–8. Each of the eight canonical hours is marked by a tiny handwritten circle, or by a corresponding space left blank when the singer is absent.
21 SP 1/104, fo. 71r.
22 SP 1/92, fo. 65r.
23 ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 242r.
24 Ibid. fos 241v–242r.
25 Bowers, ‘The music and musical establishment of St George’s Chapel’, 173 n. 9.
26 Aude de Mézerac-Zanetti, ‘Reforming the liturgy under Henry viii: the instructions of John Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells (PRO, SP6/3, fos 42r–44v)’, this Journal lxiv/1 (2013), 96–111, and ‘Liturgical developments in England’, 47–9.
27 SP 1/113, fo. 59r; Tracey A. Sowerby, Renaissance and reform in Tudor England: the careers of Sir Richard Morison, c.1513–1556, Oxford 2010, 156; Jonathan Woolfson, ‘Morison, Sir Richard’, at ODNB, <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19274>.
28 Sidney Leslie Ollard, Fasti Wyndesorienses: the deans and canons of Windsor, Windsor 1950, 121.
29 Eamon Duffy, The voices of Morebath: reformation and rebellion in an English village, New Haven, Ct–London 2001, 93–4.
30 SP 1/112, fo. 150a, 8 Dec. 1536; Sowerby, Renaissance and reform, 118.
31 Ernest W. Dormer, Gray of Reading: a sixteenth-century controversialist and ballad-writer, Reading 1923, 66–75; Peter Marshall, ‘Forgery and miracles in the reign of Henry viii’, Past & Present no. 178 (Feb. 2003), 39–73 at p. 59.
32 Foxe, Actes (1563), 590–89 [recte 599–600].
33 Ibid. 598–90 [recte 598–9].
34 Duffy, Eamon, The stripping of the altars: traditional religion in England, 1400–1580, 3rd edn, New Haven, Ct–London 2022, 408 Google Scholar.
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37 ‘Brother’ (the same term used in the last hour of Testwood’s life by his two companions at the stake) was a ‘neo-Pauline form of address’ common among early English evangelicals which ‘did not necessarily signify a blood relationship’: Freeman, Thomas S., ‘Fate, faction, and fiction in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’, HJ xliii/3 (2000), 601–23 at p. 60510.1017/S0018246X99001296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 SP 1/131, fos 15r–20r.
39 Ibid. fo. 17r.
40 Ibid. fo. 18r; Scholten, Frits (ed.), Small wonders: late-Gothic boxwood micro-carvings from the Low Countries, Amsterdam 2016 Google Scholar; The Boxwood Project, at <https://boxwood.ago.ca/>.
41 Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin (eds.), Tudor royal proclamations, I: The early Tudors (1485–1553), New Haven, Ct–London 1964, 260–1; A proclamation concernynge eatyng of whyte meates, London 1538 (STC 7799); Chris R. Kyle, ‘“A dog, a butcher, and a Puritan”: the politics of Lent in early modern England’, in Chris R. Kyle and Jason Peacey (eds), Connecting centre and locality: political communication in early modern England, Manchester 2020, 22–43 at pp. 22–3.
42 SP 1/131, fo. 19r.
43 ms Lansdowne 389, fos 259r–260r.
44 SP 1/131, fo. 20r.
45 Stipendia clericorum, St George’s Chapel Archives, Windsor, XV.59.3. The roster also includes John Hake, at whose expense Testwood made a joke in choir (ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 244r), saying that ‘he is a pretye man of the handes’. Hake is recorded as instructor of the choristers at Windsor in 1539–40: St George’s Chapel Archives, XV.56.38*; Bergwall, Erik, ‘John Marbeck and the “lost” Treasurer’s roll’, in Roger, Euan and McQuillian, Kate (eds), Scribbled in haste at Windsor: a collection of essays about St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Exeter 2024, 95–116 at p. 103Google Scholar.
46 SP 1/131, fo. 19r.
47 Ibid. fo. 18r.
48 ms Lansdowne 389, fos 242v, 244r.
49 Ibid. fo. 249r.
50 Ibid. fo. 245r.
51 Ibid. fo. 244v.
52 Ibid. fo. 245r.
53 Pace Bowers in ODNB, Foxe’s account does not say that Thomas Magnus, a conservative canon of Windsor, was the author of the text; it says only ‘which paper / one of the Canons called Mr Magnus (as it was reported) caused to be sett up in dispite of Testwodd and his secte’: ibid. fo. 244v.
54 Blackburn, Bonnie J., ‘For whom do the singers sing?’, Early Music xxv/4 (1997), 593–609 at pp. 603–410.1093/earlyj/XXV.4.593CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ulysse Chevalier, Repertorium hymnologicum, i, Louvain 1892, 104.
55 Kennedy, Kathleen E., ‘A Tudor abbot’s prayerbook and multimedia Marian devotion on the eve of the Reformation’, Reformation xxviii/1 (2023), 50–62 10.1080/13574175.2023.2187933CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 François Regnault, This prymer of Salysbury use, Paris 1531 (STC 15973), fo. 130r; Paris 1533 (STC 15981), fos 187v–188r; Paris 1535 (STC 15985a.5), fo. 184v; Paris 1538 (STC 16001), fo. 130r.
57 Nick Sandon, ‘The manuscript London, British Library Harley 1709’, in Susan Rankin and David Hiley (eds), Music in medieval English liturgy, Oxford 1993, 355–79 at pp. 371–5; Kennedy, ‘A Tudor abbot’s prayerbook’, 60–2.
58 Perne Library, Peterhouse, Cambridge, ms 31, fo. 104r (contratenor); ms 32, fo. 80r (bass). In the duet immediately preceding this, the scribe likewise changed the problematic verb ‘salvifica’ (‘save’) to the milder ‘adiuta’ (‘help’) in the treble part (ms 40, fo. 93r) but, perhaps through oversight, left it intact in the medius part (ms 41, fo. 84r).
59 Roger Bowers, ‘Phillips, Robert’, ODNB at <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22130>.
60 ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 245v.
61 Ibid.
62 ‘Of Prorogation of the Grand Feast’: Ashmole, Elias, The institution, laws & ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter, London 1672, 475–8Google Scholar.
63 Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Ashmolean 1116, fo. 5r.
64 Ibid. fos 6v, 5r; Anstis, John (ed.), The register of the most noble Order of the Garter, from its cover in black velvet usually called the Black Book, London 1724, 410 n. hGoogle Scholar.
65 ms Lansdowne 389, fos 245v–246r.
66 Ibid. fo. 245r.
67 One of the original five voice parts of Lauda vivi has been lost to the vagaries of manuscript transmission, but there was clearly no third part at play in this ‘counterverse’, which is a self-contained and musically complete duet, mirroring and almost exactly repeating the duet for high voices that immediately precedes it. Merbecke confirms that the passage is a duet when he says that Testwood came in with ‘the other part’.
68 ‘non cantavano ma giubilavano’: I diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. Federico Stefani, Guglielmo Berchet and Nicolò Barozzi, Venice 1879–1903, xx, col. 266; ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 245r.
69 ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 245r–v.
70 MacCulloch captures the turbulent, almost frenzied atmosphere of that year: ‘In one of those coincidences of which 1538 was full’: Thomas Cromwell, 442–68 at p. 465.
71 Marsh, ‘Music, church, and Henry viii’s Reformation’, 135.
72 Cavill, Paul, ‘The prosecution of heresy in the Henrician Reformation’, Journal of Legal History xlv/1 (2024), 1–33 at pp. 28–3010.1080/01440365.2024.2320968CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73 ms Lansdowne 389, fos 264r, 258v.
74 Ibid. fo. 254r.
75 Ibid. fo. 262r.
76 Ibid. fo. 263r, v.
77 Ibid. fo. 264r.
78 Hyun-Ah Kim, Humanism and the reform of sacred music in early modern England: John Merbecke the orator and The booke of common praier noted (1550), Aldershot 2008, 58–9; Robin Leaver, The work of John Marbeck, Abingdon 1978, 37.
79 ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 260v.
80 Ibid. fos 260v–261r.
81 John Merbecke, A concordance, that is to saie, a worke wherein by the ordre of the letters of the A.B.C. ye maie redely finde any worde conteigned in the whole Bible, London 1550, fo. a2v; ms Lansdowne 389, fo. 254r.
82 Kim, Humanism and the reform of sacred music, 50–5.
83 Precationes bibicae [sic]… Item piae meditationes in passionem dominicam, Cornelio Croco autore, Antwerp 1531; Albertus Josefus Kölker, Alardus Aemstelredamus en Cornelius Crocus: twee Amsterdamse priester-humanisten, Nijmegen 1963, 304. For further editions see pp. 308, 311, 313, 315, 320, 325–6, 327.
84 White, Micheline, ‘Katherine Parr, Henry viii, and royal literary collaboration’, in Pender, Peter (ed.), Gender, authorship, and early modern women’s collaboration, London 2017, 23–46 at p. 33 10.1007/978-3-319-58777-6_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Katherine Parr, translation, and the dissemination of Erasmus’s views on war and peace’, Renaissance and Reformation xliii/2 (Spring 2020), 67–91.
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87 John Merbecke, The holie historie of King David, London 1579 (STC 17302), sig. A.ii r.
88 Range, Matthias and Craig-McFeely, Julia, ‘Forty years in the wilderness: John Sadler of the Sadler partbooks’, Music & Letters ci/4 (2020), 657–89Google Scholar.
89 Richard Runciman Terry (ed.), Tudor Church Music, xx, London 1929, 200–12 at p. 204; John Merbecke, Missa per arma iustitie, Domine Ihesu Christe, Ave Dei patris filia (The Cardinall’s Musick, dir. Andrew Carwood and David Skinner, ASV Digital, CD GAU 148, 1996), track 1, at 3:45.
90 Walker, Greg, Writing under tyranny: English literature and the Henrician Reformation, Oxford 2005, 347–910.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283330.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stamatakis, Chris, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the rhetoric of rewriting: ‘Turning the word’, Oxford 2012, 5 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644407.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
91 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: a life, 2nd edn, New Haven, Ct–London 2016, 301.