In recent years we have come a long way in appreciating the complexities of rhythm in tonal music. This development is in part an outgrowth of our enhanced understanding of the complexities of tonal music itself: for example, our awareness of hierarchical structure as postulated in the theories of Heinrich Schenker. Tonal structure and rhythmic structure are closely intertwined. In a loose, informal sense, one may even say that tonal structure implies rhythmic structure, for such tonal entities as motives, linear progressions, phrases, and so forth carry with them a durational component at any given level.

In studying the rhythmic aspect of tonal music, fugues and related genres pose a special challenge. One of the main reasons for this is that tonal structure in fugal genres—even at a foreground level—is extremely complex. For example, fugal writing demands motivically and thematically independent parts; the rhythmic implications of this independence (which can sometimes be far-reaching) appear not to have been yet systematically studied.

A frequently encountered “symptom” of rhythmic complexity in fugal genres is rhythmic displacement, where corresponding thematic statements do not correspond in terms of notated metric position. Broadly speaking, one may distinguish between two main categories of rhythmic displacement in fugal genres. The first category consists of half-measure displacements in common time. In the 1760 Anhang to his Handbuch bey dem Generalbasse und der Composition, Marpurg addresses the issue of half-measure displacement with reference to the three fugal excerpts given here as example 8.1. Evoking a prevalent eighteenth-century conception of common time, Marpurg states that the measure consists of two equally “good” parts, and therefore there is no essential difference between its first and third beats. It should be noted that half-measure displacements occur frequently in eighteenth-century music notated in common time, whether in fugal or non-fugal genres.

The second category of rhythmic displacement is a more specifically fugal one. In this category the non-correspondence in notated metric position between corresponding thematic statements is considerably more acute than is the case with half-measure displacement in common time. For example, thematic statements may occur on successive beats in some given meter, as is typically the case in fugal strettos. Marpurg uses the locution “per arsin et thesin” to refer to this type of rhythmic displacement.

Like a number of other Suffolk communities, the town of Beccles, in north-east Suffolk, had a dedicated outdoor recreational site, which Beccles called The Game Place. Records also show that Beccles had its own local players, and other performers, during the late medieval and early modern periods. However, based on the fragmentary nature of the records, it is not possible to confirm or to deny a connection between The Game Place and the players. This lack of clarity concerning the playing tradition in Beccles is typical of the difficulty with Suffolk in general. Parish and civic records copiously confirm that villages and towns in every corner of the county staged plays. Early Suffolk also had innumerable dedicated outdoor recreational sites, called by various names and used for various diversions including, in one verifiable instance, the staging of plays (see below). Those sites turn up in communities great and small in every part of the county; indeed, no other region of England approaches Suffolk in its number of dedicated playing sites. Further, the great majority of surviving play texts from the late medieval period have certain, if confounding, connections with Suffolk. As John Coldewey has observed, of the ‘thirty-five vernacular English play texts and fragments [that] survive from the late middle ages’, many derive from East Anglia – and many of those from Suffolk. But while all these evidences indicate the presence of an extraordinarily rich playing tradition, the tradition itself remains obscure, and largely disconnected from the culture that created it. The dots strenuously resist connecting. This study, focusing as it does on one small town resting in a part of a county that was rich in parish drama, hopes to offer a few brush strokes to one corner of what turns out to be a very complex, and largely unfinished, picture of local drama in early Suffolk.

The Borough of Beccles

Beccles is situated on a rise overlooking the River Waveney in Wangford Hundred in north-east Suffolk, nearly equidistant between the towns of Bungay and Lowestoft. It is one of the oldest towns in Suffolk, and in earlier centuries was ‘the most substantial [town] between Ipswich and Norwich’.

The term ‘iatrogenic’, used of illness and/or death, simply means that they were hastened or caused by medical treatment. Sadly, the biographies of many composers are replete with the iatrogenic.

Potion or Poison? Good Music and Bad Medicine

The stark fact is that, until the era of aseptic surgery with anaesthesia, doctors did not really have much at their disposal with which to treat patients. These two advances came in the mid-nineteenth century, followed in the twentieth by intravenous fluids and antibiotics, as well as insulin, steroids and drugs to treat failure or irregularity of the heart rate and raised blood pressure. Then came chemotherapy and radiotherapy to treat cancer. Before the 1840s there were generally half a dozen or so treatments which became somewhat rigid blandishments for most and diverse conditions. Because those therapies applied initially usually failed, others would relentlessly follow. The sick composer was in many cases saved from worse medical remedies only by the felicitous intervention of nature, or by his professing scepticism regarding further medical torture with alternative practitioners. Of these ‘treatments’, the application of leeches and especially bleeding are probably the most notorious although, in fairness, there are today very occasional uses for both leeches and blood-letting. They are specific and beyond the scope of this book. Blood-letting achieved little apart from making patients anaemic, placing a great strain on the heart, which was sometimes the root of the problem originally. This was despite Harvey having explained the circulation in the seventeenth century.

Poultices, often dirty, were applied to open wounds and sores, introducing further infection. Bed rest and mountain air were benign and, for the tuberculous patient (TB sufferer), removal from smog-bound, overcrowded and insanitary conurbations could be genuinely beneficial. One encounters with many case histories practitioners wedded to one particular treatment. Little wonder that Beethoven famously referred to ‘bumbling doctors and medical asses’, for many of them did literally continue regardless. In so doing, perversely, they generally encountered less opposition than did Semmelweis or Lister introducing asepsis, and Simpson pioneering anaesthesia.

This performance on 8 February 2017, by the New College Players and the Frideswide Voices and directed by Elisabeth Dutton, gained much from its setting in the chapel at New College, Oxford. The feeling that this was a place used regularly for worship helped, with certain physical characteristics to enhance it, including an echo. There was a strong musical element, including dancing, in the performance and many of the actors and singers were women or young girls. This accorded with the text which unusually asks for ‘virgynes’ (line 477). Here women also acted some of the male parts, including an impressive performance of the Poet, who introduced and concluded the play. The slaughtered children were represented by dolls. There was a strong character contrast between Herod who boasted his way to madness and a grotesque destruction, and the virtuous Simeon, who in this production carried a live baby able to sit up and look beneficently at the audience (without needing an understudy). The latter was a fitting part in a play which in performance had a strong emotional appeal, much helped by the music. The episode of the slaughter was disturbing, especially when it came to a frozen pause as one of the Knights held his spear aloft, impaling a dead baby. It was at this point that both modern and late medieval audiences might have anticipated the Crucifixion yet to come, as well as other mass extermination. As a complement the baby in the arms of Simeon might have echoed the many images of the Madonna and Child, as well as the brief appearance of Mary with the child earlier.

Some doubt arises in the text about the order of the two main events, as the Poet in the introduction puts the Presentation first, with the Killing to follow. In this performance the reverse order, as in the text itself, seemed well supported on emotional grounds as the horror of the murders gave way after angelic intervention to the thankful ending centring upon Simeon.

The text is well provided with stage directions and this performance made good use of them.

This volume testifies to the vitality of the field of early theatre, demonstrating the eclectic range of interests METh engages. A group of essays approach the performance records of civic and community drama. Philip Butterworth takes us back to the founding principles of METh by exploring the technology of pageant-waggon maintenance and manoeuvre in the light of the Chester records – the pageant waggon being the subject of the very first volume of the journal in 1979. Similarly seeking to make sense of fragmentary record evidence, James Stokes investigates the scattered and enigmatic references to ‘camping closes’ and ‘game places’ as potential performance sites in the vicinity of Beccles in Suffolk. Jamie Beckett starts from a puzzling textual reference, the name of the Jew ‘Fergus’ in the lost York Funeral of the Virgin, pursuing local history and tradition to identify a possible hate figure. The perspective is broadened by Tom Pettitt's wide-ranging and suggestive discussion of Gladman's supposed ‘Carnival’ parade in Norwich in 1443, and the revealing analogues of street performance that may be found not in England but in Italy. James McBain pursues not different locations but different types of audience: examining Gascoigne's skilful play on New Comedy in the Supposes, he evaluates how different levels of familiarity with the genre in audiences at the Inns of Court and the University of Oxford suggest different kinds of spectator response. These last three essays all arise from papers given at the 2016 METh meeting at Canterbury, while Diana Wyatt's was delivered at the 2017 event at Glasgow. Based on a family record of a 1526 wedding, this opens up the field of household drama, with the apparently traditional mounting of a ‘maske and play’ as part of the celebrations. Apart from these essays, we are pleased to engage with theatrical productions of the last year, with Peter Happé's review of Elisabeth Dutton's production of the Digby MS The Killing of the Children, mounted on 8 February 2017 in the chapel of New College, Oxford.

The 2017 METh meeting, held in Glasgow with co-hosts Pamela King and Eila Williamson, was a special event, held to honour the life-work of Philip Butterworth, a founder member of METh.

The clothier was distinguished by his activities not only in organising the making of cloth, but also in marketing it. In the passage quoted above, Humfrey Monmouth, a London draper and cloth exporter, explains how clothiers, which he calls cloth-men, supply him with textiles to sell overseas. The clothiers send their cloth weekly to be sold in London, and are reliant on the money that Monmouth pays them to employ their workers. Monmouth provided this explanation in May 1528, while he was imprisoned on suspicion of heresy, so we may need to allow for some overstatement of his case to support the petition he was making to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey for his release. Even so, it seems a realistic picture of the commercial environment in which clothiers relied on London merchants to sell their cloths, who in turn were largely dependent on buyers in overseas markets.

Cloth was a relatively flexible commodity. It could be sold on at any stage in the manufacturing process, in any quantity. Clothiers sold cloths both finished and unfinished, with the latter being completed by clothworkers, possibly in London or overseas. Cloth retained its value over time as, unlike foodstuffs, it was not perishable. It was also easily transportable. Officials and organisations acting on behalf of national and local governments regulated quality. Clothiers could choose to sell their cloth locally, in a provincial town, or in London, and to a wide variety of buyers including specialist traders and overseas merchants (Figure 6).

English central and local government legislated extensively for the cloth industry as they sought to standardise goods, protect consumers, and monitor quality. In fact, cloth-making attracted so much attention from these authorities that one historian memorably described the industry as the ‘favourite child of the legislature’. This chapter explores this legislation, examining how clothiers helped to shape these policies, and how they operated within this regulatory framework. Governments became increasingly anxious to protect markets and employment within the textile industry. The cloth trade was a major contributor of revenue to the Exchequer, primarily through customs duties on cloth exports, but also through the subsidy levied on cloth sales known as ulnage. Governments were also aware though, that disruptions to overseas cloth sales created unemployment and unrest, and in the face of political protests by textile workers, they looked to clothiers to maintain production.

DEVELOPING LEGISLATION

Responsibility for regulating the making and marketing of cloth was divided between the Crown and local communities. While all places were subject to national legislation unless specifically exempt, the degree of regulation at the local level could vary considerably from place to place. Boroughs, with charters granted by the Crown or a lord to townspeople to exercise rights and privileges, issued a multiplicity of regulations. Guilds representing specific crafts might also have regulatory powers. In smaller towns and villages, where craft guilds were absent and control was exercised through the local court, there could be little or no intervention. It has been suggested that entrepreneurial ambition was deterred by the amount of regulation in many late medieval boroughs, and certainly most of the leading clothiers of the early sixteenth century were to be found in smaller urban settlements and rural areas which generally lacked these local regulatory institutions.

Borough governments and craft guilds

Many boroughs had liberties of tenure, trade, and local administration granted by the king or another lord to a defined group of members known as burgesses or freemen, who were distinct from the main body of inhabitants. These privileges varied from borough to borough, but generally included trading privileges derived from borough charters, ordinances and by-laws.

• 1. In the name of God, Amen. I, William Stumpe, do make my testament and last will in manner and form following the 15th day of October in the 4th year of our dread sovereign Lord King Edward VI [1550] by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, and in earth Supreme Head of the Church of England and also of Ireland.

• 2. First I do give thanks to God that I am in good mind and memory as ever I was and not sick in body thereof.

• 3. First of all I do bequeath my soul to our Lord Jesus Christ, I do verily trust to be saved by His blessed passion that He did suffer for me and for all mankind, and by none other means nor ways that ever was or that ever I did say or do but by Him only. My body to be buried wheresoever that God will have the body as He please.

• 4. I do give and bequeath to John Stumpe, my second son, my leases that I have of Gale's house, John Wyndowe's house and Richard Smith's house at Charlton, with ten broad looms and in money £500, all this to be delivered after my departing, when he will have it.

• 5. And I do give and bequeath to Richard Stumpe, William Stumpe, and Thomas Stumpe, my brother John's children, £10 apiece, to be delivered to them when they come to the ages of 21 years, and if any of them do die before that ages then I would their part that do die shall be delivered to the other. And if they do die all before the ages of 21 years then it shall remain to my executors.

• 6. And I do give and bequeath to every woman servant 20s above their wages and to every man servant in my house 40s, that is John Chappell 40s, and to Robert Saunson £4.

• 7. My debts paid, all the rest of my goods unbequeathed I do give to James Stumpe my son, who I do make my executor.

• 8. Witnesses: Robert Cove, David Serney, Robert Rowles with others more, Thomas Nele. This is my last will written with my hand and sealed with my seal the date above written William Stumpe.

The Baxter Treatises

Richard Baxter (1615–91) was described by A. G. Matthews in Calamy Revised as ‘the outstanding figure among ejected ministers’. Although he was one of those ministers appointed as chaplains to the king in 1660, and despite his attendance at and contribution to the negotiations held at the Savoy to decide on the shape and details of the restored Church of England, he was harassed and imprisoned in the reigns of both Charles II and James II. Although at least one modern account states that Baxter ‘retired from the Church of England on the passing of the Act of Uniformity’, giving a misleading impression of genteel withdrawal from public life, he and almost 2,000 other nonconformist divines felt compelled to make a principled and self-denying choice to remain outside the establishment. Yet, in spite of the harsh treatment meted out to him after 1662, Baxter consistently favoured the cause of ecclesiastical comprehension and did not actually leave the Church of England, although he was inhibited in the continuance of his ministry. In fact he sought to and did attend the parish churches whenever he could, though that attendance also brought him some criticism.

N. H. Keeble has described Richard Baxter as ‘throughout his life a voluminous correspondent’, and the great volume of his correspondence is matched by that of his many other writings, which demonstrate a consistent engagement with current affairs, with movements in theology and with the vicissitudes of everyday life. Dr Williams's Library in London contains the great majority of the extant manuscripts that relate to Baxter, among which are numerous letters, the subject of Keeble and Nuttall's two-volumed Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (Oxford 1991). Certainly Baxter could not refrain from writing. This puritan minister who did not attend university lived as much through his writings as through any other medium. The annotated list of Baxter's works, compiled by A. G. Matthews in 1932, contains 135 works written and published in his lifetime and six more published posthumously, including his autobiography, the Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696).

Cloths taxed by locality

This chapter examines the roles of clothiers in wider society. Their family backgrounds, houses and workshops, and activities as farmers and landowners are explored, as are their religious beliefs and commemorative practices. Historians have frequently attempted to categorise groups within medieval society and identify defining characteristics. They have considered merchants who traded in goods separately from craftworkers and artisans who likewise produced goods and traded. Similarly, those earning a living from the land have been categorised differently from those earning a living from crafts and industry. Medieval houses are differentiated in terms of urban and rural locations, agricultural and mercantile functions, and peasant and middling-class ownership. A specific merchant approach to life and death, and a distinctive merchant culture have been identified. Clothiers, however, straddled all these boundaries. Any consideration of the role of clothiers within society, therefore, needs to range widely, viewing as broadly as possible the limited evidence at our disposal.

FAMILY BACKGROUNDS

The absence of detailed biographical information about many clothiers makes tracing their origins difficult. Michael Zell's detailed study of clothiers in the Weald of Kent around 1500 found that these clothiers tended to be the sons or nephews of clothiers, or the sons of relatively prosperous farmers, traders and artisans, whose families could afford the premium for apprenticeship and the capital needed to set up a cloth-making business. Inheriting a smallholding with a house and outbuildings to store materials and carry out some cloth-making tasks was also an advantage. The backgrounds of the leading clothiers of the later Middle Ages, who are among the best documented, suggest that many of these men came from families of farmers and artisans. Thomas Paycocke's father and grandfather were butchers, while Thomas Spring I may have been a sheep farmer; William Stumpe's father was a weaver and his brother a husbandman.

Gervase Amyot (d. 1537) of Benenden in Kent provides a good example of a clothier of more modest wealth from an agricultural background. His grandfather Stephen Amyot of Benenden was a small farmer who left his son Thomas, Gervase's father, a house and lands in 1489. Stephen also had sufficient wealth to leave in his will £1 for repairs to highways and 5 marks to employ a chantry priest for half a year.