Francis Tregian the Younger as music copyist

David J. Smith responds to a controversial recent article

In a recent article, Ruby Reid Thompson dismisses the established view of the Tregian manuscripts (FVB, Eg.3665, Dr.4302, and Ch.Ch.510—14) as legend, questioning the assumptions that have come to surround our understanding of them. It is always worthwhile to re-examine evidence relating to any musical source to see what basis there is for forming an opinion about its provenance. However, there is a danger of replacing one ‘legend’ with another. Thompson puts forward the view that these great anthologies were compiled by more than one scribe in a scriptorium in which there was a conscious effort to preserve as uniform a style of writing as possible, and that the type of paper used suggests a court connection. However, the evidence for this is as circumstantial as that used in the identification of the younger Francis Tregian as the scribe. In this article I shall challenge her interpretation of the physical characteristics of the Tregian manuscripts and argue for a reinstatement of the Tregian hypothesis.

There is no direct evidence naming the scribe of any of these sources. The names which appear on the covers and flyleaves of FVB, Eg.3665, Dr.4302, and Ch.Ch.510—14 are later additions, providing no clue as to the original owner. There is no record of the compilation of these anthologies: nowhere is there a reference to any individual or group copying music on this scale. This means that any explanation of these manuscripts remains hypothetical. It is not so much a question of determining the validity of the Tregian ‘legend’, but of ascertaining whether a working hypothesis identifying him as the scribe may be held to critical account. Scholars and editors have tended, perhaps wrongly, to imply a greater degree of certainty over the penmanship than they would probably have intimated had they been questioned more closely about the subject. In the same way that scientists tend to speak of the latest hypothesis as if it were established fact, so have musicologists and performers described the Tregian manuscripts in the absence of a fuller explanation of how they came to be. The hypothesis — not legend — that Tregian wrote the manuscripts may be discarded if some material fact comes to light which proves that he cannot have been the scribe, or if an alternative view seems better fitted to what can be gleaned from the manuscripts themselves and other evidence. Does Thompson’s alternative view offer a better explanation than the working hypothesis? Should her ‘legend’ replace the existing one?