Nicholas Lanier

Master of the King's Musick

Michael I. Wilson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780859679992
• eBook ISBN: 9781351556385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666) was not only the first person to hold the office of Master of the Music to King Charles I, he was also a practising painter, a friend of Rubens, Van Dyck and many other artists of his time, and one of the very first great art collectors and connoisseurs. He is especially remembered for the part he played in acquiring, on behalf of Charles I, the famous collection of paintings belonging to the Gonzaga family of Mantua. Many of these paintings still form an important part of the Royal Collection today. In this book the different strands of Lanier's colourful life are for the first time drawn together and presented in a single compelling narrative.

1 1588–1611: The Apprentice Musician

On the walls of the Faculty of Music in Oxford hangs a portrait of a man In the costume of the early seventeenth century. His moustache and beard are reminiscent of Charles I, but he has a quizzical rather than a regal look and he wears his hat at a rakish angle. At his elbow are a skull and a sheet of manuscript music bearing in one corner the inscription 'Made and paynted by Nich. Lanier'. The brush and palette which he holds are further indications that we are looking at a self-portrait. His identity, however, remains a mystery to most people, and this is a matter for regret, for he deserves better of posterity.

It is the fate of certain historical figures, of importance in their own day and often also in ours, to exist only as passing references or footnotes in books about other people or events. Not for them the fat definitive biography with its revelations of public success and private peccadilloes. They hover on the fringes of great occasions or endeavours, flitting wraith-like through a few sentences or even paragraphs, only to vanish again into obscurity until their next all-too-brief appearance.

So it is with Nicholas Lanier. Although his name usually appears sooner or later in any meaningful discussion of English cultural life during the early Stuart period, the allusions are brief; they seldom attempt to give a rounded picture of the man, nor do they fully appraise the extraordinary talents and individuality that enabled him to be at one and the same time a skilled musician, the friend and trusted adviser of men in high office, a dazzling entrepreneur, an artist and a collector. It is the purpose of this book to give Lanier his due by making him the central figure of interest, and to try to set his abilities and achievements against the social and historical background of his times.

Despite his obvious competence as a painter, Nicholas Lanier was first and foremost throughout his life a professional musician. This was his calling and his trade; indeed he was born into it. For the Laniers were primarily a musical dynasty, prompting instant if superficial comparisons with the Bach family. Unlike the Bachs, however, the collective talents of the Laniers were also diversified into wider fields of interest and influence. Nicholas was not only without doubt the most outstanding member of the tribe, but was also the epitome of its many qualities and gifts.

In 1615 there was a vacancy In the group of lute players maintained as part of the musical establishment attached to the court of James I; this establishment was known collectively as the King's Musick. The royal lutenists were formidably accomplished. They included John Dowland, one of the greatest song writers of all time, and Robert Johnson and Philip Rosseter, both of whom composed songs and keyboard music of distinction. The vacancy arose from the death of their lesser-known colleague Robert Hale, and it was filled (from 12 January 1615/16) by Nicholas Lanier.¹ At the time, Dowland was aged fifty-two and was an internationally acknowledged master of his craft, while Rosseter was about forty years old and Johnson in his mid-thirties. Lanier, on the other hand, was only twenty-seven. How did this young man, at such a comparatively early age, come to be in such distinguished company?

The answer is twofold. In the first place there is no doubt that Lanier had considerable natural talent, of which – like J.S. Bach – he was the genetic inheritor. This is borne out to some extent by contemporary evidence but more especially by his compositions, a number of which have survived. Secondly, he was fortunate in that both his father and grandfather were established court musicians and that he himself had powerful patrons, as will be shown. Without this kind of entrée it would have been impossible to obtain a place at court. How the Laniers came to be at court at all is a story which now deserves closer examination.

'Lanier was born In Italy', asserted Horace Walpole confidently, no doubt taking his cue from George Vertue, the eighteenth-century engraver and omnivorous collector of art-historical snippets whose invaluable notebooks Walpole had edited.² Vertue twice refers to Lanier as 'an Italian' – a pardonable error since his mother certainly was Italian; also many of his professional associates were, and he himself came to be, associated with music of an Italianate stamp. Neverthe-less he was not born in Italy but in London, and the origins of the family were not Italian but French.

Confusingly, Lanier's grandfather, the founder of the English branch of the family, was also named Nicholas. The Laniers were apparently well-established in France and may have derived from an ancient Gascon family of the same name. The origins of their connections with music are unknown, although a musician called Guillaume Lasnier was operating in Paris between 1548 and 1600 and appears to have had at least one musical son (Louis). However, Nicholas 1 (so called here to distinguish him from his grandson), was a native of Rouen, where Laniers have been traced back to the fourteenth century.³ (It is interesting to note that in 1630 a ship arrested en route for Spain loaded with 'prohibited goods' was the Lanier of Rouen.)⁴ Nicholas I became a good enough musician to enter the service of Henri II and is recorded in 1559-60 amongst the 'Chantres et autres joueurs d'instrumens' attached to the French royal household.⁵ Unfortunately, 1559 was the very year in which the martially-minded King Henri met a painful end as the result of a wound inflicted by a Scottish opponent during a tournament. There was no assured tenure of service for the retainers of deceased employers. Nicholas I was therefore prob-ably ready to consider offers of other work and glad to be approached by emissaries of the Earl of Hertford who in June to July 1561 was visiting Paris accompanied by Thomas Cecil, eldest son of Lord Burghley. Mindful of his recent secret and possibly treasonable marriage (December 1560) to Lady Catherine Grey, sister of the executed pretender Lady Jane, Lord Hertford was probably looking out for ways of currying favour with the young Queen Elizabeth (he himself was only about twenty-two) and of insuring himself against the wrath to come. One idea that suggested itself was to find a new flautist to replace a member of the English royal Musick who had rec-ently died, and Nicholas I was readily recruited to fill this place.

Court musicians of the period were often expected to do more than merely perform on their instruments when required, and it is probable that Lanier's duties also included the carrying to and fro of letters and messages, some secret, others less so. To what extent he was employed in the capacity of a courier is not known, but it was certainly one in which his grandson came to excel. For the present, having been found to be of good character as well as a skilled musician, a firm offer was made to him and he set off for London.⁶ Although his date of birth is unknown, he cannot have been less than twenty years old, as musicians younger than this were not accepted into the English royal household. The date of his official appointment was 25 October 1561.⁷

He found lodgings with a fellow French musician, Guillaume de Vache, in the parish of St Olave, Hart Street, near the Tower of London. (A century later this was to be Samuel Pepys's parish church, in which he went to great lengths to have a special pew built for himself and his Navy Office colleagues; the church escaped the Great Fire of 1666 and still stands.) Nicholas I, used to the medieval streets of Rouen and Paris, was probably not too dismayed by the narrow, twisting thoroughfares of London, thronged with people, filthy underfoot, and rendered artificially dark and gloomy by the high overhanging upper storeys of title timber-framed houses. But it is to be hoped that he did not often meet with that kind of Insular prejudice which in 1592 caused a Continental visitor (the Duke of Würtemberg) to record that: The inhabitants [of London] ... are extremely proud and overbearing; and because the greater part, especially the tradespeople, seldom go into other countries, but always remain in their houses In the city attending to their business, they care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them'.

It should not be supposed that travel restrictions and residence permits for foreigners are modern ideas, and that people could come and go in and out of Tudor England as they pleased. A close watch was kept on all such movements by the highly organised spy networks controlled (after 1573) by Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's Principal Secretary of State. Resident aliens were regularly monitored, and it is in fact the relevant Returns of Aliens that disclose where Nicholas 1 lodged and for how long.⁸ The Return for 1567 describes both him and de Vache as 'musicians, servants to the Queen's Majesty', and states that he has been a resident for five years. The Return for the month of May 1571 shows him lodging in the house of an Italian broker called Stephen de John; he had recently married, apparently for the second time, although no mention is made of this in the Return. The 1571 Return gives his term of residence as nine years. A further Return issued in November 1571 misspells his name as 'Nicholas Lamerd, Frenchman, one of the Queen's Majesty's musioners' and adds tersely 'No church'.

Despite this last comment it is clear that the Laniers were Huguenots. Nicholas I was soon followed to England by John Lanier, his brother (or cousin – the exact relationship is unclear), also of Rouen and also a musician who eventually joined the royal service (20 October 1563).⁹ The November 1571 Return of Aliens credits him with a wife and two children and records that the family 'are of the French church', that is, practising Huguenots. In Tudor London aliens tended to live together in self-imposed ghettos, and the district around St Olave's was a Huguenot area, in which John Lanier I (whom again it is necessary to distinguish from his nephew or cousin John, the father of the Nicholas Lanier) eventually acquired the lease of a house.¹⁰ Both he and Nicholas I must have welcomed the opportunity of leaving France at a time when Catholics and Protestants were at loggerheads; they must have been even more thankful for their lucky escape when in 1562 full-scale religious war erupted in France between the opposing factions and continued intermittently until the end of the century.

On this count there was certainly no incentive to return to France. The Protestant climate in England was favourable and moreover the Laniers had secured good, well-paid posts at court. Nicholas I received a salary of 20d. per day, an annual living allowance of £7. 11s. 8d., and a further annual allowance for livery of £13. 6s. 8d. This remained unchanged throughout his career. The members of the royal Musick did not automatically receive the same salaries, nor was their pay necessarily calculated on the same basis; John I – whose instrument was the sackbut (trombone)–received 16d. per day and a daily living allowance of 4d.¹¹ Nevertheless their status was assured, to the extent that in the 1590s John I became a churchwarden of his local church, Holy Trinity Minories in the Hart Street area.¹² It seems that Nicholas I must already have been married some time before coming to England. Neither the date of the marriage nor the name of his first wife is known, but in a legal document of 1615, Mary the wife of his son Innocent deposed that she was aged sixty in that year. Thus Innocent himself was probably born about 1555 and his elder brothers John and Alphonso even earlier. An Aliens Return for 1606 states Innocent's residence in England as thirty-three years –that is, since 1573. No children are credited to Nicholas I in the Aliens Returns for 1567-71, and so it seems reasonable to assume that his wife had died before he left France and that his three sons remained there until he remarried. This second marriage took place on 13 February 1570/71 at the church of All Hallows, Barking-by-the-Tower, and was to Lucretia Bassano, then aged seventeen. Nicholas maintained his overseas links; in 1578 he was granted a licence valid for three months 'to pass beyond [the] seas ... to see his friends in France'.¹³

The future progress of the Lanier family was due in large measure to Nicholas and his two wives, for between them they eventually had no fewer than ten children – six sons and four daughters. The exact dates of the children's respective births cannot be established, but tables of seniority are provided by the listing of their names in their parents' wills.¹⁴ The only flaw is that sons and daughters are listed separately and there is therefore no single integrated list giving a simple sequence of all the children as they were born. The children were:

John, Alphonso, Innocent, Jerome, Clement,

Andrea; Ellen, Frances, Katherine, Mary.

All the sons except Innocent (who apparently remained childless) eventually had several children of their own: John having eight, Andrea nine, Clement el...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• A Note on the Old and New Style Calendars
• 1 1588–1611: The Apprentice Musicia
• 2 1611–1616: Exotic Entertainments
• 3 1616–1625: The Making of a Connoisseur
• 4 1625–1627: King's Messenger
• 5 1627–1628: Mission Accomplished
• 6 1628–1629: Collecting and Collectors
• 7 1629–1642: The Calm before the Storm
• 8 1642–1658; Trials and Tribulations
• 9 1658–1666: The Twilight Years
• Appendix I Alphonso and Aemilia Lanier
• Appendix II Nicholas Lanier's Etchings of 1638 and 1656
• Bibliography
• Index