Thomas Ravenscroft: A Brief ‘Civil’ Discourse

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When my edition of Thomas Ravenscroft’s music treatises was in proofs at Ashgate in April 2014, I received a photograph of a 1630 license of alienation that revealed what Ravenscroft was doing after 1622, when he resigned his position as music master at Christ’s Hospital, a school for fatherless boys just north of St Paul’s. With a signature recognizable from his holographic dedication to Sir John Egerton in a Huntington Library copy of his treatise, A Briefe Discourse (1614),1 Ravenscroft signed himself in that document as deputy to the Lord High Treasurer of England, Richard Lord Weston.2 Just before publication I was able to establish that Ravenscroft had joined the chancery office in November 1622, the same month that he declared to the Christ’s Hospital Court of Governors that ‘hee was willing to leaue the place of Teaching the Children, having Resolued of another Course for himselfe’.3 Forty-nine certifying signatures over the period November 1622 to November 1630 amply confirm his presence in chancery, and testify to the fulfillment of his resolution.4