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Chelys 7 (1977), article 2
of 1627 as having a Richard Mico among his dependants. 23 Essex was the
birthplace of the Jesuit Father Edward Mico, one of Titus Oates’s victims in the
so-called Popish Plot, who died in 1678 aged 50; 24 and the 1634 pedigree gives
‘Richard Mico of London’ a young son named Edward. Although none of these
initial clues refers to music, they led naturally to the seventeenth century Petre
family papers deposited in the Essex Record Office, which have proved fruitful,
despite tantalising gaps. The presence of a resident musician named Richard
Mico at Thorndon Hall (near Brentwood), the main Petre Essex residence in the
seventeenth century, was first noticed in the course of an article on William,
2nd Lord Petre (1575-1637), published in 1968 by Miss Briggs of the Essex
Record Office. 25 Her work has since been quoted in a study of John, first Lord
Petre (1549-1613), published in 1975 by the Essex historian A. C. Edwards. 26
Neither author however identified the Petre servant with the composer known
to viol players, and Mico was only peripheral to their main fields of interest.
These references, being concerned mainly with local history, seem to have
escaped notice in the musical world. Further research into the Petre papers and
other sources makes it possible to add considerably to Miss Briggs’s remarks
about Mico.
How did an obscure Somerset youth become attached to an Essex
nobleman? The Petres originated in the sixteenth century from
Devonshire, and several west country men can be traced among their
Essex dependants during the following century. For example, William
Smith, resident tutor at Thorndon Hall to William Petre’s sons from
1605 to 1613 (overlapping Mico’s service there), was born in 1582 at
Taunton, in the next parish to Richard Mico’s presumed birthplace. 27
The master of Taunton grammar school from 1594 to 1623 (covering
Mico’s schooldays), Richard Mercer, had previously been a Fellowof Exeter
College Oxford, with which the Petre family had a special connexion through
William Petre’s grandfather having refounded the College; William himself
was an undergraduate there (1588-91) during Mercer’s time, and doubtless
knew him. 28 The Petres were [29] known as patrons of music, and it is not
difficult to picture a young Taunton musician being brought to notice through
some such channel. William Petre visited the family’s west country estates on
23 CSPD 1627/28, p. 249, 259, 271.
24 Litterae Annuae Provinciae Angliae, 1679, Summarum Defunctorum, in archives of the
English Province of the Society of Jesus, London; Cardwell transcripts (1872), from originals in
Royal Library, Brussels, p. 98; ECR Responsa, in CRS, lv (1963), p. 503 (Edward Mico ‘nearly
19’ on 27 October 1647).
25 Nancy Briggs: ‘William 2 nd Lord Petre’, in Essex Recusant, x (1968), No. 2, p. 57-8.
26 A. C. Edward: John Petre (London, 1975), p. 31.
27 R. B. Gardiner ed.: The Registers of Wadham College, Oxford (London, 1889), I, p. 3;
Briggs, op. cit., p. 55.
28 SDNQ, xxvii (1961), p. 195; C. W. Boase ed.: The Registers of Exeter College, Oxford
(Oxford, 1899), p. 81; A. Clark ed.: Registers of the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1888), Vol.
ii Part iii, p. 165.