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Chelys 7 (1977), article 2
Besides ‘a cupboard of walnutte’ (evidently where Mico kept the household
music) its furniture comprised ‘a fair short table’ and ‘six high Stooles covered
with black velvet’—an arrangement suggestive of viol consorts.
Mico’s departure is unexplained, but clearly there was no breach with the
Petres. Conceivably he was assigned to escort Lord Petre’s third son Edward to
St. Omer, as with the youngest son George in 1627 (see below). In July 1615
Edward Petre received a pass to travel abroad with two servants 49 he was 13,
the normal age for St. Omer, whose year began in August, and he did not go to
Oxford like his elder brothers; but the St. Omer registers are lost before 1622.
Mico’s music list bears a note in another hand recording that in June 1616 the
music books and viols were ‘delivered into the charge of John Oker’. Oker
became organist of Wells cathedral early in 1620, 50 and Mico was doubtless
back at Thorndon before then, although we have no proof of his presence until
August 1623 (just after the death of William Byrd) when he witnessed the lease
of one of Lord Petre’s Essex farms. 51 Lord Petre described Mico in 1627 as one
‘who has served me long’, which seems to rule out any prolonged break of
service. 52
The wave of anti-Catholic feeling in the mid-1620s, which, as Miss Briggs
shows, forced Lord Petre to retire into private life, touched Mico too. The
episode figures in Miss Briggs’s article, and is of indirect interest here in so far
as it illustrates the responsible position which Richard Mico by now held in the
Petre household—a striking exception to Woodfill’s dictum that ‘most
professional musicians started and ended as menials’. 53 Lord Petre’s youngest
son George (13) and his young cousin the grandson of the Earl of Worcester set
out abroad in July 1627, escorted at first by Richard Mico, who later handed
over to a Jesuit. They and the Jesuit were intercepted at sea, found to be
travelling on forged passes, and sent up to London under arrest. Lord Petre then
sent an embarrassed letter to the [33] Secretary of State claiming that George
was only going to France to learn the language and that Mico had ‘much
against my will, procured one of his aquaintance (but to mee a mere stranger) to
undertake his charge for him’. The Venetian Embassy, usually well-informed,
reported home however that the youths had been arrested en route to ‘their
colleges’ (a clue not cited by Miss Briggs). It was illegal to send youths to
Catholic seminaries abroad, and war had just broken out with France. The
tangled story makes sense on the supposition that George Petre was being
smuggled to St. Omer through the Catholic ‘underground’, in which Mico was
acting for his patron. It emerged that Mico had arranged for the forged passes,
and it was he who was sent as bearer of Lord Petre’s letter when things went
49 ERO, DIDP.F.157.
50 HMC Wells, ii, p. 376.
51 ERO, D/DP.E.25, f. 278v.
52 PRO, 5P.16/70, f. 65.
53 Woodfill, op. cit., p. 243.