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Chelys 7 (1977), article 2
musicians, some of whom remained in Henrietta Maria’s service for many
years. Louis Richard, Pierre de la Mare, Simon de la Gard and Mathurin Marie
were among those who came
over with her in 1625 and all appear on the latest available list of
1640. Anthony Robert, Camille Prevost, Nicholas Duval, Jacques
Gautier and Richard Mico himself all served the Queen for at least ten years as
musicians. It is hardly surprising that she retained the services of her musicians
for they were extremely well paid—£30 per quarter being the standard rate (and
Mico’s own) as compared with £40 per annum for the King’s musicians—and
all Catholic members of her household had the right, in accordance with the
terms of the Queen’s marriage contract, to the unmolested exercise of their
religion in her chapel.
Participation in the service of the Queen’s chapel in conjunction with her
Capuchin priests was indeed a prime duty of her musicians, and the non-French
members too were presumably Catholics. Mico certainly was, and there is some
evidence that the handful of other Englishmen came from recusant families.
William Drew was probably
related to John Drew of the ‘King’s Musick’, who had been briefly dismissed
from his post, when musician to the Prince of Wales in 1623, for attending
mass. 72 The Greenbury in the lists is presumably of the same family as Richard
Greenbury, ‘Painter to the Queen’ 73 Richard Greenbury ‘pictur drawer’ occurs
in a return of recusants by [37] Westminster JP’s in 1628. 74 Richard Wells ‘ye
Queens Ma. tis servant in her chappell’ is reported in the same return.
Henrietta Maria was notorious for using her influence to mitigate the
harshness of anti-Catholic legislation and to extricate priests and other
recusants from prison, but there can be no suggestion that English Catholics
were given ‘Ordinary’ places in her music if they were incapable of the duties.
The standards of performance in the Queen’s chapel were regarded as very high
by those such as Bulstrode Whitelocke who were not of her party. When
making plans for the masque The Triumph of Peace presented by the joint Inns
of Court in 1634 he says that as well as selecting Simon Ives and William
Lawes to compose the music ‘I also made choice of four of the most excellent
musicians of the Queen’s chapel, Monsieur la Mare, Monsieur du Vall,
Monsieur Robert and Monsieur Mari, and of divers others of foreign nations,
who were most eminent in their art ... 75
72 Calendar of Clarendon State Papers, i, p. 26.
73 Thieme-Becker: Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler, xiv (1921), p. 570. .
74 PRO, 5P.16/123, no. 12.
75 B. Whitelocke; Memorials of the English Affairs (Oxford, 1853), i. p. 54. See also M.
Lelkowitz: ‘The Longleat Papers of Bulstrode Whitelocke’, in Journal of the American
Musicological Society, xviii (1965), No. 1. p. 42-61, listing performers in The Triumph of
Peace, among whom Mico’s name does not appear.