download.pdf - 6.3Mb - Viola da Gamba Society

Chelys 7 (1977), article 2
music ‘masters’ of London ‘turned adrift’ by the ‘troubles’ dispersed to cavalier
country houses. For Richard Mico a natural and nearby refuge could have been
Ingatestone Hall, where Mary Petre, widow of the 3rd Lord and Ann Mico’s
former mistress, managed to keep going throughout the 1640s and l650s despite
sequestrations. The chapel at Ingatestone Hall was still functioning in 1647
when she refused to ‘dissemble’ it in face of an invading Puritan mob. 91 But
particulars of her household during these years have not been traced.
Wherever Richard Mico was himself during the civil war after 1643, he got
his young son out of the country. Edward Mico was at St. Omer from
September 1643 until 1647 (usually among the top six in his class), 92 and then
at the English College in Rome until 1650, in both places under his Jesuit
uncle’s alias of Harvey. On admission at Rome he described his parents as
‘Catholic gentry’ (‘nobiles et [41] Catholici’), but did not disclose their
whereabouts. He added that he had no brothers but one sister, of whom nothing
else is known. 93 Edward appears in the English College register as
‘Essexiensis’. 94 This may mean no more than that he was born there; but since
his boyhood must have been spent in London, it perhaps tends to support the
hypothesis that Richard Mico, with his wife and daughter if surviving, had by
1647 gone to ground in Essex.
Later years
The next definite information about Richard Mico does not come to light until
1651, when things were beginning to settle down after nearly a decade of civil
war. He is then found again—or still—living in London and in touch with the
Petres; and unlike some musicians during the ‘broken times’, evidently not
destitute. On 31st July 1651, described as ‘Richard Mico of St. Martins in the
feilds London gent.’, he appeared before the Essex Commissioners for
Sequestrations to authenticate certain of the Petre family deeds which he had
witnessed in 1629/30. 95 Three of the younger sons of Mico’s former patron
William, 2nd Lord Petre (uncles of William, 4th Lord, the young current holder
of the title) had recently petitioned to recover annuities which had been
sequestred for recusancy, and needed to prove that the deeds were pre-war. 96
The speed with which Richard Mico and the other surviving witness came
forward suggests pre-arrangement. One of the petitioners, Edward Petre (whom
Mico had perhaps accompanied abroad in youth), described himself as ‘of
London esq.’ in a deed of 1648, 97 and in September 1657 he died in the parish
91 Roger North, op. cit., p. 80, and Foley, op, cit., ii, p. 425-8.
92 Lbl Add. Ms. 9354, 1. 112v-127v.
93 ECR, Responsa, in CR5, iv (1963), p. 503; Foley, op. cit., vi, p. 369.
94 ECR, Nomina Alumnorum, in GRS, xl (1943), p. 39.
95 ERO. D/DP.F.30 and 31, endorsements.
96
PRO, 5P.23/14, f. 164-165; 5P.23/11l, f. 517-525; Calendar of the Committee for
Compounding, i, p. 167.
97 ERO, D/DP.F.258.