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Chelys 7 (1977), article 2
London’s Catholic population. Nor need burial in a parish church imply that in
later life Richard Mico had conformed (as many did under the social and
financial pressures), since Anglican resistance to Catholic burials had largely
collapsed before the civil war. 106
The story does not quite end with Mico’s death. On 1st April 1663, John
Hingeston, keeper of the King’s organs, received a warrant from the Lord
Chamberlain in repayment of expenses for installing organs in the chapel and
music room at St. James’s Palace in London [43] for Charles II’s new
(Catholic) queen Catherine of Braganza, which included an item ‘for portage of
a larger organ from Mr Micoes to St. James’s and setting up there. 107 The work
had probably been carried out since Hingeston’s last periodical bill in July
1662. 108 There is no trace then, or at other times, of payment for this organ
itself, only for portage. Could it have been one of Henrietta Maria’s which
Richard Mico had somehow managed to rescue during the debacle of 1642/43
and to preserve in London throughout the ‘troubles’, which was now returned to
its royal owners after his death? The expression ‘Mr. Micoe’s’, used nearly two
years after he died, almost implies a known place of resort, even if his widow or
daughter were still alive and living in his former house. This suggests that the
1663 organ was used by Mico during the Interregnum for musical gatherings at
his home in the Covent Garden district, comparable to those which Anthony
Wood frequented during the same period at ‘Ellis’s’ in Oxford—Ellis being an
unemployed professional who accompanied on the organ while the gentlemen
amateurs played their viols. One might even speculate whether Mico
collaborated with Hingeston in performing Deering’s Latin motets before
Cromwell! Nothing else has yet come to light about any musical activity during
the last two decades of Mico’s life.
By way of epilogue, it should be added that Richard Mico’s son Edward
returned to England as a Jesuit missionary after his father’s death, became
secretary during the 1670s to the Provincial Thomas Whitbread, was arrested
with him in the ‘Popish Plot’, and would doubtless have shared his fate at
Tyburn had he not died in prison (December 1678) while awaiting trial. 109 The
death of Richard Mico’s only son in an unpopular cause and without issue may
perhaps have contributed to the oblivion which soon overcame the composer’s
memory.
106 J. Bossy: The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850 (London, 1975), p. 141-142. See also
ERO, D/P.31/1/1, Registers of Ingatestone, for 6 Petre burials in Ingatestone church between
1613 and 1641.
107
PRO, LC.5/137, f. 420; incorrectly transcribed as ‘Mr Nicoes’ in H. C. de Lafontaine:
The King’s Musick (London 1909), p. 156.
108 PRO, LC.5,’137, f. 209.
109 Foley. op. cit., vi, p. 369; Warner’s History of English Persecution of Catholics and the
Presbyterian Plot (written during 1680’s), in CRS, xlvii, p. 47 et seq.