My Ladye Nevells Booke

My Ladye Nevells Booke (British Library MS Mus. 1591) is a music manuscript containing keyboard pieces by the English composer William Byrd, and, together with the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, one of the most important collections of Renaissance keyboard music.

My Ladye Nevells Booke consists of 42 pieces for keyboard by William Byrd, widely considered one of the greatest English composers of his time. Although the music was copied by John Baldwin, one of the most famous musical scribes and calligraphers of the day, the pieces seem to have been selected, organised and even edited and corrected by Byrd himself.

A heavy, oblong folio volume, it retains its original elaborately tooled Morocco binding, stamped with the title, on top of a nineteenth century repair. The illuminated coat of arms of the Neville family is on the title page, with the initials "H.N." in the lower left-hand corner. There are 192 leaves each consisting of four six-line staves with large, diamond-shaped notes. At the end is a table of contents.

The origins of the manuscript are obscure. The exact identity of the dedicatee is not proven, as there are several contenders among the widespread Neville family, but recent research points to the most likely "Lady Nevell" being Elizabeth Bacon (c.1541 – 3 May 1621), eldest daughter of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510–1579), by his first wife, Jane Ferneley (d.1552), the daughter of William Ferneley of Suffolk. Elizabeth Bacon was the third wife of Sir Henry Neville of Billingbear House, Berkshire, whose arms on the title page have now been identified. Thomas Morley also dedicated a book to her (as Lady Periam). Sir Henry and his family were not Catholics, but his son Henry's association with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex is evidence that the family may have been in favour of religious tolerance.

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