Henry Atkinson manuscript

The Henry Atkinson manuscript is an early violin tunebook written in Northumberland. It is the earliest fiddle tunebook to have survived from northern England, and hence an important source for Northumbrian music in the late 17th century. The title page carries the inscription, in a fine hand, Henry Atkinson, his book, 1694. 1694 is presumably the date the book was begun. A small 5 is apparently written below the 4, suggesting that the book was continued into the following year.

Matt Seattle has written that elsewhere in the book there also appear the names Ralph Atkinson and Elinor Atkinson, suggesting a tentative identification of the book's compiler as one Henry Atkinson, a hostman (coal factor) of Newcastle. He had been enrolled as an apprentice in April 1686, where it is recorded that his father, also Henry, was a yeoman of Gateshead, then in County Durham. He completed this apprenticeship in February 1694, when he was admitted to the guild of hostmen, and in July of the same year he married Eleanor Forster. The couple had two children, Ralph (1696-1701) and Mary (1698- 1706), and Eleanor died in 1706. A grandson of this Henry by his second marriage to Margaret Lawson was also named Ralph; Henry died in 1759, at the age of 89. Julia Say has checked that the signature on his will matches writing in the manuscript, confirming that he was its compiler. He belonged to a family of merchants, many called Ralph or Henry, who had been living in Newcastle and Gateshead since before 1603. The family later became very prominent, two of Henry's grandchildren, by his second marriage, being Lord Stowell and Lord Eldon.

Some time after the death of Henry's grandson Ralph in 1827, the manuscript passed into the possession of William Andrew Chatto who added his own name to the title page in 1834. He also annotated some tune titles, pasted in some newspaper cuttings, and wrote elsewhere that Henry Atkinson "was a native of Northumberland, and lived in the vicinity of Hartburn". This statement seems to have been a misunderstanding on his part. While Ralph Atkinson did live in Angerton Hall, near Hartburn, he only acquired this property from the Earl of Carlisle later in the 18th century, after Henry's death. The identification of Henry places him firmly in the urban middle class of Newcastle and Gateshead, rather than rural Northumberland.

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