Francis Tregian (1574-1619)

Overview

According to The Oxford Companion to Music, Francis Tregian was a Cornish musical amateur to whose interest and diligence we owe three vary valuable compilations:

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
a collection of over eleven hundred madrigals, etc., and some instrumental pieces (British Museum, Egerton Manuscript 3665)
a smaller collection similar to the previous (New York Public Library)

He was the son of a Catholic exile, was educated in France , and became Chamberlain to Cardinal Allen, in Rome (1592-4). He returned to England to claim his father's estate in Cornwall. In 1609 he was convicted of recusancy [according to The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, recusant = a person who refuses submission to an authority or compliance with a regulation, especially. Historically, one who refuses to attend services of the Church of England] and incarcerated in the Fleet Prison, London, where he died. It was during this period that he copied the manuscripts.