Ms 1070 Of the Royal College of Music in London

Among the most interesting manuscripts are those that do not come under the category of church music pure and simple, but contain an admixture of contemporaneous texts in Latin alluding, directly or by biblical metaphor, to current events. Here we encounter one of the most intriguing types of manuscripts, individual creations of a clearly definable culturalpolitical centre with their own biographies, whose secrets must be ferreted out by a close study of their musical, textual, and visual aspects. In addition to their intrinsic significance, they assume importance as documents of cultural, religious, and political history. Such a manuscript is the choirbook 1070 of the Royal College of Music in London., Although it contains only one secular motet-but at an important place, the opening of the manuscript-analysis of the texts, together with other evidence, sheds new light on one of the darkest chapters of Tudor history. It is a strange and difficult manuscript with a