John Playford: Music and Politics in the Interregnum

Abstract

n April and May of 1660 Samuel Pepys and his cousin and patron, the newly appointed General of the Fleet Edward Mountagu, lay at anchor off Deal awaiting word to sail over to Scheveling and bring back Charles II as the newly restored king of England. To amuse themselves while waiting on the Naseby-to be renamed the Royal Charles once the king stepped on board-they had with them at least two music books published by John Playford, probably Matthew Locke's Little Consort of Three Parts (1656) and the anthology of works by John Hilton, Charles Colman, and others, SelectAyres and Dialoguesfor One, Two, and Three Voyces (1659). It was evidently from the latter book that they had sung, on 24 April, Thomas Brewer's setting of James Shirley's Turne Amaryllis with which my Lord [that is, Mountagu] was much pleased.' Neither Pepys nor Mountagu had been an avid Royalist or adherent to the Stuart cause in the 165os (although they both certainly warmed to it in May of 1660). Pepys had as a schoolboy witnessed the execution of Charles I and, being at the time what he himself later called a great roundhead, rejoiced over that event (Diary, entry for 1 November 166o). Mountagu had served in the Parliamentary forces during the first Civil War of 1642-45 and later in Cromwell's government, urging Cromwell himself to become king. But the connection between the Restoration and a Playford songbook would not have been lost on them, on Playford, or on the composers of the works he published-or on the vast majority of the customers frequenting Playford's shop. John Playford was the foremost publisher of music in his generation, from 1651 to his death in late 1686 or early 1687. But he wasn't always or exclusively a publisher of music. He began his publishing career in 1647, in between the two

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