Search

ABOUT seven years ago, Rough Music was made for a certain family at Copthorne, in Sussex. One Saturday night about 11 p.m., I heard the sound of shouting and banging on metal coming from about half a mile from where I then lived. I did not know what it was all about at the time, but soon afterwards I heard that the family in question were being shunned by the villagers, and demonstrations made against them. The reason for this was that the father had smacked the little boy next door for hitting his own little girl with a brick. The boy developed pneumonia shortly afterwards, and his mother claimed that it was the result of the man's blow. There was a court case about it, but it was dismissed. However, the villagers were determined to have their 'pound of flesh', and started 'rough musicking' the family. I only heard it once myself, but I understand that the demonstration was repeated on several successive Saturday nights. There was a procession and the traditional noise on each occasion, but no effigy was carried. The victims tried to stick it out, but it was too much for them in the end, and eventually they sold their cottage and moved from the district.

Contrary to popular belief, music in English parish churches did not cease during the reign of Elizabeth I. Admittedly, parish church music-making did not flourish, and many puritans objected, in their published pamphlets, to the use of polyphony in church services, but music did not stop altogether. The criticisms contained in the pamphlets were aimed especially at the cathedrals, though many parish churches at the beginning of the reign undoubtedly possessed choirs which sang polyphony.

Because of the royal connection, most of the ablest church musicians in the country were members of the Chapel Royal, and the choir was undoubtedly the finest church choir in the country. The singing men called "gentlemen in ordinary" were under the jurisdiction of the dean and the sub-dean, who in turn were answerable to the Lord Chamberlain; and the singing boys called "children of the Chapel" were under the jurisdiction of the Master of the Children. Both gentlemen and children were commissioned from cathedral and church choirs in England: the Master of the Children .(or his deputy) undertook to find suitable singers and was empowered to "take up" any fit singers he heard on his tours of the country. In 1571 a note in the York corporation minute-book shows that the master (or his deputy) had arrived there;1 it may, incidentally, have been while he was on such a journey that Robert Parsons was drowned in the river Trent at Newark, where there was a flourishing song school.

SINCE his death on 3 September, 1658, Oliver Cromwell has been the subject of ardent debate. Those who in life were closest to him, whether in body or spirit, spoke with one voice. Milton hailed him as 'Our Chief of Men' and though proverbially no man is a hero to his valet, the steward of Cromwell's house could write, 'A larger soul I think, hath seldom dwelt in house of clay.' In the Restoration period and through much of the eighteenth century the voice of calumny spoke loudest in the land, but from Carlyle's first publication of the letters and speeches in 1845 there has been a succession of major authors anxious to vindicate Cromwell's reputation such writers as Gardiner, Firth, Buchan, Barker and Ashley, to name only the giants among them. Yet, for all this distinguished literary activity, Cromwell is still a figure of current controversy. Which other seventeenth-century statesman has had his name involved in a discussion of commercial television?' Or roused such ire in a borough council when it was suggested his name should be given to a new road ?2 He has even been referred to (though quite unjustifiably) in a film review3 when a character in the film King Rat is described as having 'the kind of righteous hatred of his betters that goes back to Oliver Cromwell'. In his own day, it could be truly said of him, as Shakespeare said of Caesar, 'he doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus.' No man more plainly bore, or bears, the stamp of greatness and the innumerable historical, psychological and spiritual problems

For pt. I see ibid., vol.4, 1683 (1971). Secondary electron emission coefficients for thermal energy He(21S), He(23S), Ne(3P0.2) and Ar(3P0.2) metastable atoms incident on a gold surface have been measured using an improved gas cell absorption method. The coefficients for the same metastable species incident on chemically cleaned stainless steel and copper surfaces and on atomically clean cadmium and tungsten surfaces have been determined by calibration against the gold surface. The results indicate that rather larger coefficients than those used hitherto should be used for gold surfaces. The implications of the results presented for the measurement of metastable fluxes are examined.