Was the great composer William Byrd secretly a traitor to England?
It seems an incredible question to ask of the man who could be Englands greatest composer. In quantity and quality, Byrds output over the 60 years of his active life almost beggars belief. From 1572 he was at the heart of the new Anglican musical establishment as a member of the Chapel Royal, and went on to become one of the greatest composers for the new Anglican liturgy, writing music that is still sung in churches up and down the land. But Byrd, who is the subject of a week-long season on Radio 3, wrote far more church music in Latin, for the Catholic liturgy. And theres the rub, because for the whole of Byrds working life, Catholicism was a proscribed religion. When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, she imposed the Protestant faith on a country that had already endured three changes of state-enforced religion in just over 20 years. After so much upheaval, it seemed unlikely that the new Protestant dispensation would last long, and so English recusants  Catholics who were not willing to convert  had two options. They could practice their faith out of the public eye, pay the fines levied by the Government for refusing to attend Protestant churches, and hope for the restoration of the true faith. Or they could collaborate with the numerous powerful forces in England and abroad who were determined to bring back the old religion. (Elizabeth had to face several plots to bring down her reign, including the Spanish Armada.) We know for a fact that Byrd was a recusant, because unlike the more cautious Catholic noblemen, he didnt bother to hide his sympathies. As early as 1569, when he was working as organist and choirmaster in Lincoln, he was ticked off by the church authorities for his Popish way of playing the organ, i.e. too long and florid. In 1584 he was named on a list of recusants and fined 200, a huge sum in those days. What made his Popishness visible and audible was his stubborn attachment to Latin church music. Throughout the 1570s and 1580s, he kept on composing elaborate Latin motets for private performance in Catholic houses. He even published them, brazenly putting his name on the title page. Composing Catholic music was not in itself a treacherous act, at least not in Elizabeths eyes. She did not like to intrude on matters of conscience. But theres a definite political tinge to Byrds church music which made it more questionable. He often focused on texts referring to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, a clear reference to the bondage of Catholics in England. He even used so-called gallows texts: lines from Psalms or other Biblical texts that were proclaimed by Catholic martyrs in their final speech in the hangmans cart.