Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/127

 the late speaker of the house, and on other members. The book was suppressed. Bynneman gave his testimony against Hall. Hall alone was punished (, Journals of Parliaments under Elizabeth, pp. 291–309). Bynneman died in 1583.

Bynneman's publications were very numerous and of varied character. His name first appears in print on the title-page of Robert Crowley's ‘Apologie or Defence,’ in 1566. The ‘Manuall of Epictetus’ in English was his second publication, followed by the second volume of Paynter's ‘Palace of Pleasure’ in the same year. Bynneman was the publisher of George Turberville's ‘Booke of Faulconrie’ (1575) and ‘Noble Arte of Venerie’ (1575); of George Gascoigne's ‘Poems’ (1575–6), and of Gabriel Harvey's Latin works (1577–8). He printed the first edition of Holinshed's ‘Chronicles’ in 1574, and had licenses for printing several Latin and Greek books. In 1583 ‘the first foure bookes of Virgil's “Æneis,”’ by Richard Stanihurst, bears his imprint.

His usual device is a mermaid in an oval cartouch, with the motto ‘Omnia tempus habet;’ but he often employed in his earlier publications the device of a brazen serpent, which was the property of his master, Reginald Wolfe; in his later books he often used ‘a doe passant on a half wreath,’ with the motto ‘Cerva charissima et gratissima hinnulus prod.’

[Ames's Typographical Antiquities (ed. Herbert), ii. 965 et seq.; Arber's Transcript of Stationers' Registers, i. passim; Bullen's Cat. of Books in Brit. Mus. before 1640; Bigmore and Wyman's Bibliography of Printing, 96.] 

BYRD, WILLIAM (1538?–1623), musical composer, is generally supposed to have been the son of Thomas Byrd, a gentleman in the Chapel Royal under Edward VI and Mary. This statement is pure conjecture; there were several families who bore the same name at this period. The only evidence corroborative of it is that William Byrd's second son was named Thomas, possibly after his grandfather. Similarly it has been said that ‘in the year 1554 he was senior chorister of St. Paul's, and consequently about fifteen or sixteen years old; and his name occurs at the head of the school in a petition for the restoration of certain obits and benefactions which had been seized under the Act for the Suppression of Colleges and Hospitals in the preceding reign’ (, Some Account of William Byrd and his Works, prefixed to the reprint of Byrd's Mass, published by the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1841); but even this detailed statement cannot be verified, as the petition is not to be found in the Public Records, and the proceedings referring to the pensions in the exchequer (Queen's Remembrancer, Memoranda Rolls, 1 and 2 Phil. and Mary, 232, 238, 262 b) do not contain the name of William Byrd, though two other choristers named John and Simon Byrd are mentioned. It is more probable that he was a native of Lincoln and a descendant of Henry Byrd or Birde, mayor of Newcastle, who died at Lincoln 13 July 1512, and was buried in the cathedral. All that is known for certain of Byrd's early life is that he was ‘bred up to musick under Thomas Tallis’ (, Bodleian MS. 19 D. (4), No. 106), and was appointed organist of Lincoln probably as early as 1563. On 25 Jan. 1569 Robert Parsons, gentleman of the Chapel Royal, was drowned at Newark-upon-Trent, and on 22 Feb. following Byrd was sworn in his place. The entry in the Chapel Royal Cheque Book records that he was from Lincoln. On 14 Sept. 1568 he was married at St. Margaret's-in-the-Close, Lincoln, to Julian (or, as her name otherwise appears, Ellen), daughter of one ‘M. Birley of Lincolnshire’ (Visitation of Essex, 1634, Harl. Soc. Publications, vol. xiii.). It is possible that immediately on his appointment at the Chapel Royal Byrd did not leave Lincoln. At all events he must have kept up some sort of connection with the place, for on 7 Dec. 1572 the Chapter Records chronicle the appointment of Thomas Butler as master of the choristers and organist, ‘on ye nomination and commendation of Mr. William Byrd.’ In London Byrd seems rapidly to have made his way, sharing with Tallis the honorary post of organist of the Chapel Royal. On 22 Jan. 1575 Elizabeth granted the two composers and the survivors of them a license to print and sell music, English or foreign, and to rule, print, and sell music-paper for twenty-one years, all other printers being forbidden to infringe this patent under a penalty of forty shillings (, Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, ii. 15). This monopoly has generally been considered to have been very productive to the patentees, but that it was not so regarded by contemporary printers is proved by a passage in a petition relating to these vexatious restrictions, which was written in 1582: ‘Bird and Tallys, her maiesties servauntes, haue musike bokes with note, which the complainantes confesse they wold not print nor be furnished to print though there were no preuilege’ (ib. p. 775). The first work which Byrd published (if the undated masses are excepted) was a collection of motets, ‘Cantiones, quæ ab argumento