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. Their names are indicated in the Essayes by the subscribed initials T. H., R. H., M. W., M. W. F., and A. M., which have been identified, the first two with the brothers Thomas and Robert Hudson, the fourth with Master William Fowler, and the last with Montgomerie. The third initials, M. W., may indicate Master William (Fowler), or possibly, by transposition, William Murray, one of the King's four valets of the chamber, whom Montgomerie addresses as "belovit brother" in a friendly sonnet from London. The poems of 1591 are greeted by Fowler, Constable, and Henry Lok (or Locke), and in Greek and Lathi verses by Hadrian Damman. Locke and Constable were Englishmen, the one of Puritan sympathies and the other a Catholic, and Damman was a native of Flanders.

The lives of these gentlemen are less worthy of note for their own sake than as an indication of the King's literary intercourse and the culture of his Scottish court. The Hudsons belonged to a family of four brothers, of English descent, who were musicians to the King in his earliest childhood. They are mentioned in the first Establishment of the Household, in March, 1567, as "Violaris: Mekill Thomas Hudsoun, Robert Hudsoun, James Hudsoun, William Hudsoun"; and in the reorganized household of 1591 they hold the same offices, with the privilege of a table to themselves at meals. Thomas was appointed Master of the Chapel Royal, June 5, 1586, and was continued in the position by acts of Parliament in 1587 and again in I592. In Allott's England's Parnassus (1600), he