Our Lady’s Dowry

Lady Margaret Beaufort – mother of Henry VII. and grandmother of Henry VIII. – was instrumental in securing the crown for the Tudor dynasty at the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses.  Despite her political manœuverings, she was famous for her religious devotion and was an important patroness of the arts. On Sunday August 24, Musica Transalpina presents a program of music from early Tudor England, featuring the Missa O bone Jhesu by Robert Fayrfax, which was commissioned by Lady Margaret.  This mass survives in three choirbooks compiled around 1515, 1520, and 1525, but this mass setting would have to predate Lady Margaret’s death in 1509.  A closer look at her treasurer’s payment records indicate that she paid Fayrfax 6 shillings and 8 pence for a new mass on August 11, 1507, positively dating this composition to that year.