The Manuscript was probably purchased by Archbishop James Ussher, who from 1603 was sent to England on frequent voyages to buy books "to furnish the Library of the University of Dublin".
The name "Dublin Virginal Manuscript" is modern, and there is no mention of any specific instrument for which the music was intended.
At some time it was bound together with the Dallis Lute Book (of perhaps 1583), but the two volumes are in different hands and the collection of keyboard pieces forms a separate and independent manuscript.
All but four of the pieces are arrangements of popular song and dance tunes found in other, mainly continental sources, such as Tielman Susato, Adrian Le Roy and Petrus Phalesius the Elder.
It is also the second-oldest surviving English source (after the Mulliner Book) of early Almain tunes, of which it contains four.