[6] Despite a statute enacted in 1585 by Queen Elizabeth I which levied a penalty on religious dissidents who sent their children to school overseas, on 29 September 1586, he entered the English College in Douai, a stronghold of Roman Catholicism.
At the English College he probably undertook the typical course of study required of all beginning students which included Latin and Greek literature and grammar.
[14] Existing documents show that he purchased an interest in his family estate, the manor house "Golden" together with surrounding lands, from Elizabeth Spencer for £6500 in 1607.
Documents as to the actual cause of his incarceration are lacking, but Persons, citing Boyan, appears to believe it was because he was unable to repay the large sums of money borrowed to repurchase the family estate.
[14] Persons, citing Boyan, mentioned a document that reads: "A warrant was issued by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall to inquire about the division of lands of the late Francis Tregian, Recusant, in May 28, 1619" indicating that he died prior to that date.
[22] In two articles (which are a preparation for her doctoral dissertation), Thompson provided an extensively researched historiography of how Tregian's name became so closely associated with music and why it persists despite lack of evidence and presentation of new information.
[25] Writing about the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book in 1855, he mentioned the name Tregian based on six ambiguous abbreviations and only one instance of the name actually spelled out (no.
[29]Thompson then adds her own astute observation: Squire had apparently become locked into these lines of reasoning as the only explanation for the origin of the manuscript, and he did not consider any other.
He was adamant in assigning the compilation of [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book] to a member of the Tregian family, in spite of the lack of archival corroboration.
In the introduction to the edition, Squire wrote "...it may be conjectured with much plausibility that [the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book] was written by the younger Tregian to while away his time in prison.
Because of the wide distribution of this 1899 edition of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book due to reprints,[31] Squire's strongest endorsement of Tregian has gained near-acceptance as fact.
[29] In the second (1910) and third (1928) editions of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Squire mitigated his view of Tregian's responsibility, retreating from the claim that he had copied the work, but believing that it was still associated with him.
[29] The presence of two instances of the marking "Treg" in titles as well as ambiguous abbreviations—and noting that all these annotations are missing in other manuscript versions of these works—leads Thompson to find a slim basis for Squire's declaration of Tregian being the copyist in 1899, and no surprise that he later retreated from the claim.
",[34] and then adding Drexel 4302 making a group of four manuscripts, Schofield and Dart paradoxically announced their idea of Tregian as copyist was "more probable than ever"[35] while admitting there was "no final proof.
She was particularly taken by two legal documents and showed photographs of them to Schofield who--"perhaps little cautiously" in Thompson's characterisation[37]--"saw no reason to doubt but that Tregian was indeed the scribe of Egerton 3665 and, therefore, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Paper similar to the Wendelin Riehl but with a different watermark was used by architect Inigo Jones for three drawings made between 1619 and 1624, all of them directly related to the royal court.
She warns against superficial examination by noting that similarity of layout can be deceptive and that one must thoroughly analyze various characteristics such as margins, rulings, scripts, corrections, and annotations.
She notes how each of the manuscripts have a relative small ruled area ranging from 55.6% (for the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book) to 58.8% for Egerton 3665), observing that conservation of paper was not an issue and that these scores must have been intended for presentation.
It is not true for both Egerton 3665 and Drexel 4302, leading her to conclude that these two manuscripts were not planned as single units (which would have had identical ruling) but portions made at different times.
Thompson acknowledges the four manuscript share an orderly layout and similar graphic style, creating the appearance of uniformity.
[51] Yet she warns that each manuscript page is a "complex object built up from different layers of scribal features applied in a given sequence.
Each item (e.g. margins, rulings, scripts, corrections, annotations) when detached from the written web, provides evidence about the genesis of the manuscripts, and throws light on the chronology of scribal activity.
[51] Allowing for reduction of page size due to trimming and binding, Thompson reveals that the average amount of page used in the manuscripts was rather small (55.6% in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, 54% in Christ Church manuscript 510–14, 58.8% in Egerton 3665 and 56.6% in Drexel 4302), indicating that saving paper was clearly not a major consideration, whereas attractive presentation was apparently important.
[51] She remarks on the "elegant proportions" of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and the Christ Church manuscripts 510–514 nothing that they were probably intended as fair or presentation copies.
In summarising her discussion of scribal issues, Thompson acknowledges the difficulties of making determinations of a variety of music scripts, but concludes that there is no question of reducing the multiple hands to a single person.
[60] He states "The Tregian manuscripts were probably compiled over many years, so inconsistencies in their notation are only to be expected",[61] deliberately ignoring Thompson's findings concerning the paper particularly of the uniformity of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and Mus.
Smith notes that both the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and Drexel 4302 have empty ruled staves at their ends which he sees as evidence of a "work in progress."
Smith goes on at length to discuss particular points of the music content, an aspect that Thompson deliberately did not discuss, since she recognised that physical analysis must precede content analysis[62] Without supplying corroborative physical evidence aside from scribal issues that do not directly address or refute Thompson's discoveries, Smith feels that "there is no reason to discard the hypothesis that Tregian was the scribe.
"[63] Whether there is still a controversy concerning Tregian, in his European Music: 1520—1640 (first published in 2006), James Haar considers the hypothesis to be "demolished" by Thompson's findings.