It is the earliest fiddle tunebook to have survived from Northern England, and hence an important source for Northumbrian music in the late 17th century.
Some time after the death of Henry's grandson Ralph in 1827, the manuscript passed into the possession of William Andrew Chatto who added his own name to the title page in 1834.
He also annotated some tune titles, pasted in some newspaper cuttings, and wrote elsewhere that Henry Atkinson "was a native of Northumberland, and lived in the vicinity of Hartburn".
While Ralph Atkinson did live in Angerton Hall, near Hartburn, he only acquired this property from the Earl of Carlisle later in the 18th century, after Henry's death.
Some years after Chatto had acquired it, the manuscript was in the possession of the composer Sir Henry Bishop, Heather Professor of Music at Oxford.
[6] There is also considerable variability in the accuracy of the notation, so that whereas some tunes are meticulously detailed, showing bowings and ornaments, others are very vague and inconsistent as to barring and note durations.
Many of the tunes are explicitly in fiddle settings, with the bowings and ornaments clearly marked; Prince Eugin's March[13] has extensive double stoppings, and another, London's loyalty,[14] is an early example of scordatura notation.
Curds and Whey, with 3 distinct strains here, appears in a similar version with more variations, in the George Skene manuscript, written in Aberdeenshire some 20 years later, there called Wat ye what I got late yestreen; in The Northern Minstrel's Budget a verse list of tunes from the early 19th century, the title of this appears as And I got yesternight curds and whey, suggesting that Atkinson's and Skene's titles are both fragments of the same lyric.
The manuscript includes a version of Purcell's Britons, Strike Home!,[23] from Bonduca which was first performed in October 1695, and which Atkinson presumably copied out after this point.
It may, however, be connected to some earlier event in that family's history, perhaps James and his brother being sent to France, and the exiled court of the Old Pretender, in 1702,[27] but in any case its name must definitely post-date the creation of the earldom in 1688.
Many of the musical forms used, popular dances at the time, are no longer common, including 33 minuets, a gavotte, 3 bourees and a saraband.