Martin Peerson

Despite Roman Catholic leanings at a time when it was illegal not to subscribe to Church of England beliefs and practices, he was highly esteemed for his musical abilities and held posts at St Paul's Cathedral and, it is believed, Westminster Abbey.

It appears that he had Roman Catholic sympathies, for that year, on the same occasion as Jonson, he was convicted of recusancy – the statutory offence of not complying with the established Church of England.

Although all cathedral services ceased at the end of 1642 following the outbreak of the English Civil War, he retained the title of almoner and, along with the other petty canons and the vicars choral, had special financial provision made for him.

In spite of his Roman Catholic leanings, evidenced by the use of pre-Reformation Latin texts for his motets and his 1606 conviction for recusancy, Peerson's position at the heart of the Anglican establishment confirms the overall esteem in which he was held.

[4] Peerson's powerful patrons enabled him to print and publish a considerable quantity of his music, although little remains today.

He published some metrical psalter tunes in Thomas Ravenscroft's 1621 work The Whole Booke of Psalmes with the Hymnes Evangelicall and Songs Spirituall, and then a group of Motets or Grave Chamber Musique in 1630 with English texts and the then-fashionable keyboard continuo;[8] the latter work contains two very fine songs of mourning.

Richard Rastall, professor of historical musicology at the University of Leeds, spent 12 years reconstructing the missing part.

A drawing of Old St. Paul's Cathedral from the south, as it appeared between 1630 and 1666
A virginal , probably English, c. 1750, from Frederick Litchfield's Illustrated History of Furniture from the Earliest to the Present Time (1892?). Peerson's keyboard music would probably have been played on such an instrument.