Historians have calculated that he was born in the early part of the 16th century, towards the end of the reign of Henry VII of England, and estimates for the year of his birth range from 1500 to 1520.

[11] He avoided the religious controversies that raged around him throughout his service to successive monarchs, though he remained, in the words of the historian Peter Ackroyd, an "unreformed Roman Catholic".

The author and composer Ernest Walker wrote that "he had more versatility of style" than Tye and White, and "his general handling of his material was more consistently easy and certain".

[8] He was employed there as the organist,[16] responsible for directing chants from the organ[17] A "Thomas Tales" is named as the "joculator organorum" at the priory and received an annual payment of £2.

[11][19] Towards the end of 1538 Tallis moved to a large Augustinian monastery, Waltham Abbey in Essex,[20] after he had come into contact with the abbot, whose London home was near to St Mary-at-Hill.

[11][6] By the summer of 1540 Tallis had moved to the formerly monastic but recently secularised Canterbury Cathedral, where his name heads the list of singers in the newly expanded choir of 10 boys and 12 men.

Amongst the collection of works they produced using their monopoly was the 1575 Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur, but it did not sell well and they were forced to appeal to Elizabeth for support.

[29] His epitaph on a brass plaque, lost in the subsequent rebuilding of the church, was recorded by the English clergyman John Strype in his 1720 edition of John Stow's Survey of London[11][30] Entered here doth ly a worthy wyght, Who for long tyme in musick bore the bell: His name to shew, was THOMAS TALLYS hyght, In honest virtuous lyff he dyd excell.

He mary'd was, though children he had none, And lyv'd in love full thre and thirty yeres Wyth loyal spowse, whose name yclypt was JONE, Who here entomb'd him company now beares.

On learning of Tallis's death, William Byrd wrote Ye Sacred Muses, his musical elegy to his colleague and mentor.

Henry VIII's break from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 and the rise of Thomas Cranmer noticeably influenced the style of music being written.

Cranmer recommended a syllabic style of music where each syllable is sung to one pitch, as his instructions make clear for the setting of the 1544 English Litany.

[34] The reformed Anglican liturgy was inaugurated during the short reign of Edward VI (1547–53),[35] and Tallis was one of the first church musicians to write anthems set to English words, although Latin continued to be used alongside the vernacular.

[37] Two of Tallis's major works were Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater[38] and the Christmas Mass Puer natus est nobis, and both are believed to be from this period.

The religious authorities at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, being Protestant, tended to discourage polyphony in church unless the words were clearly audible or, as the 1559 Injunctions stated, "playnelye understanded, as if it were read without singing".

[44] Tallis's better-known works from the Elizabethan years include his settings of the Lamentations (of Jeremiah the Prophet)[22] for the Holy Week services and the unique motet Spem in alium written for eight five-voice choirs, for which he is most remembered.

[45] Records are incomplete on his works from previous periods; 11 of his 18 Latin-texted pieces from Elizabeth's reign were published, "which ensured their survival in a way not available to the earlier material".

[46] Toward the end of his life, Tallis resisted the musical development seen in his younger contemporaries such as Byrd, who embraced compositional complexity and adopted texts of disparate biblical extracts.

[49] No contemporaneous portrait of Tallis survives; the one painted by Gerard Vandergucht dates from 150 years after the composer's death, and there is no reason to suppose that it is a fair likeness.