2n<» S. N« 74., May 30, '67.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



429 



the character of the air, as I have since thought 

 them, and I was pleased to believe that " God save 

 the King" had been composed by so thoroughly 

 national a person as John Bull. 



Let the reader try the notes at the commence- 

 ment of the " ayi-e." For want of music type, it 

 must be expressed thus : Suppose two bars of 

 music, three notes in a bar, and neither sharp nor 

 flat at the signature. Instead of A, the key-note, 

 sounded thrice, as in the oldest printed copies of 

 "God save the King," it begins on the fourth below 

 — E, A, A, and then G, A, B. The G being natural, 

 the resemblance to "God save the King" is slight, 

 but by making the G sharp, and (to speak in 

 modern terms) changing tlie whole from the key 

 of A minor into A major (three sharps), the tune 

 will be essentially like " God save the King." 



There are three different ai'rangements of Dr. 

 Bull's tune in the manuscript, and the remaining 

 two are still unvarnished, and in what may be 

 called minor keys. The resemblance to " God 

 save the King" should therefore be decided by 

 those copies, and not by the " ayre." It was Dr. 

 Bull's habit to arrange the same subject in two or 

 three ways, at different periods, and I may men- 

 tion his " Jewel " as an instance. 



Mr. Clark seeing, by a letter in the Gentleman's 

 Magazine, that Ward's Lives of the Gresham Pro- 

 fessors contained a list of some compositions by 

 Dr. Bull, and that among them was one entitled 

 " God save the King," printed a book to prove 

 him the author of the national anthem, although 

 he had not then seen the manuscript. This was 

 in the year 1822. In 1841 Mr. Clark, in an ad- 

 dress to the masters and wardens of City com- 

 panies, writes thus : . 



" Determined, if possible, to set the matter still further 

 at rest, I continued my inquiries until eventually I was 

 enabled to obtain a sight of, and finally to purchase (in 

 the handwriting of the composer Dr. John Bull), this long- 

 lost manuscript." 



The manuscript is certainly not the autograph 

 of the composer, but a Dutch transcript of some 

 of his compositions, throughout which he is styled 

 Dr. Jan. Bull. It bears a date of 1619. 



Dr. Kitchener set one question at rest, viz. as 

 to the piece called " God save the King " in the 

 manuscript, by publishing it in his Loyal and N'a- 

 tional Songs of England, It is a composition on 

 four notes (C, G, F, E), with twenty-six different 

 basses. These four notes were probably intended 

 to represent the cry of " God save the King," 

 which is as old as the time of the Kings of the 

 Jews. That piece occurs at folio 56. of the ma- 

 nuscript, and at the end of it another specimen of 

 garbling is now visible through the varnish. It is 

 an attempt to make the figures " 98 " out of the 

 scroll which concludes the composition. The 

 object is to refer to the page where the " ayre " 

 (that does resemble " God save the King ") is 



written, and so to connect the two. This would 

 have escaped my observation, had not Mr. Clark 

 drawn my attention to It, and used it as an argu- 

 ment that the one was only a prelude to the other. 



If Mrs. Clark will now submit the manuscript 

 to any competent judges of writing, and they shall 

 decide that it has not been tampered with, as I 

 have described, I hereby engage to give lOZ, to a 

 charity to be agreed upon. 



The last point I have to adduce about the 

 manuscript is, that it was in the library of Dr. 

 Pepusch until his death in 1752 ; and the National 

 Anthem was performed at both the great theatres 

 in 1745. Although some may possess rare books, 

 and not acquaint themselves with their contents, 

 I do not think Dr. Pepusch ought to be classed 

 among the number ; indeed, he must have given 

 Ward the catalogue of contents for his Lives of the 

 Gresham Professors. Had the resemblance of Dr. 

 Bull's "ayre" been then as great to "God save 

 the King" as it now is, I can scarcely imagine it 

 would have escaped his observation. Again, Avhile 

 in Dr. Kitchener's possession, the manuscript was 

 submitted to the scrutiny of Edward Jones, the 

 Welsh Bard, who wrote out one of the pieces for 

 Dr. Kitchener in modern notation. Finally, in 

 1840, I looked through it to find any popular 

 tunes, when asked by Mr. Edward Walsh to esti- 

 mate its value. This was prior to its passing into 

 the hands of Mr. Clark, 



I repeatedly urged the late Mr. Clark to print 

 Dr. Bull's " God save the King," and to show the 

 manuscript, in order to set the question at rest ; 

 indeed, the whole of my correspondence with him 

 was to endeavour to clear up the matter before I 

 had occasion to write about it. Finding his pub- 

 lication still delayed, I offered 501. for the manu- 

 script, in order to submit it to proper scrutiny ; 

 and to print the air as it should be, in my Popular 

 Music of the Olden Time. In the mean time, I 

 wrote to Antwerp, where Dr. Bull was organist 

 at the date of the manuscript, in the hope of hear- 

 ing of some other copy in the library of the cathe- 

 dral, but without success. I learnt, however, the 

 curious fact, that there were eight Englishmen 

 and one Scotchman among the Pretres Chapelains 

 of that cathedral in Dr. Bull's time. 



In the second place : having within the last 

 few months made considerable researches to ascer- 

 tain whether any trace could be found of " God 

 save the King" as a National Anthem in the time 

 of the Stuarts, I have come to the following con- 

 clusions : — Firstly, that there is not a particle of 

 evidence to connect it (as Mr. Clark does) with 

 the Gunpowder Plot ; and secondly, that we have 

 no proof of any such National Anthem in the 

 reigns of Charles I., Charles II., or James II. ; 

 but that, in the last three reigns, even the cry of 

 " God save the King " was in a great measure 

 superseded by that of " Vive le Eoy I " It often 



