Editing William Byrd (section)

===The Chapel Royal===
[[File:Darnley stage 3.jpg|thumb|left|alt=The Darnley portrait of Elizabeth I|The ''[[Portraiture of Elizabeth I#The Darnley Portrait|Darnley portrait]]'' of [[Elizabeth I]], {{circa|1575}}, the year she granted Byrd and [[Thomas Tallis]] a [[monopoly]] on printing music]]
In 1572, following the death of the composer [[Robert Parsons (composer)|Robert Parsons]], who drowned in the [[River Trent|Trent]] near [[Newark-on-Trent|Newark]] on 25 January of that year, Byrd obtained the post of Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, the largest choir of its kind in England. The appointment, which was for life, came with a good [[salary]].{{sfn|McCarthy|2013|pp=51{{ndash}}52}} Almost from the outset Byrd is named as 'organist', which however was not a designated post but an occupation for any Chapel Royal member capable of filling it. 

Byrd's appointment at the Chapel Royal increased his opportunities to widen his scope as a composer and also to make contacts at the court of [[Elizabeth I|Queen Elizabeth]]. The Queen was a moderate Protestant who eschewed the more extreme forms of Puritanism and retained a fondness for elaborate ritual, besides being a music lover and keyboard player herself. Byrd's output of Anglican church music (defined in the strictest sense as sacred music designed for performance in church) is small, but it stretches the limits of elaboration then regarded as acceptable by some reforming Protestants who regarded highly wrought music as a distraction from the Word of God.

In 1575 Byrd and Tallis were jointly granted a [[monopoly]] for the printing of music and ruled music paper for 21 years, one of a number of [[patent]]s issued by the Crown for the printing of books, which was the first known issuing of [[letters patent]].{{sfn|Walker|1952|p=48}} The two musicians used the services of the French [[Huguenot]] printer [[Thomas Vautrollier]], who had settled in England and previously produced an edition of a collection of [[Orlande de Lassus|Lassus]] chansons in London (''{{lang|fr|Receuil du mellange}}'', 1570). 

The two monopolists took advantage of the patent to produce a grandiose joint publication under the title ''Cantiones quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur''. It was a collection of 34 Latin [[motets]] dedicated to the Queen herself, accompanied by elaborate prefatory matter including poems in Latin [[elegiac]]s by the schoolmaster [[Richard Mulcaster]] and the young courtier [[Ferdinando Richardson|Ferdinand Heybourne]] (aka Richardson). There are 17 motets each by Tallis and Byrd, one for each year of the Queen's reign.

The ''Cantiones'' were a financial failure. In 1577 Byrd and Tallis were forced to petition Queen Elizabeth for financial help, pleading that the publication had "fallen oute to oure greate losse" and that Tallis was now "verie aged". They were subsequently granted the leasehold on various lands in [[East Anglia]] and the [[West Country]] for a period of 21 years.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|pp=65{{ndash}}66}} Thomas Byrd inherited his half of the monopoly from his godfather, Tallis{{sfn|McCarthy|2020}} in 1585: although it is assumed that it was William Byrd who eventually managed it or was given ownership to continue the production of vast publications.