Editing William Byrd (section)

===Stondon Massey===
In about 1594 Byrd's career entered a new phase. He was now in his early fifties, and seems to have gone into semi-retirement from the Chapel Royal. He moved with his family from Harlington to [[Stondon Massey]], a small village near [[Chipping Ongar]] in Essex.{{sfn|Harley|2016b||loc=ch.5}} His ownership of Stondon Place, where he lived for the rest of his life, was contested by Joanna Shelley, with whom he engaged in a legal dispute lasting about a decade and a half. The main reason for the move was apparently the proximity of Byrd's patron [[John Petre, 1st Baron Petre|Sir John Petre]], son of Sir [[William Petre]]. A wealthy local landowner, Petre was a discreet Catholic who maintained two local manor houses, [[Ingatestone Hall]] and [[Thorndon Hall]], the first of which still survives in a much-altered state (the latter has been rebuilt). Petre held clandestine [[Mass (Catholic Church)|Mass]] celebrations, with music provided by his servants, which were subject to the unwelcome attention of spies and paid informers working for the Crown.

Byrd's acquaintance with the Petre family extended back at least to 1581 (as his surviving autograph letter of that year shows){{sfn|Harley|2016b|pp=90{{ndash}}92}} and he spent two weeks at the Petre household over Christmas in 1589. He was ideally equipped to provide elaborate polyphony to adorn the music making at the Catholic country houses of the time. The ongoing adherence of Byrd and his family to Catholicism continued to cause him difficulties, though a surviving reference to a lost petition apparently written by Byrd to [[Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury]] sometime between 1605 and 1612 suggests that he had been allowed to practise his religion under licence during the reign of Elizabeth.{{sfn|Harley|2016b|p=126}} Nevertheless, he regularly appeared in the quarterly local assizes and was reported to the archdeaconry court for non-attendance at the parish church. He was required to pay heavy fines for recusancy.