ABSTRACT
Elizabethan London was dynamic, exciting, noisy, and surely, to a teenager such as Thomas Tomkins, a confusing place. He arrived in the midst of a half-century of rapid expansion. Elizabeth had effectively saved English music from the threat of Puritan destruction. Like her father before her she was a lover of music. Like him she maintained a sizeable band of court musicians, and she could, according to Camden, play 'handsomely' upon the lute. The organization of the Chapel Royal was tightly controlled, and from about 1585 until the death of Elizabeth was under the direction of the lord chamberlain. In addition to the master of the children, a master of the grammar school was employed for the choristers of the Chapel Royal and other children of the court. Choristers therefore benefited both from instruction in music and what, in that day, was termed a learned education, but their diet was frugal and their domestic conditions lacking in cheer.
