ABSTRACT
In the first of three chapters tracing the history of modern appreciation of the carol, we explore the three first eighteenth-century editions of carols, all of the Agincourt carol and all taken not from one of the manuscripts of the fifteenth century but from a copy prepared for Samuel Pepys, alongside a bizarre arrangement of the same piece for baritone voice and five-string plectrum guitar. Other players in the story include Charles Burney, John Stafford Smith and Thomas Wright.
