ABSTRACT
This chapter presents details of Jasper Bassano family’s economic affairs and privileges, and assesses their position in society according to contemporaneous indices. As servants of the Court, the Bassano family received the status, rewards and privileges that accompanied such service. These included membership in the gentry; good pay; extra financial rewards and grants; and some freedom from parish duties, subsidy payments and arrest. Like other Court musicians, the family was wealthier and of higher social standing than virtually all other professional musicians in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century London. One source of income for Court musicians, as for all royal servants, was the ritual exchange of gifts with the sovereign. While the wages of the Bassanos and other members of the Court consorts stood still, inflation took an enormous toll. Two surviving books of Court records from the 1620s and 1630s contain numerous petitions against the musicians for debt.
