Francis Tregian the Younger

Who was Francis Tregian the Younger?

Francis Tregian the Younger was an English music copyist and amateur musician although his musical activities are the subject of dispute.

When Francis was a boy, his father Francis Tregian the Elder was dispossessed for being a Roman Catholic, and the family had to leave their home in Probus, Cornwall. He was educated in France, and in 1592 obtained a position in Rome as chamberlain to Cardinal William Allen. On Allen's death in 1594 he returned to England to reclaim his father's estates. Things did not go very well for Tregian in England. Although his family was well-connected socially, Tregian was imprisoned, as his father had been before him. He took out loans buying back the family estate in Cornwall from Elizabeth Spencer. It seems that it was this debt, aggravated by the penalties for recusancy, which led to his being imprisoned in the Fleet Prison in London. Tregian died in prison and was buried at St Bride's, Fleet Street.

There is circumstantial evidence that Francis Tregian the Younger was the copyist of musical anthologies, and since the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book was first published at the end of the nineteenth century, the hypothesis that he copied out the manuscript has been widely accepted. Tregian has been credited as the main copyist of four anthologies: