Building upon the developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the eighteenth century, this book investigates the themes of composition, performance (amateur and professional) and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions. British music in the era from the death of Henry Purcell to the so-called 'Musical Renaissance' of the late nineteenth century was once considered barren. This view has been overturned in recent years through a better-informed historical perspective, able to recognise that all kinds of British musical institutions continued to flourish, and not only in London. The publication, performance and recording of music by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British composers, supplemented by critical source-studies and scholarly editions, shows forms of music that developed in parallel with those of Britain's near neighbours. Indigenous musicians mingled with migrant musicians from elsewhere, yet there remained strands of British musical culture that had no continental equivalent. Music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular, flourished continuously throughout the Stuart and Hanoverian monarchies. Composers such as Eccles, Boyce, Greene, Croft, Arne and Hayes were not wholly overshadowed by European imports such as Handel and J. C. Bach. The present volume builds on this developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the period. Leading musicologists investigate themes such as composition, performance (amateur and professional), and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions.

Sometime in the late 16th to early 17th century an armed merchantman foundered in the Thames Estuary. Forgotten for over four centuries, it was rediscovered in 2003 as the Port of London Authority began clearing navigational hazards from the Princes Channel. Wessex Archaeology were alerted and recovered five sections of the ship's hull and four guns, as well as numerous artefacts. The first report in this two-volume set presented studies of the hull compiled by the University of Southern Denmark. The second volume describes the research undertaken at University College London on the wider maritime context, the conservation process and the analysis of the contents recovered from the wreck site. Prominent in the cargo were 42 iron bars thought to be of a type - so-called 'voyage iron' - sometimes traded to West Africa as the first stage of the transatlantic slave trade. With a tonnage of some 150 tons, the Gresham Ship emerges from this research as an all too rare example of typical armed merchantman of the age, capable of ocean passages, operating as a privateer or even serving with the Queen's Navy against the Armada.