Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 39.djvu/90

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Morley
84
Morley

associations and institutions with which he was connected followed him to his grave. He had by his wife Rebekah Maria, daughter of Samuel Hope of Liverpool five sons and three daughters, Samuel, Howard, Charles, Arnold (privy-councillor and postmaster-general), and Henry, Rebekah, Augusta, and Mary. To his children he bequeathed a prodigious fortune. A portrait of him by H. T. Wells, R.A., was painted in 1875, and is in the library of the Congregationalist Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street; there is also a bad statue of him in marble at Bristol.

Morley had all the business talents of a man of this world and all the warmth of heart and piety of a man of the next. Endlessly active, a hater of waste or sloth, keen in a bargain and shrewd in his trade, he applied himself laboriously to spending for the good of others the wealth which his commanding aptitude for business had enabled him to accumulate. He loved a good horse; otherwise he not only had no hobby and pursued no sport, but discountenanced some sports, such as gaming, in others. In old age his views broadened and his temper mellowed; in middle life he was apt to be irritable and austere; but in religious matters, though always a professed Congregationalist, he was undogmatic and liberal. Like Lord Shaftesbury and George Peabody, he erected benevolence into a business, which he carried on upon a scale hardly less huge than that on which he made his money. His numberless public and private acts of charity made him undoubtedly one of the most signal benefactors of his generation.

[His Life and Letters, based on family materials and the assistance of all his relatives and intimate friends, was brought out by Edwin Hodder in 1889; the Congregationalist, xv. 711, a eulogistic estimate by J. Guinness Rogers; Contemporary Magazine, 1. 649.]

J. A. H.

MORLEY, THOMAS (1557–1604?), musician, was born in 1557. This date is determined by the title of a 'Domine non est' preserved in the Bodleian Library, which runs : 'Thomæ Morley, aetatis suse 19. Anno Domini 1576' (Grove, App. p. 720). He was a pupil of William Byrd, and possibly a chorister of St. Paul's Cathedral. He graduated Mus. Bac. at Oxford on 6 July 1588, and about three years later was appointed organist to St. Paul's. This post he resigned on being elected, on 24 July 1592, gentleman of the Chapel Royal, by which title he always describes himself in his works. He was also appointed epistler to the Chapel Royal, and on 18 Nov. 1592 gospeller.

In 1598 he was granted a patent, dated 11 Sept., similar to that previously held by Byrd, by which he enjoyed the exclusive right of printing books of music and selling ruled paper. While this remained in force it was as his 'assignes' that William Bartley, Thomas Este, Peter Short, John Windet, and others printed and issued musical works. On 7 Oct. 1602 Morley was succeeded at the Chapel Royal by George Woodson, having probably resigned his post on account of his ill-health, to which he makes reference in his 'Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke.' The date of his death is uncertain; Hawkins and Burney both state it to have taken place in 1604.

Morley's skill and grace in the composition of madrigals are undoubted, but he has been accused of wholesale thefts from such Italian sources as the works of Anerio and Gastoldi. His reputation mainly rests on his work entitled 'A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke,' London, 1597, which, as the first satisfactory musical treatise published in England, enjoyed great popularity for nearly two centuries. Eleven years after its first appearance it was reissued with a new title-page, and as late as 1771 a second edition was published, with an appendix of motets, &c., in score. In the seventeenth century Johann Caspar Trost, organist of St. Martin's, Halberstadt, translated it into German, under the title of 'Musica Practica.' Morley's published compositions include : 1. 'Canzonets, or Little Short Songs to Three Voyces,' London, 1593; other editions 1606 and 1631. German translations of this were published at Cassel in 1612, and at Rostock in 1624. 2. 'Madrigalls to Foure Voyces, the first Booke,' London, 1594; 2nd edit. 1600. 3. 'The First Booke of Ballets to Five Voyces,' London, 1595. An edition of this with Italian words was published in London in the same year, and another, with English words, in London in 1600. A German translation was published at Nuremberg in 1609. The original was reprinted for the Musical Antiquarian Society by E. F. Rimbault in 1842. 4. 'The first Booke of Canzonets to Two Voyces, containing also seven Fantasies for Instruments,' London, 1595; reprinted in 1619. 5. 'Canzonets, or Little Short Aers to Five and Sixe Voices,' London, 1597. 6. ' The First Booke of Aires, or Little Short Songs, to sing and play to the Lute with the Base Viol,' London, 1600. In this is a setting of the Page's song, 'It was a Lover and his Lass,' from ' As you like it,' which is interesting as one of the few pieces of original Shakespearean music which have survived. It is reprinted in Knight's 'Shakspeare,' and also in Chappell's 'Popular Music of the Olden Time.' His canzonets and