In dealing with these and their music, it is impossible to think without emotion of the terrible sacrifice of treasures of art caused by the veritable holocaust made of them by the Puritans, for, of the work of centuries, there is, practically, little or no trace left. What we do know of the works of those composers who lived before and during the early Reformation period, shews that ecclesiastical music had arrived at a point of great splendour, and if Tallis may be considered as the descendant of a great school of composers, which he undoubtedly was, it can help us to realize the extent of our loss. He was, fortunately, able to protect his own work, or, doubtless, that would have perished with the rest, since all of his early music (and some of the noblest specimens) was written for the monastery at Waltham Abbey. Tallis stands out pre-eminent among the early Church composers, and, indeed, has been generally called the father of English music. The date of his birth is not known, but as he was organist and composer to an important monastery at the time of its dissolution in 1540, it is not only evident that he must have been born early in the century, but that his genius was decidedly precocious. Some authorities give the date as about 1529; Grove's Dictionary, on the other hand, as supposedly in the second decade of the century: this seems more probable, as the former would have found him holding such a conspicuous appointment at the age of eleven. It is a fact of much significance that he was a prominent composer before the Reformation, and thus a descendant of the ancient school of English Church music, pure and unalloyed. His earliest compositions were, of course, written to Latin words, and the publication of his motets in that language in 1575, more than thirty years after its suppression, suggests that the call of his early training and associations was greater than he could resist, for it must be borne in mind that those were days of fierce bigotry, and many had been undone for acts much less provocative of "suspicion." Indeed, of all the immediate changes in the Church services effected under Henry VIII., perhaps the most important, after those asserting severance from Rome, was the substitution of English in place of Latin in their administration, and on no point were the reformers more jealous, since it implied complete freedom from outside interference and, above all, that of the Pope.