The spinet was a keyed instrument with jacks. According to Dr. Burney it was a small harpsichord, or virginal, with one string to each note. Though many writers persistently say that the name was derived from the spine, or thorn, that plucked the strings, an old Italian book, published in Bologna in 1608, says: “The Spinetta received its name from its inventor, Giovanni Spinetti, of Venice.” One of his instruments is dated 1503. Very beautiful cases were made for these old Italian spinets which were sometimes painted by great artists. Annibal Rosso made a new kind of spinet without a case, showing the soundboard with the wires lying flat like a harp. In England this _Spinetta traversa_ was called the Stuart, Jacobean, or Queen Anne, Spinet, and also the couched harp. The spinet made its way from Italy to France, the Netherlands, Germany, and England. The largest spinets were called the virginals. The word “virginal” appears in a book by Virdung, published in Basle in 1511, which contains a picture showing an instrument of the same shape as the clavichord and with the same arrangement of the keyboard. According to Prætorius, who wrote about a hundred years later, the word “virginal” was used for a quadrangular instrument. However, from the time of Henry the Seventh to the close of the Seventeenth Century the word was used to describe all quilled keyboard instruments,—the harpsichord and trapeze-shaped spinet as well as the regular virginal of Virdung and Prætorius. Henry the Eighth was a fine performer on the virginal and so was his daughter Queen Elizabeth. Facing page 292 is a typical virginal of the Seventeenth Century; and we can see from the performer just how the hands were placed on the keyboard. This is taken from the title-page of Playford’s _Banquet of Music_, published in London in 1688. Very often in literature we find “a pair of virginals” mentioned; for example Pepys, describing the Great Fire of London in 1666, writes: “I observed that hardly one lighter, or boat, in three that had the goods of a house in but there was a pair of virginals in it.” The clavecin and harpsichord seem to have supplanted the psaltery some time in the Sixteenth Century. The _gravicembalo_ or _clavicembalo_ was, as we have seen, a conspicuous member of Monteverde’s Orchestra (see page 143). It remained in the Symphony Orchestra until the days of Haydn, who got rid of it. Originating in Italy, it spread northward into France, Germany, the Netherlands, and England. The earliest mention of the harpsichord is under the name _clavicymbolum_ and occurs in the rules of the Minnesingers in 1404. The earliest mention in English is in 1502, when it is called _clavicymball_.