This Dean Williams was a very great man, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards Archbishop of York; he was Dean of Westminster in 1620. We are told in his _Life_, written by John Halket, {45} Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry: "He procured the sweetest music both for the organ and for voices of all parts, that ever was heard in English music. In those days the Abbey and the Jerusalem Chamber, where he gave entertainment to his friends, were the votaries of the Choicest Songs that the Land has heard. The greatest masters of that delightful faculty frequented here above all others." I think it must be to this patron of music that we owe the fine collection of Madrigals and Motets (including the very rare and valuable books of Deering) which are now preserved in the Abbey Library. This account of the perfection of the music at the Abbey in these remote days, under the fostering care of a Dean distinguished both as a statesman and a musician, may perhaps be followed by a contemporary description of the members of a choir--not, of course, of the Abbey Choir in particular by another Dean. This was Dean Earle, the first Dean after the Restoration. But the work from which I quote was first printed in 1628, so that it is only a year or two after the time of Gibbons. Earle was not Dean of Westminster until more than 30 years later. The book is entitled _Microcosmographie: a piece of the World discovered in Essays and Characters_, and was first published anonymously. {46} I hope this description of what the writer calls "A Merry Crew, the Common Singing-men in Cathedrall Churches," is not a true description of the great body of such choirs at the time, but it is worth quoting. _The Common Singing-men in Cathedral Churches_