Almost no music survives from the English Jesuit colleges (indeed very little at all has come down from the European Jesuit colleges as a whole from the period 1550-1773) so the importance of the Selosse manuscript for the history of English Catholic music, as well as Catholic music in general, cannot be overstated. There is tantalising evidence in the volume which suggests a connection with another Jesuit musician Anthony Poole (one of Selosses colleagues at Saint Omers) and with an English late seventeenth century manuscript derived possibly from the Protestant community copied around 1680-90. It therefore seems likely that the Selosse manuscript may well have arrived in England during or shortly before this period. This also suggests evidence of a link between Catholic and Protestant musical circles at a time when penal laws made life for English Catholics extremely difficult. The transmission of music across religious boundaries in seventeenth century England has yet to be fully appraised
Edited by Peter Leech.
