(fl c1410). English ruler and composer. Two works by him are included in the Old Hall manuscript. Identifications with various English monarchs of this name have been suggested since the rediscovery of the manuscript. Barclay Squire, rejecting Henry VIII and Henry VII, settled for Henry VI (reigned 1422–61, 1470–71), using the dates of Damett’s and Sturgeon’s Windsor canonries during this reign as supporting evidence. He did not consider Henry V (reigned 1413–22), for whom Lederer first put up a case, though mainly for misguided reasons. When John Harvey’s researches linked the same composers with the Royal Household Chapel of Henry V, Bukofzer argued in favour of Roy Henry being this monarch. His reasons, too, were unsound, as they failed to separate the original compilation from the later additions to Old Hall. The composers with royal associations occur only among the latter and could not, as Bukofzer supposed, following Barclay Squire, have ‘directly participated in or supervised the compilation of the MS’. Harrison superimposed a correct separation of the layers on to Bukofzer’s framework, arguing that, since the second-layer composers can be associated with Henry V’s chapel from the beginning of his reign, and that since the second layer is later than the first, the latter must belong to the previous reign. Roy Henry, he claimed, was Henry IV (reigned 1399–1413), an identification more consistent with the date of the musical style as we now understand it. This is undoubtedly true of the music itself, but not of the composer’s identity; Harrison reverted to a confusion which Bukofzer avoided, between the date of composition and the date of compilation.
The evidence of literary and archival sources is inconclusive. There is some testimony to youthful activity on musical instruments for both kings. Early biographies of Henry V tell us that he ‘delighted in songs and metres’, and ‘was in his youth a diligent follower of idle practices, much given to instruments of music, and fired with the torches of Venus herself’. The Old Hall composer need not have been ‘roy’ (king) when he wrote the music, but only when the scribe made his attribution. A date during the latter part of Henry IV’s reign is consistent with the musical style, years during which the king was declining. One reference to Henry IV does seem to imply specific musical aptitude (‘in musica micans’), though taken in the context of a long laudatory catalogue it may be no more than conventional praise. The possibility can still not be discounted that Roy Henry might after all not have been a king.
His Gloria and Sanctus (both ed. in CMM, xlvi, 1969–73, nos.16 and 94) stand at the heads of their respective sections in the manuscript, and were not later additions, as has been suggested. The Sanctus, written in score, is severely archaic, but its mensuration changes betray an origin later than that of the most old-fashioned descant pieces. The Gloria, likewise in three parts but written out in choirbook format, is characterized by a well-poised and moderately florid melodic line with two slower-moving lower parts which frequently cross. It opens in major prolation with semiminims, later changing to duple time. The tessitura is low, as is often the case with pieces having partial signatures of one, two and two flats respectively. No certain plainchant identification has been made for either piece; Dom Anselm Hughes’s ingenious claim that both movements are based on the relevant chants from Vatican Mass IX has not won general acceptance.
The marking ‘henrici quinti’ on a four-part Alleluia, Virga Jesse discovered by Brian Trowell in the Worcestershire Record Office (b705:4 BA 54) is not a composer attribution, but pertains to the archival document. The fragmentary younger cousin of the Old Hall Manuscript (see Bent, 1984, 1996) now includes in pride of place at the head of its Gloria section, corresponding to the position of Roy Henry’s Gloria in Old Hall, a canonic Gloria by Dunstaple.
MGG1 (‘Heinrich IV’, ‘Heinrich V’, ‘Heinrich VI’; B. Trowell)
A. Hughes: ‘Background to the Roy Henry Music’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 205–10
M. Bent: ‘The Progeny of Old Hall: More Leaves from a Royal English Choirbook’, Gordon Athol Anderson, 1929–1981, in memoriam, ed. L.A. Dittmer (Henryville, PA, 1984), 1–54
M. Bent: ‘A New Canonic Gloria and the Changing Profile of Dunstaple’, PMM, v (1996), 1–54
For further bibliography and illustration see Old Hall Manuscript.
MARGARET BENT