Manuscript publishing in the Commonwealth period: A neglected source of consort music by Golding and Locke

A previously unknown manuscript (shelfmark BRm630.85Go42) at the Henry Watson Music Library, Manchester, contains a number of pieces by the composer Sir Edward Golding together with a small collection from Matthew Locke's Little Consort. On the basis of the appearance of the copying and the presence of inscriptions apparently indicating price, the manuscript is identified as an example of a ‘manuscript publication’. The consequences of this hypothesis are explored throughout the article, both in order to elucidate the likely origins of the source and to evaluate its potential to increase our understanding of the wider phenomenon of manuscript publishing in mid-seventeenth-century England. Considerable attention is also devoted to establishing the identity of Sir Edward Golding (a composer who seems to have been misidentified in an earlier study), and to the analysis of the pieces from Locke's Little Consort, the texts of which shed new light on the history of this work.