John Wilbye
(1574 -- 1638)
John Wilbye, who never married, writes of nothing but love; he is the most perfect artist of the school. Kerman pays tribute to 'the seriousness of his approach, the sensitivity of his grasp of poetry and language, the polish of his style and the subtlety of his musical ideas and their treatment', and compares him to Marenzio. Born at Diss in Norfolk in 1574, his father, a well-to-do tanner, left the boy his lute; when the Cornwallis daughter of neighboring Brome Hall married Sir Thomas Kitson of Hengrave, she took young Wilbye with her to provide music and he spent the rest of his life doing so. Up to our own destructive time Hengrave still possessed the collections of the Kitsons, portraits, manuscripts, inventories, which tell us what a part music played in their lives: payments for kersey for the musicians, seven cornets, a treble viol, a pair of virginals, for 'stringing, tuning and fretting my mistress' lute', for 'the musicians of Swan Alley for many times playing with their instruments before my master and mistress.' A few miles away across the fields was Rushbrooke of the Jermyns--a fine Elizabethan house pulled down by Lord Rothschild after the war. There resided George Kirby, another composer and friend of Wilbye: they both set the words 'Alas, what hope of speeding' in friendly rivalry.


excerpted from:
(http://www.hoasm.org/IVM/Englandthru1635.html)
My thanks to Chris Whent for his outstanding site and pages 
of information which I absolutely recommend to the reader, 
as well as for his radio programme, likewise recommended.