“Maister Doctor Dowland”

Abstract Dowland’s final years were spent as a musician in the London courts of James I and Charles I as one of a group of “Musicians for the Lutes.” This chapter outlines the terms of his employment and considers the musician’s other activities of the years 1612 through 1626 and his ongoing reputational legacy in both England and on the Continent. His contributions to William Leighton’s Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule and Thomas Ravenscroft’s A Briefe Discourse and Whole Booke of Psalmes also receive attention, as do contemporaneous mentions of the composer by authors and musicians such as Johannes-Philippus Mendelius, Thomas Tompkins, and William Webb. The chapter ends with commentary on the career and family of son Robert Dowland, and presents details of John Dowland’s 1626 death and burial at St. Ann Blackfriars, London.