Mico and Jenkins:’Musitians of Fame under King Charles I’1

Abstract The lives of Richard Mica and John Jenkins were in many respects so similar that it is somewhat surprising that there is no evidence of their ever having been acquainted. Mica was probably born in 1591 and Jenkins in 1592, both lived through ‘that blody difference between the King and Parliament’, and through the Restoration of the monarchy. Mica died soon after, in 1661, while Jenkins survived until 1678. Both came from comfortable, but essentially working-class environments: Mica’s family were cloth merchants based in Taunton, and Jenkins’s father was a carpenter in Maidstone. But, while Jenkins’s family was demonstrably musical, possessing ‘Seven Vialls and Violyns, One Bandora and a Cytheme’, there is no record to show that Mica’s was musically active. Yet, by the age of eighteen, Mica was proficient enough in the art to have been appointed resident musician at Thomdon Hall, near Brentwood, Essex, home of the noble Catholic Petre family, whose enthusiasm for music was of long standing.