Hymnal, Use of Salisbury, survives in good condition. Copied in 1542 by William Forrest as a donation from Robert King, Abbot of Thame and Bishop of Osney, to his short-lived diocesan cathedral: the obscured inscription on f. iii verso reads ‘Ex dono reverendissimo patris et domini domini [sic] Roberti kyn[ge hu]ius Ecclesiae cathedralis Oseneyae primi Antistis Anno Domini MCCCCCxlii’ (Hanna, Catalogue).

Forrest may have studied at Cardinal College, Oxford, around 1530, but probably learnt calligraphy and music as a monk of Cistercian Thame Abbey where he is listed among the monks at its surrender in November 1539 (See GB-Lna E 322/222: Surrender, Thame Abbey, 16 November 1539). Forrest was then a petty canon of Osney Cathedral from 1542 until its dissolution in 1545 when he was awarded an annual pension of £6. He apparently returned to Thame as vicar of St Mary’s church in 1551-2; the church had paid him 20s. for a Hymnal (almost certainly MS 60) in 1545. He was admitted vicar of Bledlow, Bucks, on 1 July 1556; he resigned this living in 1576.

As well as MS 60, Forrest copied now-lost polyphony while at Oxford: for Magdalen College (1541-2), All Souls and New College (both 1544-5). He owned, and copied the second layer of, GB-Ob Mus. Sch. e. 376-381, the (Forrest-Heather Partbooks); and he also assumed ownership of Thame Abbey’s manuscript miscellany GB-Lbl Burney 357, at the abbey’s surrender in 1539.

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Number of leaves: i-iii + 116 + iv-vi

• Osney Cathedral, Oxford, 1542 (by donation from Robert King, Abbot of Thame (1529-39) and bishop of Osney)

• Thame, Oxfordshire, prebendal church of St Mary the Virgin (by purchase: inscription, f. iv verso, ‘This is one of the churche Bookes of Thame / Made by me Wyllm foorest prest’); in 1545 the churchwardens of Thame paid 20s. to ‘Master Forest for a Hymnall’

• William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, donated MS 60 to St John’s College, Oxford, in 1620 (inscription on f. 3)

Date inscription on f. iii verso

Nine four-line staves, red, 130 x 13-15 mm

Modern pencil foliation made on 25 June 1991, top right-hand

Initial item letters: blue or green lombards on red filigree fields; Initial verse letters: alternating blue or green and red capitals