John Jenkins (1592-1678) was acknowledged by his English contemporaries as a supreme composer of instrumental music. A conference held in 1992 to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth, rather than focusing only on his life and work, set these in a wider context. Some of the papers included here were first presented at the conference, but are supplemented by others giving a broad conspectus of current work by leading scholars in the field of English
consort music. The collection embraces various aspects not only of Jenkin's work, but also some of his contemporaries (Gibbons, Ferrabosco II, Mico, Cobbold), instruments (lute, lyre, viol, organ), and consort manuscripts, including their patrons and copyists.