page_title: John Bull (composer)
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: John Bull (composer) / Life
context_page_description: John Bull was an English composer, musician and organ builder. He was a renowned keyboard performer of the virginalist school and most of his compositions were written for this medium.
context_section_description: Bull's place of birth is shrouded in uncertainty. In an article published in 1952, Thurston Dart presumed that Bull's family originated in Somerset, where it is possible the composer was born. It was the 17th-century antiquarian Anthony Wood who first proposed that he was related to the Bull family of Peglich, Somerset, but in 1959 Dart wrote that Bull was probably the son of a London goldsmith…. Then, in the second edition of his Calendar of the Life of John Bull, Dart proposed Hereford as a third possibility. More recent research by Susi Jeans suggests that Bull was born in the Radnorshire parish of Old Radnor within the diocese of Hereford, although no birth records have yet been discovered. Bull's appointment as organist of Hereford Cathedral in 1582 lends credence to this diocese being his place of birth: it was customary at this time for organists to return to their home cathedrals after training in London (cf: Thomas Morley).
  In 1573 he joined the choir at Hereford Cathedral, and the next year joined the Children of the Chapel Royal in London, where he studied with John Blitheman and William Hunnis; in addition to singing he learned to play the organ at this time. After being appointed to the Merchant Taylor's Company in 1577–78, Bull received his first appointment as organist of Hereford Cathedral in 1582, and then became Master of the Children there.
  In 1586 he received his degree from Oxford, and he became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal that same year. In 1591, following the death of John Blitheman, he became organist at the Chapel Royal; in 1592 he received his doctorate from Oxford, and in 1596 he became the first professor of music at Gresham College on the recommendation of Queen Elizabeth, who admired him. There is some evidence that she sent Bull on espionage missions: his eighteen-month trip to the continent in 1601–02, ostensibly for health reasons, has never been satisfactorily explained, and his whereabouts there, apart from a visit to Brussels, remain a mystery. On the death of Elizabeth, he entered into the service of King James, establishing a reputation as a skilled composer, keyboard performer and improviser.
  However, in addition to his virtuosity as a keyboard performer and composer, Bull was also skilled at getting into trouble. In 1597 his appointment to Gresham College required him to obey the committee's ordinances, lodge at Gresham House, and give an inaugural lecture during the second week of June in the presence of the mayor, the aldermen, the Bishop of London and the master and warden of the Mercers Company. Fearful of losing his readership because his assigned rooms were still occupied by Thomas Gresham's stepson, William Reade, he forced an entry to the rooms by engaging a mason to help him break down a wall, which led to an action against Bull in Star Chamber. The outcome of this case is not known. Ten years later, he was forced to leave his post at Gresham College on 20 December 1607, after he fathered a child pre-maritally with an Elizabeth Walter, thus losing his best source of income as well as his quarters. Even though he filed a petition for a marriage licence two days after he lost his job, he never returned to the college. He married Elizabeth Walter in 1607, by whom he had a daughter.
  Just after publishing seven keyboard pieces in Parthenia, Bull left England for good, secretly and with great haste in October 1613, fleeing the wrath of George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, and King James himself; the charge this time was adultery.  William Trumbull, the English envoy in the Low Countries, after first attempting to cover for him – but later fearing for his own position if he continued to do so – wrote to the King in early 1614:
  Bull did not leave your Majesties service for any wrong done unto him, or for matter of religion, under which fained pretext he now sought to wrong the reputation of your Majesties justice, but did in that dishonest matter steal out of England through the guilt of a corrupt conscience, to escape the punishment, which notoriously he had deserved, and 
caption: Antwerp Cathedral, painted c. 1820 by Domenico Quaglio the Younger. Bull worked as organist of the cathedral from 1615 until his death.
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