But which Henry? The three kings of the house of Lancaster—the son, grandson, and great-grandson of
John of Gaunt—were all named Henry. Henry VI, who acceded to the throne in 1421 at the age of nine
months, can be ruled out, but Henry IV and Henry V, the father and the brother, respectively, of the
manuscript’s possible first owner, both reigned during the period of its compiling. Opinions still differ as
to which of them may have composed the two pieces attributed to Roy Henry (and there is no guarantee
that either attribution is anything but honorific), but as the two pieces differ radically in style it is not
impossible that each of the two kings may have written one. An Alleluia setting in a different manuscript,
attributed to “henrici quinti,” might seem to clinch the case for the younger man; but as Margaret Bent, a
specialist in the period, has dryly noted, the piece “is no more similar in style to the two Old Hall items
than these are to each other.”^4 The Old Hall Sanctus setting (Ex. 11-14) is the older of the two, to judge by
its style and notation. Like the English descant settings of old (in particular, like Ex. 11-10), it is written
in score, is basically homorhythmic, and freely mixes “perfect” and “imperfect” consonant chords. (The
other “Roy Henry” piece is a Gloria in an advanced ars nova cantilena style, entered choirbook fashion
in separate parts.) As befits its status as a royal composition—or at least as a composition carrying a
royal attribution—it stands at the head of its section in the manuscript. Smoothly and skillfully written,
maintaining the English predilection for full triadic sonority without resorting to actual parallelism, it can
be taken as representative of “normal” English style (as opposed to the ostentatious complications of
Francophiles like Pycard) just before that style became widely known and momentously influential on the
continent.
EX. 11-14 Roy Henry, Sanctus, mm. 1–25