Notes on the Petre Gradual

Untraced and believed lost since the 1960s, the Petre Gradual was rediscovered in the Special Collections of Newcastle University’s Robinson Library in 2014. It is the fruit of five phases of activity: initial copying in the 1380s–1390s, a major replacement of lost gatherings in the early fifteenth century, and three subsequent additions: supplementary Propers for the Holy Trinity and St Thomas of Hereford (c. 1420), mensural squares for Mass movements and two-voice settings of the Kyrie (c. 1460), and devout texts by its Elizabethan owners, the Petre family of Ingatestone, Essex.