Adrian Couwenhoven, who died in Spain in 1592, left there a widow, Ana Wickerslot, who implored the king to grant her money to go back home to Flanders with her children.

The Brebos family were famous organ-builders in the fifteenth century; they were famous marriers, too,—­but one of them met his match, Jean, called to Spain, married there a widow, Marianna Hita, with one son.  The widow outlived the husband and her son succeeded him in business.  Gilles Brebos, the best organ-builder in Europe, according to his son, who ought to have known, married in Spain a woman who was also Flemish.  When he died she was a widow raised to the third degree, and she was compelled to appeal to the king for charity.  In her quaint appeal she naively points with pride to the fact that in thirty years she had married with three of his Majesty’s servants. (Casada con tres criados de V.M.) These three were a royal mathematician, a captain in the royal navy, killed in the Flanders rebellions, and finally a royal organ-builder.  We are not told what further royal alliances she achieved.

Among the most famous of early Flemish musicians is Adrian Willaert (1480?-1562), who was born in Bruges, and was counted the founder of the Venetian school.  He was a pupil of that “Prince of Music” Josquin Despres (of whom too little is known save that the Church got him), Willaert was the teacher of Zarlino, and of Ciprien de Rore (who from his epitaph seems to have left a son, though nothing is known of his marriage).

We know nothing of Willaert’s life-romance, but he must have been happily married, for he made six wills before he died, and they are all preserved.  In every one of them he mentions his wife Susana, though he never gives her family name.  In each of his wills he leaves her the bulk of his fortune; in the fourth will he says the last word in devotion by bequeathing his widow his fortune to enjoy whether she remarries or not.

As Van der Straeten says, “it appears that the affection the old man vows for his wife grows greater and greater the nearer the fatal day approaches.  The most minute dispositions are made in her regard.”

Strangely enough Willaert never mentions either his compositions or his daughter Catharine, who was a composer, too.  Perhaps this gifted daughter had a little romance of her own and found herself disinherited.

One of the darkest of the royal English tragedies concerns a musician, one David Ricci or Rizzio, who was born at Turin, the son of a poor music-teacher, and who, when grown, managed to join the train of the Count de Moretto, then going as ambassador to Scotland.  There, thrown upon his own resources in a far cold country, this forlorn Italian managed to ingratiate himself among the musicians of Mary, the unhappy Queen of Scots.  She eventually noticed him and engaged him as a singer.  He gradually rose higher in her political and personal favour till he became secretary for French affairs, and conducted himself with such odious pride and grew so rich and so powerful that at last he was dragged from the very presence of the queen and slain.  And this was in the year 1566.