Thomas, one of the greatest musicians of England, was born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, and died on the 23rd November 1585, aged about sixty years. Thus, for the greater part of his life, he was a contemporary of Palestrina; and Burney, in his History of Music, does not hesitate to rank Tallis with Palestrina in respect of good harmony and ingenious construction. It is certain that Tallis was organist of the Chapel Royal in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but, as Burney remarks, there is no evidence, and little probability, that he held that office in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary, as has been asserted. In 1575 he published, jointly with his celebrated pupil, William Bird, Latin Motets, and Hymns for Five and Six Voices; and at the same time Queen Elizabeth granted to these two musicians a very arbitrary and monopolizing patent for twenty-one years, for the publication of any music whatsoever, English or foreign, and even for the ruling and vending of music-paper. These motets and hymns are full of the dry and learned contrivances of that age. Tallis's most extraordinary production is his Song of Forty Parts, not in simple counterpoint, but in forty real parts, crowded with subjects of fugue and imitation; the whole consisting of 138 bars in alla breve time. In 1560 and 1565 John Day, and in 1641 John Barnard, published some pieces by Tallis; and Dr Boyce inserted some in his Collection in 1760. Specimens are also given by Burney and Hawkins in their Histories of Music. In the first of Dr Thomas Tudway's six MS. volumes of Church Music, preserved in the British Museum, there are five anthems by Tallis, and the whole of his Service in D minor. It may be noticed, that in the same MS. volume, among the compositions by William Bird is the canon Non nobis Domine, which, although ascribed to Bird by tradition, does not appear anywhere in print under his name during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Besides Tallis and Bird, there were other distinguished English composers of cathedral music in the sixteenth century, viz., Tye, Sheppard, Johnson, Parsons, White, Farrant, Cawston, Oakland, Taverner.