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Thomas Weelkes was one of the most gifted of the English madrigalists, and a major composer of English church music. He was very talented and on 1602 was awarded the Bachelor of Music degree from New College, Oxford. However, he moved from one job to another because of his unruliness and because, according to a report to the bishop of Chichester, he was “noted and famed for a comon drunckard and notorious swearer & blasphemer.” The bishop therefore dismissed him. None of Weelkes’s church music was published in his lifetime.