«The Paston Collection, one of the largest from Elizabethan and early Jacobean times, consists of 45 part-book sets in 157 volumes and among these, there are 5 remaining lute books which include over 500 works transcribed for lute and voice.
This extraordinary collection was assembled and intabulated by one man: Edward Paston, a noble gentleman from Norfolk with close ties to the King. He was a poet, an orator, and a translator, but perhaps most interestingly for our purposes, Paston was a lute player. His intabulations include compositions of Taverner, Lassus, Victoria, da Monte, Gombert, Victoria, Josquin, Palestrina, and the largest collection of William Byrd in any contained manuscript. This collection, as impressive as it is surprising, makes a veritable “playlist” of music spanning the Renaissance–all ready to be played at home with friends»