If Herrick made some friends among members of his own profession, his love of music probably procured him many more. He addresses poems to William and Henry Lawes, both of whom set verses of his to music; he alludes also to Dr. John Wilson, to Gaulthier, to Lanière, and to Robert Ramsay, in terms of familiarity. The last named, who 'set' his version of the dialogue between Horace and Lydia, may have been a Cambridge friend, as he was organist of Trinity College (1628-1634). With another organist, John Parsons of Westminster Abbey, who died in 1623, Herrick must have been acquainted very shortly after his return from Cambridge. Evidence of the friendship remains in two charming little poems addressed to the musician's daughters, Dorothy and Thomasine:
'If thou ask me, dear, wherefore I do write of thee no more, I must answer, sweet, thy part Less is here than in my heart,'
are the lines which have given the elder sister immortality, while the attractions of the second are for ever celebrated in the couplet,--
'Grow up in beauty, as thou dost begin And be of all admired, Thomasine.'
Another family into which Herrick's love of music was probably the key which gained him admission, was that of the Norgates. According to the 'Calendars of State Papers,' Edward Norgate the elder was in 1611 appointed, in conjunction with Andrea Bassano, to the office of tuner of the King's virginals, organs, and other instruments; and six-and-twenty years later we find him superintending the repair of the organ in the chapel at Hampton Court. His son, another Edward, was originally a scrivener in the King's service, and was employed 'to write, limn and garnish with gold and colours' the royal letters to a picturesque list of foreign potentates, including the Grand Signior, the King of Persia, the Emperor of Russia, the Great Mogul and other remote princes, such as the Kings of Bantam, Macassar, Barbary, Siam, Achee, Fez, and Sus. From scrivener he was raised to be Clerk of the Signet Extraordinary, and thence to be Windsor Herald, and to fill a variety of small offices of profit. Herrick addresses him as 'the most accomplished gentleman, Master Edward Norgate, Clerk of the Signet to his Majesty,' and remarks that