Yet Dowland was not a happy man. He had repeatedly failed to achieve the recognition he craved in his own country in the form of a post as a lutenist at the English court: he had been passed over in 1594 and again in 1597-8. The problem, it seems, was religion. He had converted to Catholicism during a period spent in Paris as a teenager in the service of the diplomat Sir Henry Cobham. However he had aroused the suspicion of the English authorities in 1595 when he got involved with a circle of English Catholics in Florence involved in plotting against Queen Elizabeth. He wrote a long and hysterical letter to Sir Robert Cecil (the queen’s Secretary of State) from Nuremberg on 10th November 1595 protesting his innocence, but he must have been naîve if he thought he would be believed.

In general, Dowland seems to have been a difficult and sensitive man, alternately arrogant and depressive, who was often his own worst enemy. As his friend, the writer Henry Peacham put it, he “slipt many opportunities in advancing his fortunes.”