Chapter 4 considers routes that advanced string players took to prepare for entering the workplace, and the changing socioeconomic and gender constraints that shaped their options. It begins by unearthing informal modes of training and “ways in,” including private or family instruction and unpaid work experience in theater orchestras, and it ends with an examination of what British conservatoire education could offer those who could afford to attend such institutions. Both sections draw on testimonies of individuals. A middle section provides a close examination of diplomas that engages scholarly conversations about musicians’ quest for professionalization and the credibility of qualifications. College of Violinists’ diplomas emerge as reputable qualifications and the exams of choice for less affluent players who wanted to teach. The chapter argues that by increasing the supply of certified teachers and competent performers for both the professional and amateur scenes, conservatoire instruction and reputable diploma certification ensured the robust continuation of violin culture in Britain beyond 1930.

This chapter examines ten or so English language or bilingual documents obtained, produced, copied, adapted and forged at Christ Church Canterbury between the 1090s and the mid 1150s. Beginning with a remarkable series of bilingual writs issued by Henry I and his successors, it also analyses a purported bilingual notification of Cnut, apparently confected around 1100, and a remarkable English-language version of a diploma of Cnut, relating to the port of Sandwich, produced at approximately the same time, as well as a document of Æthelred contrived from it fifty years later. Consideration of the documents suggests this activity involved monks, both English and French, who felt the use of English made their contentious claims more plausible. In the hundred years after the Norman Conquest, these men continued, and even expanded, the range of ways in which English could be used as a language of documentary record.