By the sixteenth century the votive antiphon, or "antem" as it was colloquially known, had become an important observance in the British church. It formed an act of devotion which took place out of quire after Compline or at some other convenient time, often in conjunction with prayers: one polyphonic setting even has a prayer intercalated between the antiphon proper and its Amen. Such pieces were usually addressed to the Virgin and sung in the Lady Chapel until reform­ atory pressures swung the pendulum in favour of Jesus antiphons performed beneath the great cross of the rood screen. In the pre-reformation secular liturgies these antiphons were not regarded as part of the Office and, apart from the briefest of references in the Exeter Ordinal (1337), are not mentioned in their service books. It was precisely because of their extra-liturgical nature that, when Vespers and Compline were compressed into the Evensong of the First Book of Common Prayer in 1549. they were able to survive in their traditional place as the anthem we know today. 0 bone Jesu, whose text is adapted from a prayer traditionally ascribed to St. Bernard, is the last of a group of votive antiphons copied during the 1550's at the end of the set of manuscripts known as the "Gyffard" part-books (London, British Library Add. MSS 17802-5). These books are usually thought to-have been written for Westminster Abbey because they contain a votive antiphon of St. Peter, the abbey's dedicatee. However, the piece in question could have been sung in any institution which had an altar or image of him, though the composers represented in the source strongly suggest that it originated in- a London church. This provenance is of little help in trying to identify the composer of O bone Jesu since it admits too many candidates. David Wulstan has suggested that it might be Philip van Wilder, a Flemish musician who worked in London from 1525 until his death in 1552. This is possible, but, while the high range of the alto and tenor parts suggest a continental composer, they are by no means unknown in English music of the time. Similarly, English composers were taking an ever increasing interest in continental techniques and there must have been several active in the lSSO's who could have composed a piece such as this.