JOHN WANLESS 1616-63
Wanless was admitted as organist at Lincoln
Cathedral on 28 October 1616. A year later on 30 September 1617
Wanless's salary was fixed at £20, and on 25 September 1620 he was
granted an extra £3.6s.8d. He was allocated the Gatehouse Chambers (i.e.
the gatehouse to Vicars' court) at a rent of 10s. on 5 February 1624/5,
and on 1 October 1636 he was appointed to take charge of the Scripture
library for the choristers at £2 a year.
In 1658 Wanless received a grant of £2 from the Trustees for the
Maintenance of Ministers. After the Restoration he reappears in the
accounts for 1660-1 as organist, and in 1661-2 as poor clerk also.
Wanless's death is inferred from the payment made in accounting year
1662-3, of half a year's salary to Henry Wanless for 'John Wanless
defunct, lately organist and poor clerk'.
Six of John Wanless's children were baptized at St
Margaret-in-the-Close, Lincoln between 1628 and 1641: Thomas, John,
Mary, Henry, William and Edward. His wife Mary died on 19 December
1641. On 19 October 1626 a Christopher Wanless was elected chorister,
and a Thomas Wanless likewise on 30 September 1633. This could be the
Thomas Wanless who is mentioned in the minutes of the London Corporation
for Regulating the Art and Science of Music on 3 February 1662/3. A
John Wanless became Burgersh chanter on 1 October 1636 as did an Ezekiel
Wanless on 14 July 1639. The son Henry, to whom the half-year's salary
was paid in 1662-3, became an innkeeper, and was appointed by patent to
be constable of the close of Lincoln on 19 September 1670. Another
Thomas Wanless (conceivably Henry's son) was admitted Burgersh chanter
on 2 April 1677, and one of that name was playing the organ on 12
November 1689 when John Cutts struck John Jameson; was this perhaps the
Thomas Wanless who became organist of York Minster?
It may be that the whole Wanless group of cathedral musicians (Lincoln,
Ripon, York) was of Durham origin. The register of leases granted by
the Dean and Chapter or Durham records a grant of property in Claypath
(Durham City) on 18 December 1593 to one Edward Wandlesse. In 1632-3 a
certain Thomas Wanless (or Wandles), MA, was precentor of Durham; and
in 1609-10 and 1633-4 two boys called Henry Wanles (or Wandles) were
choristers of Durham. Thomas Wanless, precentor of Durham; John
Wanless, organist of Lincoln; and Henry Wanless, organist of Ripon could
all have been brothers, possibly the sons of Edward of Claypath who
might have been the great-grandfather of Thomas Wanless of York.
Matthews (1948) records how Thomas Wanless, precentor of Durham, was
called 'Chevalier Wandles' for his being sequestered and imprisoned at
Hull for loyalty to the King during the Civil War. The various phonetic
transcriptions of the name are well illustrated in Ripon Cathedral
which records the burial, on 25 May 1690 of 'Mrs. Ellen Goodman from
Wath, daughter of Mr Wansley once organist of Ripon'.

HENRY WANLESS before 1662-1674
One infers that Wanless was already in office by 1662 from an entry of a
payment of 2s. on 4 October that year to 'Mr Wanlasse pro going to view
the organs of Lord Darcy' -perhaps to obtain a temporary organ for the
Minster (Ripon Minster Accounts, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record
Series, 118 (1953 for 1951), Miscellanea vi). The same accounts reveal
payments made to Preston, the organ-builder of York, for a new
instrument for Ripon, 1663-4.
Wanless's only mention in the Chapter Acts occurs on 28 May 1670 towards
the end of his life:
It was then likewise consented and agreed before the said Chapter
betwixt Mr Wanless Organist and Mr Wilson one of the singingmen that the
said Mr Wilson should and would in consideration of the deafness and
other impotency of the said Mr Wanless to perform the same both teach
the chorister boys and play upon the organs for and instead of the said
Mr Wanless if he the said Mr Wanless would sing in his room and stead in
the choir and likewise allow him £4 per annum therefore, which he the
said Mr Wanless then and there promised and agreed to do: and this
agreement was to endure till the midsummer come twelve-month and no
longer.

This arrangement was renewed a year later, 'if the said Mr Wanlass shall
so long live'. The burial, on 5 December 1674, of 'Henry Wanlass of
Ripon Organist' is recorded in PR. Clearly he was an old man when he
died; it is not impossible, therefore, that he had been organist of the
Minster before the Interregnum. Two boys names 'Henry Wandless' were
choristers of Durham Cathedral in 1609-10 and 1632-3. It could quite
well be that the elder of these became the Ripon Organist. (For a
comment on the Wanless family, see under Lincoln Cathedral).
Wilson, whose Christian name is as yet unknown, seems to have given up
before Wanless's death. The Fabric Roll already quoted contains the
following entry dated 4 June 1674: 'Pro house organ bought of Mr Wilson
late organist for the use of the next £7.' Notwithstanding the wording
of this reference, Wilson appears only to have been acting organist;
there is no minute of his appointment to the substantive post.

THOMAS WANLESS 1691-1712
Wanless was appointed organist by Chapter Act dated 18 April 1691. His
name is there spelt 'Wandlas' and Wandlesse'; although generally the
form 'Wanless' is used as he himself signed.
A John Blundeville retained charge of the choristers until Whitsun 1692,
when Wanless himself, as the accounts show took over until 1698. At
that point a certain Mr (Thomas) Benson assumed this duty.
Wanless married Mary daughter of Henry Harrison of Holtby, Yorkshire on
10 February 1697/8. Later that year he took the Cambridge degree of
Mus.B. He clearly gave good service at York; a loose piece of paper,
now inserted in the accounts, contains the following note from the dean:

Mr Squire
Pray pay Mr Wanless the Sun [sic] of Fifty Shillings which the
Residentiaries agree with me to give him as an Encouragement for his
diligent Attending the Service of the Church
Henry Finch

His burial on 2 February 1711/12 is entered in the register of St
Michael-le-Belfry. He was the editor of a volume entitled Full Anthems
and Verse Anthems as they are ordered by the Dean and Chapter to be sung
in the Cathedral and Metropoliticall Church of St Peters in York.
Collected by Thomas Wanless, Batchelor of Music and Organist there. This
collection of words was published in York c.1703

[If memory serves me correctly his compositions are in the library at
Tenbury Wells]

More on Thomas Wanless of York from " A History of York Minster" by G.E. Aylmer and Reginald
Cant.

On 18 April 1691 Thomas Wanless was admitted organist of York Minster in
succession to Thomas Preston, he was appointed master of the choristers
in the following year. Wanless, himself a prolific composer of church
music, was editor of the earliest extant edition of the York Anthem
Book, a collection subsequently enlarged, revised, and reprinted no less
than fifteen times during the course of the next 250 years. The date of
the first edition is not known, but a second appeared in 1705. It
contains the words of seventy-eight anthems, no fewer than seventeen of
which are by Wanless himself.
From the few anthems and other sacred writings by Wanless which have
survived, it is difficult to understand how he can have earned the
reputation he enjoyed during his lifetime. His music, when not
incompetent is often plain to the point of dullness. His funeral anthem
'I am the Resurrection' suffers from a marked paucity of melodic
invention, a weakness made more noticeable by the squareness of the
rhythmic structure and the repetitive harmonic patterns. Wanless was
also the composer of the four part 'York Litany', a work which remained
popular for more than a century after his death. It was reprinted at
least three times during the nineteenth century, and though temporarily
dropped from the Minster repertoire was reintroduced in 1941...from
which time it was in regular use at York until the songmen ceased
singing at matins in 1955. In 1889 John S. Bumpus reported that the
Wanless Litany was regularly performed at Lichfield, where it was
considered 'by no means less beautiful and pathetic' than the setting by
Tallis. This may seem extravagant praise, and perhaps reveals more
about the taste of the late nineteenth century than it does about the
ability of Wanless. Nevertheless, he could occasionally come up with an
arresting musical idea. The exuberant opening of his anthem 'Awake up
my glory' is certainly striking enough despite the somewhat obvious debt
to Purcell, though it must be said that the rest of the work falls far
short of the level of the first few bars. The only complete version of
this anthem to have survived is found in the manuscript collection
prepared by Thomas Tudway for Lord Harley, where it is described as 'a
verse anthem accompanied by instruments...compos'd by Mr. Tho. Wanless,
organist of York, for his Batchelour of Musick's degree at Cambridge'.
For a degree exercise the music is surprisingly undisciplined.
Consecutive fifths and octaves between the voice parts abound, the
string writing is often clumsily contrived, and some of the harmonic
progressions are, to say the least, rather inept.

From "Cambridge University Alumni, 1261-1900" at www.ancestry.com:
WANLESS or WANLEYS, THOMAS
College: QUEENS'
Admitted pens. at QUEENS', July 2, 1698. Doubtless s. of John, of Lincoln. Mus.Bac. 1698. Organist at York, 1691. Married Mary, dau. of Henry Harrison, of Holtby, Yorks., Feb. 10, 1697-8. Musical composer. Died Feb. 2, 1711. Buried at Belfrey's, York. (J. E. West, Organists.)