News of a great victory came to King Henry V of England on August 21, 1416. His brother, John, the Duke of Bedford, followed up the recent English victory at Agincourt by breaking the siege of Harfleur and advancing the English cause in the Hundred Years' War. An immediate service of thanksgiving was called in Canterbury Cathedral, in which both King Henry and the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund took part. A contemporary verse chronicling the solemn event lists each piece of music sung; a motet for Saint John the Baptist (Bedford's patron saint) with Inter natos mulierum and the unique text Preco preheminencie featuring prominently. This yields one of the only surviving clues to a performance of music by Bedford's famous musician, John Dunstable. Both Italian and English sources preserve copies of his isorhythmic motet for St. John, "Preco preheminencie."

Three of Dunstable's four voices sing different texts (following the vibrant tradition of multi-texted motets in fourteenth century France). The voice upon which the piece's structure is founded, the tenor, sings a fragment of a plainchant antiphon for the Nativity of John the Baptist in the Sarum (English) Rite, Inter natos mulierum (Matt 11:11; Luke 7:28). The more florid upper pair of voices sings texts apparently unique to this setting: "Preco preheminencie" and "Precursor premittitur." Both are highly rhythmic, with clear poetic couplets; both present a nearly overwhelming use of alliteration within their texts and between one another ("The preacher preceded the Prince of preeminence," and "The precursor is pre-sent to prepare the people" in Howlett's translation). These two texts, one presenting the moment of Christ's baptism by John and the other John's imprisonment, might preserve pieces of the same poem.

Musically, Preco preheminencie follows a classical pattern of isorhythmic structure in the lower pair of voices. Two iterations of a rhythmic pattern (or talea) are allotted to the 24 notes of the tenor melody (the isorhythmic color). The tenor voice sings this entire isorhythmic complex three times, with note values decreasing in the proportion of 3:2:1. Each new (faster) statement in the tenor and the textless contratenor bassus is preceded by rests, filled by duet passages in the upper voice pair whose lines show Dunstable's characteristic use of triadic openings, fluid rhythms, and melodic grace. The "harmony-bearing" lower pair provides a platform for the more song-like upper pair, gradually building the rhythmic crescendo.

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