William Byrd lived on the knife's edge of religious persecution. People could face arrest and imprisonment on the charges of being secretly Catholic (and therefore against the government). Regardless of the ramifications, Byrd published under his own name a printed book of Mass music, and another massive collection of motets for the Catholic worship. Part of the protection that allowed him such boldness was the patronage of prominent recusant Catholic familes. In 1593, in fact, Byrd left London to retire to Ingatestone Hall, the Stondon Massey estate of his long-time protector, Sir John Petre, and his family. While there, he probably participated in the family's underground Catholic worship, and may have composed his Masses and some if not all of the vast number of liturgical motets in his Gradualia for them. But apparently he also contributed music to the secular side of the Petre's household: even before he came to live there, he composed at least one pair of dance varations for Sir William (the son of Sir John), this Pavan and Galliard.

The Pavan and Galliard pair had for some time been a staple of the Elizabethan courtly instrumental music. Byrd himself contributed at least a score of surviving works, each of which pairs a stately duple-meter Pavan with a more lively triple-meter Galliard. For the opening Pavan, Byrd takes a measured and almost severe dance in G minor, with regular phrase structure but some harmonic daring, and subjects it to a series of variations. Technically there are only two variations, though he also varies each repeat of the basic music, first by the addition of a kind of perpetual-motion ornamentation. The second pair of times through the music, he adds much more contrapuntal action, including some very close syncopation, and for the third pair, he even alters the basic harmonic character, beginning instead in major. Ornamental sequences lead into a conclusion that absolutely blazes with virtuosic ornaments. Though the basic ethos of the attached Galliard is completely different and much lighter, the composer manages to almost exactly mirror his procedures from the Pavan: three pairs of variations, adding in succession moto perpetuum runs, greater counterpoint and syncopation, and a harmonic variation leading to a virtuosic close. Sir William was a lucky man, and—if he ventured to attempt to play the piece—a talented one.

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