Richard York is probably the reference on mediaeval and early renaissance music in the country: he's a very active performer and runs the Chester Minstrels, which brings the top performers from bands like Blowzabella, Lady Maisery, and most of the Bagpipe Society together on an annual street gig. The suggection you could play accurate historically-informed Renaissance music on a fuke is actually offensive to the work a lot of people have done getting it right, from the Galpin Society to Sothebys to Kings College London...and to claim academic credentials in that is hilarious, speaking from within the halls of the Warburg Institute, a specialist house in research of the period - I am a memmber of the esoteric studies reading group. We're the home of PROMS, one of the leading sources of work of the very period you're talking about, my own studies are entirely congruent with Tony Rooley's teaching at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, and I'm consulted by Stevie Wishart, the leader of Synphonie. Me, I have enough difficulty having my Hobrough Galileo doppia accepted as it's a 17th-century instrument - but at least my Germsan nakers are right. The only way I can is because people are playing hurdies of the period.

Now, for all that you're a decent folkie, don't go there in Renaissance, you obviously haven't kept up in the last 20 years with what's gone on. Unless you are working with Joel Cohen and the Boston Camerata, you probably don't rate, and I'm most certainly not a major player in the UK.