This documentary program from the BBC has quite a bit of information about Byrd, his career, and his life as a recusant. Browse around in it and perhaps there will be some piquant factoids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cd9_6IIsRk

The Queen granted Byrd & Tallis a monopoly on the publication of polyphonic music (don't tell Jeff).

Read Kerry McCarthy's books about him.

He had many 'false relations'.

FUN FACTS, PEOPLE.

Liam thanks for both links. A little troubling, both: way too fast tempi, undue "focus" on one line, generally the soprano, but the underlying music quite interesting.

Anyone in the Seattle area has an opportunity to hear the Tallis Scholars sing a bunch of Byrd tomorrow night, Thursday, Dec. 4, 7:30 pm, at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church. Sadly, this was news to me before I booked my return flight out of Seattle a mere few hours before they sing. Almost worth the change of ticket fee.

Blessed Sacrament Church, Seattle
http://www.tudorchoir.org/concerts.html

Byrd: Vigilate
Desprez: Missa Gaudeamus
Byrd: Laetentur caeli
Byrd: Plorans ploravit
Byrd: Ye sacred muses
Byrd: Ne irascaris Domine
Turges: Magnificat

http://www.thetallisscholars.co.uk/concerts

If surviving signatures are a representative sample, the composer's preferred spelling of his own name was "Byrde", although on his own publications it also appears as Bird and Byrd. His contemporaries knew him indiscriminately as Byrd(e), Bird(e) and even Burd(e).

William Byrd was a devoted Roman Catholic who, because of life circumstances and the theological leanings of the most important woman in his life, spent his career working for Anglicans.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MUST HAVE FELT LIKE.

The Kerry McCarthy book on Byrd (Oxford University Press) is pretty recent, I note:

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195388756.do

Even more recent is a Hyperion CD (Westminster Cathedral) of all the Byrd Mass settings:

http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68038

My favorite thing is that in all 3 of his Masses, in the Credo, he either repeats the word "Catholicam" or has a major cadence to stretch it out. If I remember correctly, in one of them, he also repeats "apostolicam ecclesiam". I think this is hilarious.

This is an odd post bump...

Nearly all of them are!

TWELVE MONTHS

I guess I'm alone, but the picture of him writing this by candlelight with a quill and saying "Take that, Queenie!" strikes me as quite amusing. William Byrd is second only to Bach in my book.