Very little is known about the two sonatas which appear here in their original keys. They were placed in the library of the Music School in Oxford at the end of the seventeenth century in a form convenient for playing (i.e. unbound). The library was catalogued by Hake between 1850 and 1855 and the sonatas were eventually bound in 1855 with other instrumental and vocal manuscripts of the same period, some of which are dated 1698.

The sonatas are both inscribed on the title page Sonata à Violon...