Background
He was the second son of Bernard Gates, gentleman, of Saint Margaret"s, Westminster.
He was the second son of Bernard Gates, gentleman, of Saint Margaret"s, Westminster.
He was director of the choir at Westminster Abbey from 1740 to 1757. Surviving music, in a conservative style, includes six anthems and a morning service. The same singers sang the work at a subscription concert at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, and again at the room in Villiers Street, York Buildings.
Gates sang one of the airs in the first performance of the "Dettingen Te Deum" in 1743.
In 1737 (10 March) Mistress Gates died, and in 1758 Gates moved to North Aston, Oxfordshire.
He died there on 15 November 1773, and was buried in the north cloister of Westminster Abbey on the 23rd of the month. The inscription on his monument, a source for his family information, gives his age as eighty-eight.
A tablet to his memory was put up in the church of North Aston, at the expense of his pupil, Thomas Sanders Dupuis.
This unusual Christian name, which was borne by another daughter of Gates (buried 1736), was derived from a Mistress Atkinson, who had been laundress to Queen Anne, and who had brought up Mistress Gates, and made her her heiress.
He held the sinecure office of tuner of the regals at court, and was a member of the choir of Westminster Abbey. He had been a prominent member of the society from its inauguration.