The three respond motets from Matins for the Dead by Robert Parsons constitute an important part of the sacred Latin repertory of mid-sixteenth-century England, illustrating central features of the English mid-century style. Although he worked within a conservative musical tradition, Parsons experimented with that tradition in personal and individual ways. Specifically his modal and thematic construction as well as his practice of musica ficta are singled out for closer analysis. Consequently, a methodology for editorial decisions concerning musica ficta is developed. Two special problems, the simultaneous cross-relation and diminished fourth, are shown as the result of normative polyphonic processes and vertical structures.