Coordinates: 51°45′07″N 1°16′26″W / 51.752°N 1.274°W / 51.752; -1.274

Osney or Osney Island ( /ˈoʊzni/; an earlier spelling of the name is Oseney) is a riverside community in the west of the city of Oxford, England. In modern times the name is applied to a community also known as Osney Town, located off the Botley Road, just west of the city's main railway station, on an island surrounded by the River Thames and its backwaters. Osney is part of the city council ward of Jericho and Osney.

Until the early 20th century the name was applied to a different island, between Castle Mill Stream and the main stream of the Thames, on which Osney Abbey and Osney Mill were established during the Middle Ages. The place plays a minor but significant role in The Miller's Tale in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The name of Osney is Old English, and means either "island in the Ouse" (possibly an old name for the Thames) or "Osa's Island". Until the early 20th century the name was applied to the island formed by two streams of the River Thames immediately west of the centre of Oxford, Castle Mill Stream and the stream which is now the main channel of the river. To the north the island is bounded by a short channel between the River Thames and the Castle Mill Stream, the Sheepwash Channel, which separates it from Fiddler's Island.

William Byrd (1540 or late 1539 – 4 July 1623) was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school) and consort music.

Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely to the research of John Harley (Harley, 1997). Following the discovery of a document dated 2 October 1598 in which Byrd's age is given as "58 years or there abouts," it now appears that he was born in 1540. The older dating 1542–3 is derived from Byrd's will (endorsed on 22 November 1622) which describes him as 'in the 80th year of my age'. It now becomes clear that it must have been drafted about three years earlier than the date of endorsement. Byrd was born in London, the son of a Thomas Byrd (not Thomas Byrd of the Chapel Royal) about whom little is known. Byrd had two brothers, Symon'd and John, and four sisters. It is clear from a reference in the prefatory material in the Tallis/Byrd Cantiones of 1575 that Byrd was a pupil of Thomas Tallis, then the leading composing member of the Chapel Royal Choir. Byrd also worked in collaboration with two other Chapel Royal singing-men, John Sheppard and William Mundy, on one of his earliest compositions, a contribution to a joint setting of the alternatim psalm In exitu Israel composed for the procession to the font at the Paschal Vigil. As an item for the Sarum liturgy this was presumably composed near the end of the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–1558), whose Catholic beliefs impelled her to revive Sarum liturgical practices during her brief reign. In view of these contacts it is reasonable to speculate that Byrd was a Chapel Royal choirboy, though the surviving records do not name the choristers individually.