Regarding the titles of pieces that are addressing the names of various nobility:
I assume that some such titles are intended to be simple literal descriptions. Many surviving dances and other pieces were originally composed for various masques and other entertainments that occupied much of the nobility's time and resources. (In modern equivalent values, The Triumph of Peace cost about 6.5 million pounds [U.K.]!) Hence, a dance described as "So-and-so's Galliard" may simply infer that the dance was composed for a courtly entertainment sponsered by So-and-so. Various examples (for consort rather than lute alone) are in Sabol, Four Hundred Songs & Dances from the Stuart Masque, for example: nos. 146-148 (pp. 240-241), described as "The First of My Lord Essex", etc. Sabol states that these are dances from Jonson's _Hymenaei_, written for the marriage of Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, and Lady Frances Howard (p. 582). Another is no. 213 (pp. 294-295), Robert Johnson's "Lady Hatton's Almain" possibly for an entertainment given by Lady Elizabeth Hatton (p. 593). The instrumental versions of The Earl of Essex Galliard [no connection with the above mentioned dances] are, of course, variants of the song "Can she excuse my wrongs" (Bk I no 5). Poulton, John Dowland (pp. 224-230), suggests that the poem of "Can she..." that Dowland set for the song was written by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and that is where Dowland derived the name for the instrumental version in _Lachrimae or Seaven Teares_, as a reminder of the poem and the ill-fated career of Essex. So likewise, the name is a description of the piece's source, rather than any attempt to gain favour (especially as Essex was executed in 1601). GJC
