Thanks to all for your responses. I should have said that I was thinking only in terms of its being used when playing bass notes/lines. As to how important to know if Dowland used it, not terribly. Just curious. I only very recently discovered mention - and recommendation - of its use by a couple of lutenists, and was a bit surprised. I had always thought of it as belonging only to guitar playing. It doesn't come at all naturally to me, and I do wonder if it is a stroke that I should work on developing (I play Renaissance lute only). The 'grazing' stroke mentioned by dt does sound very useful.
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