The Reformation in Rhyme For Andrew The Reformation in Rhyme Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603 BETH QUITSLUND Ohio University, USA First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2008 Beth Quitslund Beth Quitslund has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Quitslund, Beth The Reformation in rhyme : Sternhold, Hopkins and the English metrical psalter, 1547–1603. – (St Andrews studies in Reformation history) 1. Sternhold, Thomas, d. 1549 2. Hopkins, John, d. 1570 3. Whole booke of psalmes 4. Bible. O.T. Psalms – Paraphrases, English – History and criticism 5. Psalters – England – History 6. England – Church history – 16th century I. Title 223.2’067 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Quitslund, Beth. The Reformation in rhyme : Sternhold, Hopkins and the English metrical psalter, 1547–1603 / by Beth Quitslund. p. cm. – (St. Andrews studies in Reformation history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6326-3 (alk. paper) 1. Church music–Church of England–16th century. 2. Psalms (Music)–16th century–History and criticism. 3. Church of England. Psalter. I. Title. ML3166.Q58 2009 782.32’2342–dc22 2008008622 ISBN 9780754663263 (hbk) Contents Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations and Other Conventions ix Introduction 1 1 Thomas Sternhold’s Certayne Psalmes 1547–1549 19 2 Al Such Psalmes and the Zeal for Biblical Verse 1549–1553 59 3 Psalmes of Dauid Among a Scattered Flock 1554–1558 111 4 The Anglo-Genevan Metrical Psalter 1556–1560 155 5 The Whole Booke of Psalmes and the Elizabethan Settlement 1559–1562 and After 193 6 The Whole Booke of Psalmes in the Life of the Elizabethan Church 1562–1603 239 Appendices A Chronological Bibliographies 275 B Non-Psalm Contents of the 1562 Whole Booke of Psalmes 279 C Authorship and the Development of the English Metrical Psalter 283 D Attribution and Misattribution in the 1562 Whole Booke of Psalmes 293 Bibliography 299 Index to Biblical Passages 313 General Index 315 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements It takes a great many kinds of support to write an academic book, and I have been lucky in having a large number of friends, colleagues, family members, and institutions that have offered enormous help during the process. Some of the earliest work on this project—though I didn’t yet know what the project would be—was done in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar led by John N. King in 2003; I owe the NEH thanks for materially supporting for my research, and both John and the other members of the seminar for their interest and useful provocations. A grant from the Ohio University Research Council in 2005 funded travel and research in both Britain and the US. During this work, I received generous assistance from the librarians at the Boston Public Library, the British Library, Christ Church and Harris Manchester College at Oxford, the London Society of Antiquaries, and St Paul’s Cathedral. At Ohio University, the members of the English Department have given me encouragement, mental stimulation, and a warm working environment, and the interdisciplinary Classics, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Colloquium helpfully responded to an early draft of the first chapter. The diligence and care of my research assistant, Katilyn Fox, in cataloging the contents of Elizabethan editions of The Whole Booke of Psalmes helped uncover important patterns in the volume’s publication history. I must also thank the owners and staffs of Donkey Coffee and The Front Room, who have for the last few years cheerfully kept me supplied with crucial coffee, sweets, and table space. I wish it were possible to list the whole community of Renaissance and Reformation scholars that has influenced and corrected this book during its gestation. Conversations in the hallway or after talks at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference have assisted or modified my thinking for the better more times than I can count. Among those who have offered more tangible help, however, are Anne Lake Prescott, who read pieces of this project in embryo and has always been willing to discuss all things Davidic, and Susan Felch, Micheline White, and John Craig, who each shared their own unpublished work with me at critical points. Alec Ryrie’s comments on the Marian material here were extremely valuable. Rashi Jackman has served as my Secretary of Foreign Tongues, giving help with German correspondence and knotty French, in addition to enabling remote access to the Stanford University libraries. As well as supporting this work with his friendship (and being stuck with me on innumerable mid-Tudor viii THE ReformatION IN RHYME conference panels), Scott Lucas read nearly all of this manuscript; his many careful suggestions and corrections have improved the result immeasurably. I alone, of course, am responsible for the cases in which I have resisted good advice. On the strictly personal side, I owe profound thanks to my son Garey for sharing me for so many hours of so many months with these long-dead poets and preachers. My greatest debt, though, is to my husband Andrew Escobedo. He has read (and read over) every word of this book and many more that are, thanks to his helpful interventions, not included in it, in addition to providing the plentiful childcare, unending sympathy, and unshakeable confidence without which this project could not have been completed. Abbreviations and Other Conventions Quotations from early modern sources have been modernized in spelling and, more conservatively, in punctuation and capitalization. All titles, however, have been left in the original spelling to facilitate electronic searching. (The one exception is The Whole Booke of Psalmes, which I have uniformly capitalized because of variation among the many editions.) Unless otherwise specified, psalm numbers are those of the Great Bible, and verse numbers are those of the Authorized Version. List of Abbreviations ARH Archive for Reformation History ASP Al such psalmes BCP Book of Common Prayer CP Certayne Psalmes ESTC “English Short Title Catalogue,” at http://estc.bl.uk JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History L.P. Letters and papers, foreign and domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, J.S. Brewer, James Gairdner, and R.H. Brodie (eds), 22 vols (London, 1862–1932) MEPC Music of the English Parish Church ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H.C.G. Matthew, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–2007), at http://www.oxforddnb.com OED Oxford English Dictionary SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal Cal. S.P. Span. Calendar of letters, dispatches, and state papers relating to the negotiations between England and Spain, G.A. Bergenroth et al. (eds) (London, 1862–1954) x THE ReformatION IN RHYME STC A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England Scotland and Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave (eds), rev. W.A. Jackson, F.J. Ferguson, and K.F. Panzer, 2 vols (London, 1986) WBP The Whole Booke of Psalmes Wing Short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English books printed in other countries, 1641–1700, Donald G. Wing (ed.), rev. J.J. Morrison, C.W. Nelson, and M. Seccombe (New York, 1994) Introduction This is a book about a book: The Whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into Englysh metre by T. Starnhold I. Hopkins & others: conferred with the Ebrue, with apt Notes to synge the[m] with al, Faithfully perused and alowed according to thordre appointed in the Quenes maiesties Iniunctions. First published under that title in 1562, it has been known since the Restoration as “Sternhold and Hopkins,” and since the 1696 publication by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady of A new version of the Psalms of David as “the Old Version.” As those dates suggest, this was an extraordinarily long-lived volume, and the number of editions is even more impressive than its chronological survival: about 150 during Elizabeth’s reign, and close to 1,000 in total by the time it ceased publication in the nineteenth century.1 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Bishop William Beveridge asserted that it had been “printed oftener than any other book in England.”2 By any measure, it is an important anthology for both the history of printing and the history of English devotionality. From the middle of the seventeenth century, however, The Whole Booke of Psalmes has enjoyed—if that is the right word—a distinctly bedraggled critical reputation. The poet Abraham Cowley calls the paraphrases “Psalms, which if David from his seat of bliss / Doth hear, he little thinks they’re meant for his.”3 Thomas Fuller, a clergyman and