SOURCE: Leaver, Robin A. “Early Beginnings of Hymnody in English.” In ‘Goostly psalmes and spirituall songes’: English and Dutch Metrical Poems from Coverdale to Utenhove, 1535-1566, pp. 62-86. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

In the following excerpt, Leaver examines Coverdale's collections of hymns, Goostly psalmes, the first book of hymns in English. Leaver considers how the hymns were received by his contemporaries and discusses Coverdale's intentions in composing them.

Miles Coverdale (1488-1568) was one of the earliest Englishmen influenced by the writings of Martin Luther. With Robert Barnes, he was a leading member of the group of theologians that met at the White Horse Inn in Cambridge around 1520 to read and discuss Luther's writings.¹ Since 1514 he had been an Augustinian friar (his prior was Robert Barnes), but in 1528, a year or so after Barnes's trial and enforced recantation, he renounced his order and appears to have adopted an itinerant ministry...