Draft:William Samuel, clergyman and poet

• Comment: Many issues, previous ones not addressed, occupation doesn’t belong in the article name either — MaxnaCarta  ( 💬 • 📝 ) 07:37, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

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William Samuel (fl. 1550—1577) was a Tudor poet and clergyman. He is best known as the author of a metrical abridgement of the Old Testament.

1550—1553 : Life under Edward VI

William Samuel’s origins are unknown. His name first appears in 1550, when, on 31 March, he was admitted to the vicarage of Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire, in the diocese of Lincoln. The true patron of this living was the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey. However, on 15 November 1548, they had granted the right to nominate the next vicar to Anne Stanhope Seymour, duchess of Somerset. It was she who presented Samuel to the living.

The first instalment of Samuel’s abridgement of the Bible, was printed in 1551 by Robert Crowley for “Robert Stoughton”, viz. Edward Whitchurch. The title then was The Abridgement of God’s Statutes in Metre. Samuel intended to divide each book of the Bible into small units, composed in ballad metre, which could then be learnt by heart and sung by the people of England, instead of the “feigned miracles, saint’s lives, and Robin Hood” that were available to them before the Edwardian Reformation. Samuel dedicated the book to Anne Stanhope Seymour, and described himself as her servant and as the servant of her husband, Edward Seymour, Lord Protector.

It was during the reign of Edward VI that Samuel wrote the first of his four known verse pamphlets : The Practice Practised by the Pope and his Prelates. The pope laments that his agents in England stirred up the French and Scots to war against Henry VIII, since it means that all his treasure is now lost and gone forever. Another pamphlet was probably written about now : A Warning to the City of London. Samuel warns the citizens of London that God will punish them if they do not mend their ways. Both works were published by Humphrey Powell for Hugh Singleton.

1554—1557 : Life under Mary and Philip

Samuel was replaced at Godmanchester on 26 November 1554. No reason was given. He and his wife went to Geneva, Switzerland, where they were registered as residents on 7 January 1557, on the same day as the poet Anne Lok and the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard. The Samuels joined the congregation of John Knox on 8 May 1557.

Samuel continued to work on his abridgement, and a second edition of the abridgement, now lost, was printed abroad in the late 1550s “by outlandish [viz. foreign] men”. It went from Genesis to Kings. This time the title was : An Abridgement, Brief Abstract, or Short Sum of These Books Following, Taken out of the Bible and Set Into Sternhold’s Metre. While he was abroad, he also published a metrical pamphlet called A Prayer to God for his Afflicted Church (see below).

1559—1577 : Life under Elizabeth I

Samuel had returned to England by 1559, when, on 23 October, he was presented to the rectory of Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire, in the diocese of Lincoln, a few miles south of Godmanchester [CCeD Person ID 151247 : Samuel, William (1550—1580).].

By 10 May 1561, Samuel had been reinstated as vicar of Godmanchester, when a new school was granted its royal charter of foundation. Samuel was named both as vicar and as one of the governors of the new school. He lived at Godmanchester, not at Eynesbury, where he employed curates to do his work.

It is likely that the early days of the new reign also the publication of Samuel’s final pamphlet : The Love of God. Samuel explains that God punished the English under queen Mary – he means the persecution of the reformers – because they were so sinful. But otherwise he would have had to send them all to hell, so this punishment stands as an example of God’s love for his chosen people.

In 1566, a few lines of Samuel’s lost Prayer were quoted by Robert Crowley in his Apology or Defence of Those English Writers and Preachers Which Cerberus . . .Chargeth with False Doctrine. The book was printed by Henry Bynneman on 16 October 1566. Samuel had been accused of holding anti-Calvinist views by the anonymous author – Crowley calls him “Cerberus” – of a controversial tract published in the mid-1560s. Crowley quoted the lines from Samuel’s Prayer to prove that he was not out of line with Calvinist orthodoxy on the question of predestination.

In 1569, William Seres printed the third version of his magnum opus, now called An Abridgement of All the Canonical Books of the Old Testament. Samuel had planned to abridge the apocrypha and the New testament, but he never did. This imstalment of the work is provided with direction for using the digits of the left hand as a mnemonic device to remember the books of the Bible.

Samuel’s last work was in prose. It is a dialogue on fishing called The Art of Angling, printed by Henry Middleton in 1577. The main characters are Piscator, and a passer-by named Viator. Piscator’s wife, Cecily, is the third speaker. The only extant text lacks a title-page, and the name of the author is not given. However, the details of Piscator’s life are so similar to those of Samuel’s, that it seems reasonable to conclude that Samuel was the author.

Samuel died before 9 August 1580, when his death left the vicarage of Godmanchester vacant. Death was also given as the reason for the vacation of Eynesbury, where he was replaced on 4 October 1580.