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Notes
According to Louis F. Benson (The English Hymn, John Knox Press: Richmond, Virginia, 1962, pp. 65-66), Wither's volume had "singularly little influence" on the eventual development of English hymnody in the eighteenth century. As a "fully formed hymn book for the Church of England," it appeared more than half a century before the English were willing to supplement or replace the singing of Metrical Psalms in church worship with hymns not closely translated from scripture. Although thirty-eight of Wither's hymns were metrical paraphrases of scriptures other than the Psalms, and therefore had at least a similar kind of justification, almost fifty of them were original compositions intended to be sung on particular festivals or holy days, or at times of special thanksgiving ("For seasonable weather," "For deliverance from a Publike Sicknesse"). The continuing influence of Calvin, who had rejected all hymns except those in the Scriptures, and for practical purposes all other than the Psalms, made the bulk of Wither's hymns unacceptable for worship at the time of their publication.
Although Wither did not consider it unreasonable, he did acknowledge in The Schollers Purgatory that the grant was a far more gracious one than he had requested.
Pollard and Redgrave, Short-title Catalogue, nos. 2580-2638. It is, of coure, quite possible that more editions were printed during the period than have been recorded.
Robert Lemon, Catalogue of a Collection of Printed Broadsides in the Possession of the Society of Antiquaries (1866), p. 66. Possibly as a result of this petition, a warrant was issued for Wither's arrest on May 15; when a friend of his put up resistance against the arresting officer, Wither protected the officer from harm instead of offering resistance himself. (Journals of the House of Commons, I, 789, 792).
SPD, 1623-1625, p. 43. The entry is undated, but obviously must have followed the seizure of Wood's press on September 9, 1624. This appearance by Wither before the Commissioners for Causes Ecclesiastic is presumably the one to which his anonymous respondent was referring when he wrote: "haue they [the Stationers] not peticōned his Matie in this cause, and hath not his Matie graceously referred it to most Reverend Men?" (SB, XVI, 41).
Attention that was ultimately embodied in his Britain's Remembrancer (1628), and his sense of mission as England's Jeremiah.
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