Godfrey Thring
Born: March 25, 1823, Alford, Somerset, England.
Died: September 13, 1903, Shamley Green, Surrey, England.
Buried: Shamley Green, Surrey, England.
Son of Rev. John Gale Dalton Thring and brother of Lord Thring, Godfrey graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, England. He was ordained in the Anglican church, and was given the rectory at Alford-with-Hornblotton, near Glastonbury. Later, he became Prebendary at Wells Cathedral. While at Alford-with-Hornblotton, Thring wrote a number of hymn volumes, including:
Hymns Congregational and Others, 1866
Hymns and Verses, 1866
Hymns and Poems for the Holy Days and the Festivals of the Church
Hymns and Sacred Lyrics, 1874
A Church of England Hymn-Book Adapted to the Daily Services of the Church Throughout the Year, 1880
Church of England Hymnbook, 1882
His Hymns and Poems for the Holy Days and the Festivals of the Church, became well known. Thring’s brother Edward wrote of this work:
Be sure that no painting, no art work you could have done, could have been so powerful for good…As long as the English language lasts, sundry of your hymns will be read and sung…and many a soul of God’s creatures will thrill at your words. What more can a man want? Very likely if you had had all that old heathendom rammed into you, as I had, and all the literary slicing and pruning, and been scissored like me, you would just have lost the freshness and simple touch which makes you what you are. No, my boy, I make a tidy schoolmaster and pass into the lives of many a pupil, and you live on the lips of the Church. So be satisfied. And what does it matter, if we do the Master’s will?
Source: The Cyber Hymnal