Doxology: A Song History
The four lines English-speaking Protestants call simply the "Doxology" were written by Thomas Ken (1637–1711), a clergyman later remembered as one of the Seven Bishops who defied James II and as a nonjuror deprived of the see of Bath and Wells after 1688.[1][2] Around 1674 Ken composed a morning, an evening and a midnight hymn to go with his Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Scholars of Winchester College, closing all three with the same stanza of praise to the Trinity.[1] Sources differ on when the hymns first reached print: Hymnary.org points to a 1694 pamphlet and the 1695 Manual, while Britannica dates their addition to the 1700 edition.[1][2]
David Young Cameron, Distant View of Winchester and St. Croix, etching, 1902. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
The melody is older. OLD HUNDREDTH first appeared in the enlarged Genevan Psalter of 1551 as the setting for Psalm 134, and is generally credited to Louis Bourgeois, the psalter's music editor and Calvin's collaborator, though Hymnary.org notes other attributions; one handbook suggests its opening phrases may echo far older plainsong and folk melody, with the later half and overall shape being Bourgeois's work.[3][4] William Kethe, a Protestant exile who spent time in Geneva during Mary I's reign, wrote a metrical Psalm 100, printed in the early 1560s, evidently with this tune in mind, and its pairing with Psalm 100 gave the melody its English name.[4]
Ken's stanza long ago broke free of its original hymns. It now stands alone as a sung response and is often added as a closing stanza to other hymns; Hymnary.org counts it in roughly 1,500 hymnals.[1] Among mountain dulcimer players, it appears in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam: Gospel Edition, a collection of hymn and gospel favorites.[5]
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