Draft:William Samuel, clergyman and poet

William Samuel
William Samuel (Samwell) was a Tudor poet and clergyman.

The Clergyman

Samuel’s origins are not known. He is first recorded in 1550, when, on 31 March, he was admitted to the vicarage of Godmanchester, Hunts., in the diocese of Lincoln. His patron is given as the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, who possessed the right to present clergy to the living. However, after the death of the previous incumbent, they had granted the right to present his successor to Anne Stanhope Seymour, duchess of Somerset, on 15 November 1548. When Samuel published the first instalment of his Abridgement of God’s Statutes in Metre in 1551, he dedicated it to the duchess, describing himself her servant, and also the servant of her husband, Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector. From this dedication it is clear that Samuel positioned himself on the side of the new church of the reformers. Samuel did not keep Godmanchester long. After the death of Edward VI, the new regime deprived many incumbents of their livings, especially if they were married priests. As a reformer, Samuel might have had a chance to keep quiet and keep his living. But when he arrived in Geneva in 1557 he was accompanied by a wife, so that may be the reason why he was replaced at Godmanchester by William Weston on 26 November 1554. The Samuels registered as residents of Geneva on 7 January 1557, on the same day as the poet Anne Lok, and William joined the congregation of John Knox on 8 May 1557.

But once Mary I had died, and Elizabeth I had taken her place, Samuel was soon reinstated to the vicarage of Godmanchester. On 10 May 1561, when a new school was founded at Godmanchester, Samuel was named both as vicar and one of the governors. In the meantime, on 23 October 1559, he had been presented to the rectory of Eynesbury, Hunts., in the diocese of Lincoln, and about ten miles south of Godmanchester. His residence, however, was Godmanchester, and we find him employing curates at Eynesbury in the 1570s. Samuel appears to have kept both livings until his death, which must have occurred not too long before 9 August 1580, when he was replaced at Godmanchester by Ambrose Dorrington. Richard Jones replaced him at Eynesbury on 4 October 1580.

The Poet

William Samuel’s magnum opus was his great abridgement of the Bible. The first instalment appeared, as we have seen, in 1551 as The Abridgement of God’s Statutes in Metre. It was printed by Robert Crowley for ‘Robert Stoughton’, viz. Edward Whitchurch. He intended to divide each book of the Bible into small units, composed in ballad metre, so that the people of England could learn by heart and sing instead of the ‘feigned miracles, saint’s lives, and Robin Hood’ they were used to from their pre-Reformation past. The 1551 instalment went from Genesis to Deuteronomy. The second instalment is now lost, but we know it went from Genesis to Kings, and was printed abroad ‘by outlandish men’. Presumably it was printed in Geneva. Finally, in 1569, he published An Abridgement of All the Canonical Books of the Old Testament. It was printed by William Seres. The preface outlines an ingenious but highly impractical method of remembering what occurs in each of the smaller units of the abridgement by means of an alphabetic code using the digits if the left hand.

Samuel was also a writer of short moralising pamphlets in verse. The first two of his four known pamphlets were written in the reign of Edward VI. The Practice Practised by the Pope and his Prelates is an anti-papal satire. It is mainly spoken by the Pope, who regrets that his agents in England stirred up the French and Scots to war against Henry VIII, since it means all his treasure is lost and gone forever. A Warning to the City of London is a jeremiad, which attacks the vices – there are many – indulged in by citizens of London. God will punish them, says Samuel. Both pieces were published by Humphrey Powell for Hugh Singleton. He published A Prayer to God for his Afflicted Church when he was abroad, presumably in Geneva. The text is lost, but a fragment survives thanks to a spat between an anonymous writer and Robert Crowley. The anonymous writer wished to prove that Crowley was not really committed to the doctrine of predestination, and the example of Samuel’s Prayer to God was brought in to prove that there were other pseudo-predestinarians at work. Crowley reprinted the anonymous writer’s work – he calls him Cerberus – and converted it step by step in his Apology of Defence of Those English Writers and Preachers Which Cerberus ... Chargeth with False Doctrine. The book was printed by Henry Bynneman on 16 October 1566. By this time, Samuel’s fourth pamphlet had probably long been printed. The Love of God reminds the people of England that they have been punished by the rod of God – he means the persecutions of reformers under Mary – for their egregious sinfulness. But this beating only shows how much God loves them.

Samuel’s last work was in prose. It is a dialogue, mainly between Piscator and Viator, called ''The Art of Angling. Piscator'' has a wife called Cecily, and it may be that this was also the name of Samuel’s wife. The dialogue is full of useful tips and interesting gossip. It was printed by Henry Middleton in 1577.