‘God Save our Gracious Quing’

Our dear National Anthem is now forever going to trip me up…

One of my favourite early manuscript books is one with the decidedly unpromising title GB-WB P14. But, in fact, this is an impressive Tenor Choirbook from the Chained Library of Wimborne Minster, located in the equally impressive 14th-century Treasury Tower, high above the church’s south transept.

Very much worth a visit, by the way: founded in 1686, it is evidently one of the earliest chained libraries in England, as well as the second largest. (Perhaps the third, now that Wells has rediscovered the joys of chaining up their valuable old tomes.)

Not many pages away from the coronation anthem - amusingly called here ‘Sadock the priest’ - is ‘O Lord, make thy Servant Charles’, possibly the work of William Cranforth, who died around 1645.

His royalist anthem was written early in the reign of Charles I. The phrase ‘…thy servant Charles our gratious king’ remained good for decades! But before long, partbooks such as this were in trouble. For, ‘Charles’ has had to be struck out, and 'James' inserted. Very soon quite a bit of remodelling was required to turn the line into the clever but somewhat clumsy ‘..thy servants our King and Queen’.

I am not sure what the dour couple will have felt about the ensuing sprung rhythm!

Presumably folk also sang ‘God save our King and Queen’.

I would not have coped well at all.