Thomas Cotterill

Above:  Ruins of Sheffield Manor, 1819

Image in the Public Domain

Thomas Cotterill (1779-1823) was a priest of The Church of England.  From 1817 to 1823 he served as the Perpetual Curate of St. Paul’s, Staffordshire.  He and James Montgomery collaborated on A Selection of Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Use, Eighth Edition (1819), with 150 psalms and 367 hymns (25 of which Cotterill composed and 5o of which Montgomery wrote).  This volume became so controversial that a faction of Cotterill’s congregation sued him in a diocesan court.  At the time the congregational singing of hymns (instead of the traditional metrical psalms) was a contentious practice.  Archbishop of York Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt settled the dispute by having Cotterill withdraw the Eighth Edition and prepare the Ninth Edition (1820) under his supervision and with his financing.  The Ninth Edition, with 150 psalms and 146 hymns, circulated, but the withdrawn Eighth Edition became influential in the English-speaking world.

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Jesus! Exalted Far on High:

https://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/jesus-exalted-far-on-high/

Let Songs of Praises Fill the Sky:

https://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/let-songs-of-praises-fill-the-sky/

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