William Austin › Texts

Austin, William. A lawyer of Lincoln's Inn in the time of Charles I. His widow, Ann Austin, published in 1635, his

Devotionis Avgvstinianae Flamma. This contains 3 carols for Christmas Day, 3 poems for Good Friday, 1 for tbe Annunciation, and a poem by himself in anticipation of his own death. They are all of merit, and 4 may be found reprinted in Days & Seasons, 3rd ed., 1857, London, Mozley. In the Harleian manuscript Kalph Crane's A Handful of Celestial Flowers contains other hymns, one of which, with Austin's initials, has been printed by Farr in his Select Poetry of James I. It begins, "What a gracious God have we." The popular carol--
"All this night bright Angels sing,
Never was such carolling."

No. xli. in Bramley and Stainer's Christmas Carols, New & Old, 2nd Series, is his—

"All this Night shrill Chauntecleere
Daye's proclaiming Trumpeter,"
the first of his "Carrols for Christmas-day."

Austin died Jan. 16, 1633, and lies in the north transept of St. Saviour's, Southwark, where there is a stately monument representing him, his wife, and all his children, in the quaint fashion of those times. [William T. Brooke]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology,, p. 97 (1907)