Who Is F. A. Judd, Hymn Writer?
  • FKulash
    Posts: 79
    Does anyone know anything about F. A. Judd, the author of the hymn "Sons of the Holy One, bright with his splendour" (New English Hymnal (1986) #192)? I found one web site that says he was ordained in the Church of England in 1905 and was a member of the Society of Sacred Mission: nothing more. I'd like to see some biographical information and other hymns he wrote, but I don't even know his full name.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    It's probably the Rev. Francis Arthur Judd (1878-1939), M.A. He attended St. Paul's School in London, winning prizes in Latin and Greek; and graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1904. He was ordained a deacon 1905 and priest 1906, and appointed curate of St. John, Limehouse.

    In 1903 Kegan Paul published his anthology of devotional poems "The Shrine of St. Cuthbert". He also wrote a collection of Swedish poems in English translation, "Under the Swedish Colours" (1911), and another anthology of his original poems, "The Monarch of the Fenland" (1919).

    In the 1921 Crockford's Clerical Directory, he was listed as living in Uttar Pradesh, India, where he wrote "The Rose of India" (1924), a play based on the legends of St. Thomas the Apostle; but by 1927 he was apparently holding a parish position in England.

    In 1927 he wrote a hymn for a congress of Anglo-Catholic clergy at the Albert Hall; one of its stanzas was:

    Let us throng anew his altar
    Where his own are ne'er denied;
    Let us raise our intercession
    With and through the Lamb who died.
    Then as rushed the healing waters
    Forth of Israel's holy place,
    Flow through us his life abounding,
    Flooding all our land with grace.

    Posthumously, in 1940, something he wrote about Saint Ignatius of Antioch appeared in the Times Literary Supplement (page 427, perhaps?)