# Ainsworth Psalter



## VirginiaHuguenot (Oct 19, 2004)

Does anyone know if the Ainsworth Psalter (used by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and at Plimouth Colony) has been republished? I have a book _about_ the Ainsworth Psalter, but I would love to get an actual copy. From my research, it seems that there are none to be found. The only copy I have ever seen was an antiquarian copy at Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts. I have a republished copy of the Bay Psalm Book and hope to add the Ainsworth Psalter to my library one day.


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## Peter (Oct 22, 2004)

Never heard of it. I thought the American Puritans used the Bay Psalter. Actually the very 1st book printed in America!


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Oct 22, 2004)

Henry Ainsworth was a remarkable Hebrew scholar associated with the Separatists in Holland. His Psalter was carried across the Atlantic in the Mayflower and used by the Pilgrims who settled in Plimouth, Massachusetts in 1620. The _Bay Psalm Book_ was published in Massachusetts in 1640 (the first book published in America) and ultimately replaced the Ainsworth Psalter. 




> The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a time of great religious turmoil in Great Britain, as various ideologies struggled for control of the Church. The reign of the Catholic queen Mary Tudor (d. 1558) meant persecution and exile for many Protestants. She was succeeded by Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603) who failed to reform the church to the degree many Protestants desired. As a result, separatist groups formed who worshiped outside the established church -- the beginnings of the congregational or "gathered church" movement -- and some of these groups moved into exile in Holland. In 1612 in Amsterdam, Henry Ainsworth published his Book of Psalms for the use of these congregations, including 39 tunes of English, Dutch and French origin. The Ainsworth psalter was brought to Plymouth Colony in 1620 by the group we know as the Pilgrims and was used there for a generation.



Source: http://www.zionsong.org/art-leonard-singpsalms2.html


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Jul 15, 2005)

Wikipedia article on Henry Ainsworth


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Sep 27, 2005)

From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's _The Courtship of Miles Standish_:



> So through the Plymouth woods John Alden went on his errand;
> Came to an open space, and saw the disk of the ocean,
> Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfortless breath of the east-wind;
> Saw the new-built house and people at work in a meadow;
> ...


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Sep 11, 2006)

Like Matthew Poole, Henry Ainsworth was thought to have been poisoned. 

For further discussion of this see Daniel Neal, _History of the Puritans_, Vol. I, p. 342; Benjamin Brooks, _Lives of the Puritans_, Vol. II, p. 302; Alice Morse Earle, _Sabbath in Puritan New England_, p. 73.


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Feb 27, 2007)

VirginiaHuguenot said:


> From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's _The Courtship of Miles Standish_:



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born 200 years ago today, on February 27, 1807.


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