Matthew Parker, a leading protestant Anglican theologian, had been summoned by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to join him at the new Cardinal College (now Christ Church College) in Oxford – and refused – and then Master of Corpus Christi Cambridge, and then Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
His protestant Anglicanism served him well under Edward VI, survived the return of Catholicism under Mary I, and when Elizabeth I became Queen, she made him Archbishop of Canterbury.
During all of this, Thomas Tallis – Gentleman of the Chapel Royal – was composing as best he could to both suit the religious and monarchial changes in England which dictated the styles of music.
Part of Parker’s work was moving Latin church texts into English, and within this was a metrical English version of the Psalms. Tallis set eight of these psalms, plus the Veni Creator (sung at consecration of priests and bishops, and at Whitsuntide/Pentecost).
350 years later, the third tune (‘Why fum’th in sight’) became the basis of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams at the 1910 Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, as part of a resurgence of interest in English Renaissance music.
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