author
John Mason
d. 1694
An early English hymn writer and Anglican clergyman, he is remembered for intense devotional verse that helped bridge older psalm traditions and the more personal hymn style that followed.
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About the author
John Mason was an English clergyman, poet, and hymn writer who lived in the 17th century and died in 1694. The surviving facts about his life are fairly limited, but sources agree that he studied at Clare Hall, Cambridge, served as a curate at Isham, and later held church posts in Buckinghamshire, including Water-Stratford.
He is best known for Spiritual Songs, a devotional collection that gave him a lasting place in English religious writing. Readers often remember his work for its warmth, urgency, and personal tone, and later hymn historians have treated him as an important forerunner to the great flowering of English hymnody that came after him.
Because so much of his biography is fragmentary, Mason is known more through his writing than through vivid personal anecdotes. Even so, his hymns and sacred poems kept his name alive long after his death, especially among readers interested in the history of English devotional verse.