Crown him with many crowns 

Matthew Bridges (1800-1894) wrote this hymn after the influence of John Henry Newman and the Tractarians led him to convert to Roman Catholicism.  Bridges was born into a C of E family in the east of England; his brother was an Anglican priest.  He was educated at Magdalen Hall in Oxford (then a grammar school and now Hertford College).   Bridges wrote a long poem, Jerusalem Regained, and two scholarly books in his late 20s.  In one of those, The Roman Empire under Constantine the Great, he set out “to examine the real origin of certain papal superstitions.”  But in the Preface to his Hymns of the Heart (2nd edition,  1851), written after his conversion, and which contains this hymn, he wrote of his “poignant and unmitigated regret for having ever used his feeble pen against that holy and Apostolic Church, which by divine grace he has lately been enabled to join.”  Bridges later in his life lived for some time in Quebec, but he returned to England, living near the Convent of the Assumption founded in Sidmouth, Devon, in 1882.  He is buried in the convent’s cemetery.  

 

In Hymns of the Heart the hymn is headed “In capite ejus, diademata multa. Apoc. xix.12.” (On his head are many crowns.)  Each of stanzas 2-6 begins with “Crown him,” followed by a title of Christ; those titles create a thematic structure based on the the Crucified and the Ascended Christ.  Only one of the stanzas—the fifth—does not contain an explicit reference to the Crucifixion.  This structure is somewhat masked in the text we sing, since the last stanza is omitted.  Thus in this version the hymn ends with what becomes a climactic stanza concentrating solely on the enthroned Christ.  A common alteration of Bridges’ hymn, introduced by Henry Baker, the first textual editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern, uses the first half of stanza 5 and the second half of 6, preserving the thematic structure but losing both the progression from years and time to “the infinite” in 5 and the trinitarian reference in 6.

 

Parts of another 6-stanza hymn, beginning “Crown him with crowns of gold” are sometimes interwoven with parts of Bridges’ hymn.  It was written by Godfrey Thring (1823-1903), Dean of Wells and a hymn writer, in 1874.  Thring had earlier written an altered version of Bridges’ hymn.  Now he wrote his own, explaining that he wrote it at the request of another priest “to supply the place of some of the stanzas . . .of which he and others did not approve.”  Thus the Marian second verse is lost, as are the references to the wounds of the Crucifixion.  Thring’s hymn has a concomitant stronger emphasis on sin and sinners.

 

Both hymns are sung to the tune “Diademata” (Crowned) by George Job Elvey (1816-1893).  Elvey began his musical career as a chorister in Canterbury Cathedral; when his brother Stephen  was appointed organist of New College, Oxford, George, then 14 years old, went to live and study with him in Oxford.  Two years later he began filling in as organist at New College, as well as at Magdalen and Christ Church.  At age 19 he was appointed organist and Master of the Choristers of St George’s Chapel at Windsor (chosen over S.S. Wesley and others), where he remained until 1882.  He studied with William Crotch at the Royal Academy of Music and graduated Mus. B. from New College in 1838 and Mus. D. in 1840. Elvey composed many hymn tunes and much other liturgical music. He is now best known for “St George’s, Windsor,”  setting the harvest hymn “Come, ye thankful people, come,” and for  Diademata