Henry Francis Lyte (1 June 1793 – 20 November 1847) was a British Anglican divine, hymnodist and poet who wrote the hymn Abide with Me.
Life and career Early life Henry Francis Lyte was born in Ednam near Kelso in Roxburghshire, Scotland,Faith Cook 2005, Our Hymn-writers and Their Hymns (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press). the second son of Thomas Lyte, whose family had once lived at Lytes Cary, Somerset, in South West England, and Anna Maria Oliver. This family had been of great prominence as early as the reign of King Edward I, and its seat was at Lytes Cary Manor, but the house passed out of the family in 1748.
Thomas Lyte, an army captain, does not seem to have married Anna Maria Oliver, although it has been argued that since they were accepted as husband and wife in Scotland, where they lived, they legally were so, according to Scots law.B. G. Skinner, Henry Francis Lyte: Brixham's Poet and Priest, University of Exeter, 1974, pp. 1–2, 32–34
At the time of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Thomas Lyte was an officer of the British forces sent to Ireland. He settled first at Dunmore, County Galway, and later at Ballyshannon, County Donegal, with Anna Maria Oliver, who claimed to be his wife, and their three sons. He has been described as a "ne-er do-well ... more interested in fishing and shooting than in facing up to his family responsibilities".
In August 1803, Thomas Lyte, reported as "late a Captain in the Northumberland Fencibles", was given a new commission as a Captain in the 1st Battalion of Reserve.The London Gazette, Issue 15613, 20 August 1803, p. 1072 When the young Henry Francis Lyte was nine, his father ran away from Anna Maria and his debtors, married Eliza Naghten in Roscommon, and settled in Jersey, where he had eight more children. He deserted his first family shortly after making arrangements for his two older sons to attend Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. Anna Marie moved back to England and soon became destitute.Patrick Comerford, "AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY: TAGHMON in south Co. Wexford is celebrating a handful of anniversaries", The Irish Times, 13 May 1997 She and her youngest son are said to have died in London.
The headmaster at Portora, Robert Burrowes, recognised Lyte's abilities, paid the boy's school fees, and "welcomed him into his own family during the holidays". Lyte was effectively an adopted son.David Robertson, "Henry Francis Lyte"
Religious conversion After studying at Trinity College, Dublin, and with very limited training for ordained ministry, Lyte took Anglican holy orders in 1815 and for some time he held a curacy in Taghmon near Wexford. Lyte's "sense of vocation was vague at this early stage. Perhaps he felt an indefinable desire to do something good in life".Skinner, 17. However, in about 1816, Lyte experienced an evangelical conversion. In attendance on a dying priest, the latter convinced Lyte that both had earlier been mistaken in not having taken the epistles of St Paul "in their plain and literal sense". Lyte began to study the Bible "and preach in another manner", following the example of four or five local clergy whom he had previously laughed at and considered "enthusiastic rhapsodists".Skinner, 18. "The poor man died, I rejoice to say, happy under the belief that though he had deeply erred, there was One whose death and sufferings would atone for his delinquencies, and be accepted for all that he had incurred. I was greatly affected by the whole matter."
Early career and marriage In 1817 Lyte became a curate in Marazion, Cornwall, and there met Anne Maxwell, a daughter of William Maxwell, of a well-known Ulster-Scots family. They were married by license at Walcot, Bath, on 21 January 1818. She was 31, seven years older than Lyte, and a "keen Methodist." On Sunday mornings in Brixham, Lyte would drive his wife to the Methodist society before proceeding to his own church, which she would attend in the evenings.Skinner, p. 61 She "could not match her husband's good looks and personal charm", but the marriage was happy and successful. Anne eventually made Lyte's situation more comfortable by contributing her family fortune, and she was an excellent manager of the house and finances.Skinner, p. 27 They had two daughters and three sons, one of whom was the chemist and photographer Farnham Maxwell Lyte. A grandson was the well known historian Henry Maxwell Lyte.The Lyte family (accessed 23 December 2009). The children were Henry William Maxwell Lyte (1818–1856); Anna Maria Lyte (1821), who lived only a month; Anna Maria Maxwell Lyte, later Hogg (1822–1889); John Walker Maxwell Lyte (1825–1848) and Farnham Maxwell Lyte (1828–1896). Although J. W. M. Lyte died of scarlet fever at 23, his son, Henry Maxwell Lyte (1848–1940), became a notable historian.
From 1820 to 1822 the Lytes lived in Sway, Hampshire. Itself only from the English Channel, the house in Sway was the only one the couple shared during their marriage that was neither on a river nor by the sea. At Sway, in 1821 Lyte lost a month-old daughter, Anna Maria. While there, he wrote his first book, later published as Tales In Verse Illustrative of the Several Petitions of the Lord's Prayer (1826).Skinner, pp. 39–44 In 1822, the Lytes moved to Dittisham, Devon, on the River Dart; and then, after Lyte had regained some measure of his health, to the small parish of Charleton.Skinner, pp. 39–46 On 19 October 1823, while in Charleton, Lyte preached the sermon "Without God in the World," which attracted the attention of George Canning, later briefly prime minister. In the sermon, Lyte compared the fates of men who lived for God or for the world in the face of approaching death. Skinner says the sermon demonstrates " a prominent 'hell-fire' note and was true to the tradition of Wesley and the Evangelical Revival" but with "a peculiar beauty about both the language and the content."Skinner, pp. 45-46
Brixham
About April 1824, Lyte left Charleton for Lower Brixham, a Devon fishing village.Skinner, 46. By 1785, 75 trawlers were operating from Brixham; by 1914, there were 350 trawlers. (50) Almost immediately, Lyte joined the schools committee, and two months later he became its chairman. Also in 1824, Lyte established the first Sunday school in the Torbay area and created a Sailors' Sunday School. Although religious instruction was given there, the primary object of both was educating children and seamen for whom other schooling was virtually impossible. Each year Lyte organised an Annual Treat for the 800–1000 Sunday school children, which included a short religious service followed by tea and sports in the field.Skinner, 58–59.
Shortly after Lyte's arrival in Brixham, he attracted such large crowds that the church had to be enlarged—the resulting structure later described by his grandson as "a hideous barn-like building."Skinner, 60. Lyte added to his clerical income by taking resident pupils into his home, including the blind brother of Lord Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, later British prime minister.Skinner, 96. About 1830, Lyte made excavations at nearby Ash Hole Cavern, where he discovered pottery and human remains.
Character and personality
Lyte was a tall and "unusually handsome" man, "slightly eccentric but of great personal charm, a man noted for his wit and human understanding, a born poet and an able scholar." He was an expert flute player and according to his great-grandson always had his flute with him.Skinner, 55. Lyte spoke Latin, Greek, and French; enjoyed discussing literature; and was knowledgeable about wild flowers.Skinner, 75. At Berry Head House, a former military hospital at Berry Head, Lyte built a library, largely of theology and old English poetry,”Introductory Notice”, Catalogue of the Valuable, Rare, and Curious Library of the Rev. H.F. Lyte, Deceased, with the Subsequent Additions Made by His Son, the Late J. W. M. Lyte, Esq. which Will be Sold by Auction, by Southgate and Barrett July 4th, 1849 (1849), pp. v –vii described in his obituary as "one of the most extensive and valuable in the West of England".Skinner, 92–93. When the library was sold after his death, the catalogue ran to 296 pages. In the twentieth century, Lyte's home became the Berry Head Hotel .
Lyte was also able to identify with his parish of fishermen, visiting them at their homes and on board their ships in harbour, supplying every vessel with a Bible, and compiling songs and a manual of devotions for use at sea.Skinner, 56. In theology he was a conservative evangelical who believed that man's nature was totally corrupt. He frequently rose at 6 am and prayed for two or more hours before breakfast.Skinner, 55, 74.
In politics, Lyte was a Conservative who feared revolt among the irreligious poor.Skinner, 37. He publicly opposed Catholic Emancipation by speaking against it in several Devon towns, stating that he preferred Catholics to be "emancipated from priests and from the power of the factious and turbulent demagogues of Ireland".Skinner, 79. A friend of Samuel Wilberforce, Lyte also opposed slavery, organising an 1833 petition to Parliament requesting it be abolished in Great Britain.Skinner, 83–84. Slavery was abolished that year in the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Decline and death In poor health throughout his life, Lyte suffered various respiratory illnesses and often visited continental Europe in attempts to check their progress. In 1835 Lyte sought appointment as the vicar of Crediton but was rejected because of his increasingly debilitating asthma and bronchitis.. In 1839, when only 46, Lyte wrote a poem entitled "Declining Days."Skinner, 103. In the poem he wished to write "some sparklet of the soul, that still might live/When I was passed to clay," a wish fulfilled in "Abide with Me." Lyte also grew discouraged when numbers of his congregation (including in 1846, nearly his entire choir) left him for Dissenter congregations, especially the Plymouth Brethren, after Lyte expressed High Church sympathies and leaned towards the Oxford Movement.Skinner, 105, 111. One leading member of the choir thought that some words of "Abide with Me"—"When other helpers fail and comforts flee"—applied to these choir members. Another commentator thought they referred to "12 devout young men" whom Lyte had trained to hold services in the surrounding community, all of whom defected from Lyte's church to dissenting congregations.
By the 1840s, Lyte was spending much of his time in the warmer climates of France and Italy, making written suggestions about the conduct of his family's financial affairs after his death. When his daughter was married to his senior curate, Lyte did not perform the ceremony.Skinner, 118–19. Lyte complained of weakness and incessant coughing spasms, and he mentions medical treatments of blistering, bleeding, calomel, tartar emetic, and "large doses" of Prussic acid.Skinner, 121–22. Yet his friends found him buoyant, cheerful, and keenly interested in affairs of the Europe around him.Skinner, 116, 120, 123. One of his last publications was the first full volume of Welsh poet Henry Vaughan’s works since his death in 1695, with a thirty-eight-page biographical sketch trying to reverse the poet’s lack of recognition. Lyte spent the summer of 1847 at Berry Head then, after one final sermon to his congregation on the subject of the Holy Communion, he left again for Italy. He died on 20 November 1847 at the age of 54, in the city of Nice, at that time in the Kingdom of Sardinia, where he was buried.Skinner, 131, 147–48. "Referring to our Lord's atoning sacrifice as being a 'pillow of consolation' to a dying soul, Lyte added, 'O brethren, I can speak feelingly, experimentally on this latter point; and I stand up here among you seasonably today, as alive form the dead.'" (131) His last words were "Peace! Joy!"Robert Morgan 2003, Then Sings My Soul, special ed. p. 119.
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