Henry Ramsden Bramley

Henry Ramsden Bramley (4 June 1833 – February 1917) was an English clergyman and hymnologist perhaps best known for his collaborations with the composer Sir John Stainer. Along with earlier 19th-century composers such as William Sandys and John Mason Neale, Bramley and Stainer are credited with fuelling a Victorian revival of Christmas carols with their 1871 publication of Christmas Carols, New and Old, which popularised carols such as "The First Nowell", "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" and "The Holly and the Ivy". By 1871, the second series of 22 carols came out bringing the total to 42. A third series – with 28 carols – was issued in 1878, expanding the collection to 70 carols, second only to R. R. Chope's Carols for Use In Church in the number of carols it contained.

Early life and education Henry Ramsden Bramley was born on 4 June 1833 at Addingham in Yorkshire. He studied at Oriel College, Oxford (1852), and was later made a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1857.

Ordination Bramley was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 1856, and priest in 1858. He served as Vicar of Horspath in Oxfordshire between 1861 and 1889, and was later Canon and Precentor of Lincoln Cathedral between 1895-1905. Theologically, he is described in Professor Jeremy Dibble's biography of John Stainer as a "High Church conservative".

Published works Bramley became acquainted with John Stainer after the composer was appointed organist at Magdalen College in 1860. Indeed it was Bramley, as a fellow of the college, who presented Stainer with his doctoral robes. Bramley and John Stainer published the first series of the Christmas Carols, New and Old, with a total of 20 Christmas carols, sometime in the 1860s. Bramley acted as the textual editor, contributing a number of new Latin translations and original verses to the publication,

William Studwell and Dorothy Jones note that the book, with an informative preface, an index with information on the origin of the carol texts and illustrations by the Brothers Dalziel caught the mood of the time, and was both "an artistic and commercial success".

Studwell and Jones note that despite his numerous appointments, Christmas Carols, New and Old was Bramley's only influential publication. His other published works (with the exception of a few publications related to Oxford University administration) include a hymn, "The Great God of Heaven is Come Down to Earth", included in the English Hymnal of 1906, and his new translation and expansion of the Latin carol "The Cradle Song of the Blessed Virgin", with music by Joseph Barnby.

Personal life and death Bramley never married. His sister Ann lived with him at Nettleham Hall for 17 years following the death of her husband, the Rev. James Stewart Gammell, previously Vicar of Outwood (Yorkshire) where Bramley's parents were interred.

Henry Ramsden Bramley died on 28 January 1917 in Lincoln.

Works S. Gregorii Magni Regulae pastoralis liber: the Benedictine text, with an English translation (1874) Christmas Carols, New and Old with John Stainer (1878) Meditations and Prayers upon the seven words of our Lord Jesus Christ from the Cross (1880) The Psalter: or Psalms of David and certain canticles (1884)