From the Archives: An Account of the National Anthem entitled God Save the King!

Richard Clark (Datchet, 5 April 1780 – London, 5 October 1856)

Contentious theories on the origins of the anthem.

Richard Clark in a painting attributed to John Cawse (1778-1862); ca 1830. Clark is depicted holding a book with the spine label “Statutes of Windsor & Eton”. 

Richard Clark, a bass singer of the first half of the 19th century, came from a musical family, his mother being from the Sale family of singers. Clark’s grandfather was John Sale (d.1802), one of the lay clerks at St George’s Chapel Windsor Castle, and Richard was a boy chorister and became a lay clerk on the death of his grandfather.  He appears to have left in 1811 having started to deputise for his uncle John Sale (?1759-1827, Member A105) at St Paul’s Cathedral, for his cousin John Barnard Sale (1779-1856, Member A202) at Westminster Abbey, and for James Bartleman (1769-1821) at the Chapel Royal. 

His application to join RSM, giving his address as 13 Barton Street just a short walk south of Westminster Abbey, was endorsed by his uncle John. As Clark had a family his application required the listing of his children and six are named; the correspondence includes corroboration from the curate to the Dean of St George’s Chapel in which four of the children had been baptised; the youngest daughter had been baptised there in 1812 “privately” (rather than within a public service). The last born child, Richard Spencer, was baptised at St John the Evangelist, Westminster (i.e. St John’s Smith Square), the parish to which the Clark family then belonged. His career as a musician included being a gentleman of the Chapel Royal from October 1820, deputy organist for John Stafford Smith (1750-1836, Member S8), from 1827 as a vicar choral of St Paul’s Cathedral and, from 1828, as a lay clerk at Westminster Abbey. He died in the “Litlington Tower” at Westminster Abbey from where he had last written to RSM two years previously. 

An Account of the National Anthem entitled God Save the King!, with authorities taken from Sion College Library, the Ancient Records of the Merchant Tailors’ Company, the Old Checque-Book of His Majesty’s Chapel, &c. &c. &c.  Selected, edited, and arranged by Richard Clark.  (London: Printed for W. Wright, 1822).

One of Clark’s publications was the contentious An Account of the National Anthem entitled God Save the King! in which he attributed the authorship of the anthem to John Bull although had previously published with an attribution to Henry Carey (1689?-1743, Member EM060). Clark’s theory, alongside one relating to Handel and the ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’, has long been disproved: “unfortunately Clark advocated [his ideas] with an energy worthy of a better cause, and thus through him two utterly unfounded ideas were very generally accepted as true. Much more useful were Clark’s endeavours to obtain for the singing men and choristers of cathedrals the ancient privileges of which in course of time they had been deprived” (Grove Online).