James Montgomery - Later Career

Later Career

After retiring from newspaper editorship, Montgomery's only other long poem is The Pelican Island (1828), nine cantos of descriptive blank verse of which he was scarcely a master. But Montgomery himself expected that his name would live, if at all, in his hymns. Some of these, such as "Hail to the Lord's Anointed", "Prayer is the Soul's Sincere Desire" and the carol "Angels from the Realms of Glory", are still sung. The earliest of his hymns dates from his days in Wath on Dearne and he added to their number over the years. The main boost came when the Revd James Cotterill arrived at the parish church (now the cathedral) in 1817. He had compiled and published A Selection of Psalms and Hymns Adapted to the Services of the Church of England in 1810 but to his disappointment and concern he found that his new parishioners did not take kindly to using it. He therefore enlisted the help of James Montgomery to help him revise the collection and improved it by adding some hymns of the poet's own composition. This new edition, meeting with the approval of the Archbishop of York (and eventually of the parishioners of St Paul’s), was finally published in 1820. In 1822 Montgomery published his own Songs of Zion: Being Imitations of Psalms, the first of several more collections of hymns. During his life he composed some 400, although less than a hundred are current today.

From 1835 until his death Montgomery lived at The Mount on Glossop Road in Sheffield. He was very well regarded in the city and played an active part in its philanthropic and religious life. Following his death in 1854, he was honoured by a public funeral. In 1861 a monument designed by John Bell (1811-1895) was erected over his grave in the Sheffield cemetery at the cost of £1000, raised by public subscription at the initiative of the Sheffield Sunday School Union, of which he was among the founding members. On its granite pedestal is inscribed 'Here lies interred, beloved by all who knew him, the Christian poet, patriot, and philanthropist. Wherever poetry is read, or Christian hymns sung, in the English language, 'he being dead, yet speaketh' by the genius, piety and taste embodied in his writings.' There are also extracts from his poems "Prayer" and "The Grave". After it fell into disrepair the statue was moved to the precinct of Sheffield Cathedral in 1971, where there is also a memorial window.

Elsewhere in Sheffield there are various streets named after Montgomery and a Grade II listed drinking fountain on Broad Lane. The meeting hall of the Sunday Schools Union (now known as the Sheffield Christian Education Council), situated in Surrey Street, was named in his honour in 1886; it houses a small theatre which also bears his name. Elsewhere, Wath on Dearne, flattered by being called 'the queen of villages' in his work, has repaid the compliment by naming after him a community hall, a street and a square. His birthplace in Irving was renamed Montgomery House after he paid the town a return visit in 1841 but has since been demolished.