Aaron Williams

Aaron Williams was an eighteenth-century British psalmodist, singing teacher, music engraver, compiler, and church musician active in London. Hymnological sources place him as clerk at the Scottish Church, London Wall. He published several influential collections for congregational and parish use, including “The Universal Psalmodist” (1763), “The Royal Harmony” (1766), “The New Universal Psalmodist” (1770), and “Harmonia Coelestis” (1775). His music also crossed the Atlantic through American reprints and adaptations of British psalmody.

The short-meter tune now called ST. THOMAS originated as the second half of Williams’s longer tune HOLBORN, published in “The Universal Psalmodist” in 1763 with Charles Wesley’s “Soldiers of Christ, Arise.” Around 1769–1770 the excerpt circulated independently and was named ST. THOMAS’S. It was therefore composed decades before Timothy Dwight wrote “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.”

The earliest located pairing of ST. THOMAS with Dwight’s hymn dates from 1851, and the combination became increasingly standard during the twentieth century. Williams’s documented church employment does not establish his personal denominational identity securely enough for this record to assign one.