The origins of the rhymed psalter lie in twelfth-century translations from the Latin Vulgate into French.
[1] Following the Protestant Reformation rhymed metrical psalters like the Dutch Souterliedekens came into popular use for congregational singing.
The oldest English rhymed psalter is a translation of the Vulgate psalms, generally dated to the reign of Henry II of England.
Another rhyming psalter of much the same style is assigned epigraphically to the time of Edward II of England.
These and other pre-Reformation rhyming psalters demonstrate the popular use of the vernacular Scripture in England, contradicting the belief that the singing of psalms in English began only with the Reformation.
During the reign of Edward VI, Sir Thomas Smith translated ninety-two of the psalms into English verse while imprisoned in the Tower of London.
A chaplain to Queen Mary I of England, calling himself the "symple and unlearned Syr William Forrest, preeiste", did a poetic version of fifty psalms in 1551.
In 1636, George Sandys published a volume containing a metrical version of other parts of the Bible together with "a Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David, set to new Tunes for Private Devotion, and a Thorow Base for Voice and Instruments".