Author unknown.

This hymn is cred­it­ed to Charles Wes­ley on ve­ry slight ev­i­dence that he is the au­thor. While it has long been one of the most pop­u­lar and wide­ly used hymns among Amer­i­can Meth­od­ists, Eng­lish Meth­od­ists, strange­ly enough, have ne­ver giv­en it a place in any of their of­fi­cial hym­nals…It was writ­ten…to be sung to the fa­mil­iar tune to which God save the King and My coun­try, ’tis of thee are sung. A brief his­to­ry of the cir­cum­stanc­es un­der which this na­tion­al hymn orig­in­at­ed will ex­plain why in all prob­a­bil­i­ty the au­thor of this no­ble Chris­tian lyr­ic…chose to re­main un­known. The first two stan­zas of this na­tional an­them of Eng­land ap­peared as a song For Two Voic­es in a pub­li­ca­tion ti­tled Har­mon­ia An­gli­ca­na, which, though not dat­ed, is sup­posed to have been pub­lished in 1743 or 1744. These stan­zas are al­so known to have been ex­ist­ence in La­tin at that time and to have been used as a La­tin Cho­rus in a con­cert given by the or­gan­ist of the Cha­pel Roy­al in 1743 or 1744. On Sep­tem­ber 28, 1745, this now fa­mous Eng­lish song is known to have been sung in Dru­ry Lane The­a­ter, Lon­don, in hon­or of King George, and a few days lat­er at Co­vent Gar­den. At both places it awak­ened tu­mul­tu­ous ap­plause. The fol­low­ing month (Oc­to­ber, 1745), the mu­sic and words, as sung in both play­hous­es, were pub­lished in the Gen­tle­man’s Mag­a­zine, with the third stan­za…add­ed. It was thus caught up and sung by ev­er­y­bo­dy, and in due course of time, by vir­tue of its wide­spread pop­u­lar­i­ty ra­ther than by any of­fi­cial ac­tion, it came to be re­cog­nized as the na­tional hymn of Eng­land.

Nutter, pp. 2-3

Ital­i­an Hymn, Fe­lice de Gi­ar­di­ni, in The Col­lect­ion of Psalm and Hymn Tunes Sung at the Cha­pel of the Lock Hos­pi­tal, 1769 (MIDI, NWC, PDF). De Gi­ar­di­ni wrote the music spe­ci­fic­al­ly for this hymn.

• America, The­saur­us Mu­si­cus, 1744 (MIDI, NWC, PDF)