ABSTRACT
Some of the printing innovations that appeared throughout the period had an impact on English and Scottish psalters alike. The Middleburg Psalters and the Common Tunes therefore serve as case studies of the interactions between English and Scottish metrical psalters during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They are examples of the tension between a nascent British unity and ancient national loyalties that typified English and Scottish views in the early to mid-seventeenth century. Once the English Whole booke and the Scottish Forme of prayers were completed and printed, the general trend for psalm tunes was to move north from England to Scotland. Richard Schilders's introduction of different musical material for these very psalms may have discouraged potential customers used to the Day psalters. Though the Middelburg-style psalters continued to be changed over the next 50 years, their unique format of parallel prose and metrical texts disappeared from English presses after 1649.
