Patrick Comerford
The Christmas or (more correctly) Epiphany carol, ‘We Three Kings of Orient are,’ ranks alongside ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ by Bishop Phillips Brooks among the best-known and popular American carols, but few people in Ireland realise that the author’s father was born in Dublin and was one of the bishops who played a pivotal role in the formation of the Anglican Communion.
‘We Three Kings of Orient are’ was written in 1859 by the Revd John Henry Hopkins junior (1820-1891). He was the Rector of Christ Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, when he wrote this carol for a Christmas pageant in the General Theological Seminary, New York, although it did not appear in print for another six years. He was the son of John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868), an Irish-born Episcopal bishop who was the first Bishop of Vermont and later the eighth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
Bishop John Henry Hopkins was born in Dublin on 30 January 1792, the son of Thomas Hopkins and his wife Elizabeth (née Fitzackerly). Thomas and Elizabeth Hopkins emigrated from Dublin in 1800 to Philadelphia. There, the young John Henry Hopkins began his education at home with his mother, and he was reading Shakespeare before the age of nine. Elizabeth established a school for girls in Trenton, New Jersey, and eventually sent her son to a Baptist boys’ school in Bordentown, and then to Princeton University. Because of his family’s straitened circumstances, Hopkins took a job at a counting-house. At the time, he was not particularly religious and his parents’ marriage was troubled. When his mother moved to Frederick, Maryland, to establish another school, he remained in Philadelphia with his father and friends.
Hopkins worked for an ironmaster in New Jersey and in Philadelphia before moving west to manage the ironworks at Bassenheim in Butler County. James O’Hara (1752-1819), an immigrant from County Mayo who became the wealthiest man in Pittsburgh, employed Hopkins to run the ironworks in the Ligonier Valley. There Hopkins got to know the Muller family, descended from a long line of German Lutheran ministers, and, after a religious awakening, he began studying the Bible and other religious books. He travelled back to Harmony, Pennsylvania, to marry Caspar Muller’s daughter Melusina and they settled at Hermitage Furnace. The iron business failed, however, and Hopkins returned to Pittsburgh where he taught drawing and painting while studying law. He was called to the bar in 1819 and set up a legal practice in Pittsburgh.
John and Melusina attended the Presbyterian Church, but he was also the organist and choirmaster at Trinity Church, the local Episcopal Church. When the Rector of Trinity Church moved to New Jersey and the next priest proved inadequate, Hopkins applied to be accepted for the priesthood, planning to combine his ministerial and legal vocations. He was licensed as a lay reader in 1823 by William White, bishop of Pennsylvania, was ordained deacon on 14 December and was ordained priest on 12 May 1824. He was placed in charge of Trinity Church, Pittsburgh, and he was Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in the Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh) in 1824-30. He read the works of the Church Fathers in the original Greek and Latin and, although in principle committed to high church liturgical practices, he opposed the introduction of the confessional to the Episcopal Church.
In 1827 he stepped back from the opportunity to become a coadjutor bishop to Bishop White, who was also the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. He realised his own vote would have decided the election in his favour, and he lost by one vote. Later he told his son that had he voted for himself he would have wondered for the rest of his life whether his will or God’s had been done.
In 1831, he moved to Trinity Church, Boston, where his vision was to establish a diocesan seminary. In 1832 he was elected the first bishop of Vermont and was consecrated in St Paul’s Church, New York, on 31 October. At the same time, he became the rector of St Paul’s, Burlington. While he was bishop of Vermont, the diocese faced financial depressions, mass migration to the west which was opening up, personal bankruptcy and controversies.
Hopkins is credited with introducing Gothic architecture to the Episcopal Church, and was the architect of Trinity Church, Rutland, where he was the rector in 1860-1. In 1861 he published a controversial pamphlet, A scriptural, ccclesiastical, and historical view of Slavery, in which he argued that slavery was not a sin per se but an institution that was objectionable and should be abrogated by agreement. His dream of a diocesan seminary was realised in 1860 with the opening of the Vermont Episcopal Institute near Burlington. For a time, he was also the Chancellor of the University of Vermont.
He was elected the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in January 1865, and presided that October at the general convention in Philadelphia. Largely through his friendship with Bishop Stephen Elliott of Georgia, the presiding bishop of the breakaway Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, the Northern and Southern branches of the Episcopal Church were reunited in 1866 after the end of the American Civil War.
Hopkins took a leading role in the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, bringing together all bishops in the Anglican Communion. He survived only two months after his return to Burlington and died on 9 January 1868, aged 75. His funeral took place in St Paul’s Church, Burlington, and he was buried beside the seminary he founded.
John and Melusina Hopkins had 13 children. In 1866, most of their large family gathered at the family home to celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary. The University of Vermont and Harvard University hold many of the family papers.
The bishop’s son, the Revd John Henry Hopkins junior, the author of ‘We Three Kings of Orient are,’ was born on 28 October 1820, in Pittsburgh. He graduated from the University of Vermont with an AB in 1839, and received his master’s degree in 1845. He worked for some time as a journalist before entering the General Theological Seminary, New York. After ordination, he was the seminary’s first music teacher (1855-7), composed several hymns and edited the Church Journal. As the rector of Christ Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania (1876-1887), he delivered the eulogy at the funeral of President Ulysses S Grant in 1885. He died in Hudson, New York, on 14 August 1891 and is buried beside his father.
Hopkins wrote the words and music of ‘We Three Kings of Orient are’ for a Christmas pageant in 1859 while he was visiting his father’s home in Vermont, although it did not appear in print until his Carols, Hymns and Songs was published in New York in 1863. The carol is based on the story of the Visit of the Magi (Matthew 2: 1-12). Three male voices each sing a single verse by himself, corresponding with the three kings. The first and last stanzas are sung together by all three as ‘verses of praise,’ while the intermediate stanzas are sung individually, with each king describing his gift and revealing the sacramental nature of the gifts offered to the Christ Child. The refrain praises the beauty of the Star of Bethlehem.
This is the first Christmas carol from the US to win widespread popularity, and it was included in Bramley and Stainer’s Christmas carols old and new in London in 1871. In 1916, it was published in the hymnal for the Episcopal Church. When it was included in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928), it was described as ‘one of the most successful of modern composed carols.’
Sources and Further Reading:
John Henry Hopkins III, ‘The Rev. John Henry Hopkins, Jr.,’ Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Vol 4, No 4, (Historical Society of the Episcopal Church Vol 4, No 4, December 1935), pp 267-280.
‘We Three Kings of Orient are’: an Epiphany carol with Irish links is published in Christmas and the Irish: a miscellany, ed Salvador Ryan (Dublin: Wordwell Books, 2023, 403 pp, €25, ISBN: 978-1-913934-93-4), pp 103-107.
The list of contributors includes this note on p 400:
Patrick Comerford is an Anlican priest living in retirement near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. He is a former adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin
