On 7 October 1761, a Royal Proclamation was made requiring that the four ‘forms of prayer with thanksgiving’, commemorating significant dates from the nation's history, ‘be forthwith printed, and published, and annexed to the Book of Common Prayer’. The form of prayer for 5 November commemorated the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the arrival of William III at Torbay in South West England in 1688. Drawing upon Psalm Forty, the prayer giving thanks for William begins:

Having examined in the previous chapter the psalmic imagery of God putting songs in mouths and the hundredth psalm's movement into political and nationalist consciousness, the politics of song can equally be explored through the context of the French Revolution, with particular discussion of the political song tradition of the ‘Harmodium Melos’, and the ways in which political actors of the period either ‘put songs into mouths’ or were concerned with those who did.

This chapter examines the role of songs in the commemoration of revolutions in the long eighteenth century, beginning with the commemoration of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and ending with the French Revolution of 1789.