Henry Francis Lyte was born on 1 June 1793 near Kelso in the Scottish Borders. Ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1815, he moved in 1823 to All Saints', Lower Brixham, on the Devon coast — a fishing parish he served for 24 years, ministering to trawlermen and their widows.
By 1847 his tuberculosis was terminal. On the evening of Sunday 4 September he preached what he knew was his final sermon, took communion at his own altar, walked back to his rectory and — either that evening or shortly after, the family accounts differ — wrote out 'Abide With Me' in his study overlooking Brixham harbour, adapting Luke 24:29: "Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent."
"He handed the manuscript to his daughter, sailed for the French Riviera hoping the climate would prolong his life, and died in the Hôtel d'Angleterre at Nice on 20 November 1847, aged 54. His last recorded words were "Peace! Joy!""
The hymn was set in 1861 to the tune 'Eventide' by the English organist William Henry Monk, composed — Monk's widow later claimed — in ten minutes at the family piano the day their infant daughter died. That pairing of text and tune is the one still sung.
'Abide With Me' was sung at the wedding of the future King George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, at the state funerals of Mahatma Gandhi (1948) and George VI (1952), by the survivors of the Titanic in the ship's saloon on the night of the sinking (14 April 1912), and at every FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium since 1927 — the community-singing tradition begun for the first Wembley cup final and never broken since.