Baring-Gould was an antiquarian, novelist, and travel writer, who was born in Exeter and educated at Clare College, Cambridge. In 1864 he became curate of Horbury, Yorkshire, but moved to become rector of Lew Trenchard, Devon, in 1881, when he inherited his family estate there and stayed until his death.

He was the writer/poet who penned the lyric to  ’Onward Christian Soldiers’, which was written a processional hymn for thechildren of his Parishin Horbury Bridge, Yorkshire. It was published in The Church Times in 1864, and set to its now-traditional tune, “St. Gertrude,” by Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) in 1871. Baring-Gould originally entitled the song “Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners“ I have always loved this hymn, with its powerful chant ‘….marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus, going on before’ – stirring stuff, words that lead men into the battlefield to die for a cause.

I was prompted to set the words of Baring-Gould and the melody by Sullivan to my own ‘tune’ but called it “Procession with Cross and Banners“.

A reviewer wrote: ‘Procession With Cross And Banners’ sounds like a Vision On tribute to the Salvation Army, which is just as well as I misread it as ‘Procession With Cross And Bananas’, bringing the Lord into our house via the greengrocer. A dark dance thread emerges in this and is subverted by mental cases.’ This hymn was released on a ‘This Window’ CDr called ‘Jig-Saw Man’..read more or better still [Buy It]