Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/530

 The literary standard of this collection is very high, but its practical use has been limited. Thring wrote many hymns which have attained popularity. Among them are 'The radiant morn hath passed away'; 'Fierce raged the tempest'; 'Saviour, blessed Saviour'; and 'Thou, to whom the sick and dying.' He produced what is generally admitted to be the best translation for singing of Luther's 'Ein' feste Burg,' 'A Fortress sure is God our King'; this is No. 245 in 'Church of England Hymn Book' (1882).

 THRING, HENRY, first  (1818–1907), parliamentary draftsman, born at Alford, Somerset, on 3 Nov. 1818, was second son of the Rev. John Gale Dalton Thring by Sarah, daughter of John Jenkyns, vicar of Evercreech, Somerset, his father was both squire and rector of Alford; his mother was a sister of Richard Jenkyns [q. v.]. Master of Balliol College, Oxford. He came of a long-lived stock. His father died at the age of ninety, his mother lived to be 10l. Of his younger brothers Edward Thring [q. v.] was headmaster of Uppingham school, and Godfrey Thring [q. v. Suppl. II] acquired reputation as a writer of hymns.

Henry Thring was educated at Shrewsbury school under Benjamin Hall Kennedy [q. v.], to whose teaching, and that of his brother George, Thring used in after years to attribute that nice sense of the exact meaning of words which he rightly considered essential to the work of a good draftsman. From Shrewsbury Thring went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, was in 1841 third classic in the classical tripos, and was subsequently elected to a fellowship at his college. He occasionally examined for the classical tripos, but does not seem to have taken any other part in university or college work. He went to London, studied law, and on 31 Jan. 1845 was called to the bar as a member of the Inner Temple. He worked at conveyancing, 'the driest of all earthly studies,' as he describes it in the autobiographical introduction to his little book on 'Practical Legislation.' Having much leisure, and finding that the task of a conveyancer was neither profitable nor attractive, he passed to the study of the statute law, and there found the work of his future life. He read the English statute book critically from its earliest pages downwards, extolled Stephen Langton as 'the prince of all draftsmen,' and contrasted the draftsman of Magna Charta favourably with his wordy successors. He convinced himself that a radical departure ought to be made from the conveyancing models then followed by the draftsmen of Acts of parliament. He sought for better principles and a better type of drafting in Coode's book on legal expression (1845) and in the American codes, especially those of David Dudley Field, which then enjoyed a high reputation. In 1850 he tried his hand as an amateur in framing for Sir William Molesworth [q. v.] a colonial bill in which he endeavoured to simplify and shorten the expression of legal enactments. In 1851 he published portions of this bill as an appendix to a pamphlet which he entitled 'The Supremacy of Great Britain not inconsistent with Self-Goyemment of the Colonies.' In this pamphlet he carefully enumerated and analysed the powers exercisable by the home government and the colonial government respectively, and distributed them on lines which foreshadowed the fines of the Irish home rule biU drawn at the end of his official life. Sir William Molesworth's bill did not become law, but drew attention to its draftsman, who soon obtained employment from the government on the lines in which he had specialised. Thring drew the Succession Act of 1853 which formed part of Gladstone's great budget of that year. At the same time he was engaged on a more comprehensive piece of legislative work. Edward (afterwards Lord) Cardwell [q. v.] was then president of the board of trade, and desired to recast the body of merchant shipping law administered by his department. Accordingly, under Cardwell's instructions, and in co-operation with Thomas Henry (afterwards Lord) Farrer [q. v. Suppl. I], Thring drew the great Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 which for forty years was the code of British merchant shipping law. In the preparation of this measure he found an opportunity for putting into practice those principles of draftsmanship which he afterwards expounded in his 'Instructions to Draftsmen.' He divided the bill into parts, divided the parts under separate titles, arranged the clauses in a logical order, and constructed each clause in accordance with fixed rules based on an analysis of sentences. From merchant shipping law Thring passed to another branch of law with which the board of trade is intimately concerned, that relating to joint-stock companies, and