of Mary I; Locke may have known her through their sons, who were both educated at the home of William Cecil. The volume was entered into the Stationers' Register on 15 January 1560 by John Day, a printer known for his publication of Protestant and reformist texts. The sequence begins with five prefatory sonnets, printed under the heading "The preface, expressing the passioned mind of the penitent sinner." Another heading, "A Meditation of a penitent sinner, upon the 51. Psalme," introduces the remaining twenty-one poems in the sequence. The "Meditation" poems gloss the nineteen-line psalm line by line, with a few expansions: the author gives two sonnets each to the first and fourth lines of the psalm; these comprise the first, second, fifth, and sixth poems in the sequence. In the 1560 edition, each line of the psalm appears beside its corresponding poem. This version of the psalm may have been translated by Locke. Poetics A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner is one work in a long tradition of poetic meditation on the Psalms. The sequence develops the penitential poetic mode that was also used by late medieval poets. While both Catholics and Protestants composed poetry in the penitential tradition, Protestant reformers were particularly drawn to Psalm 51 because its emphasis on faith over works favoured their reformist theology. The author of the sequence was probably influenced by Sir Thomas Wyatt's translations of the penitential psalms, published in 1549 and accessible to Locke before her Genevan exile. Wyatt's influence is evident in the pattern of psalm lines glossed. Both the author of the sequence and Wyatt composed one sonnet per line of the psalm, except for verses 1 and 4, which are each glossed with two poems. The author's enjambment is also similar to Wyatt's. Though the sonnet was not an established form of English poetry while the author composed the sequence, the author both uses and disregards features of the sonnet circulating the island during the sixteenth century. It is likely that, in addition to Wyatt's work, the author also had access to the sonnets of the Earl of Surrey, as the author uses Surrey's rhyme scheme, , now best known as the Shakespearean rhyme scheme. Wyatt's Psalm translations may also have introduced the author to Surrey's work, as his volume contains a prefatory sonnet by Surrey. The author seems to have drawn upon the arrangement of this particular