Anne Vaughan Lok (or Lock or Locke) (c.1530–1590/1607) is the author of arguably the first sonnet sequence in English – and this is possibly the least important constituent of her cultural contribution. Lok appended the sequence, itself a poetic transcription of Psalm 51, to her translation of a collection of the
Sermons of John Calvin, upon the song that Ezechias made after he had bene sicke
(1560). While the innovation of the sonnet sequence is, of itself, important, hers is not the work that probably influenced the later sonnet sequences of Philip Sidney or Edmund Spenser. The only poem she can be said to have definitively influenced is Thomas Norton's translation of Psalm 51. Rather, Lok's contribution lies in her influence upon the development of Protestant devotional lyric – lyric poetry based upon scriptural material or expressing a religious experience. Her son Henry Lok is frequently taken as a precedent in studies that trace the emergence of the religious sonnet sequence in England (Lewalski 1979; Roche 1989). But the 1560 sonnet sequence of his mother, ‘A meditation of a penitent sinner’, has recently replaced Henry's work in this narrative as the significant starting point for the development of religious lyric in England (Roche 1989; Spiller 1997).