Title page
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To the reader
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The Lordes prayer
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The Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter is bound with a 1594 bible on whose pages are recorded names and dates of a Faulkner family from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first complete Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter with music was published at London in 1562 by John Day. Still earlier versions of the work were issued by the English while in exile in Geneva, but they do not include all of the psalms. The title-page of the volume and the page with the instructions to the reader bear the inscription "Robert Nuningtone, his Booke." On the title-page the signature is dated 1655. In this edition, solmisation syllables accompany each note of the melody, making sight-singing easier for the user. The six-note system is explained in the preface "to the reader."

The printing process used here is known as the single-impression method. Each piece of type contains both staff-lines and notes. Before this system was developed by Pierre Attaingnant at Paris in 1528, printers set the staff system on the paper and then, on a second impression, added the notes. The difficulty of getting the notes place accurately on the staff during the second impression was considerable. The single impression method not only solved this problem, but also saved time (and cost) for the printer. The printer's skill may be measured by the evenness he was able to maintain in aligning the individual pieces on the page to produce a staff with straight lines.