I stumbled upon this very interesting discussion today, having woken up with a line from Joan Baez's version of this song in my head, and gone looking for more information.

I repeated your searches for "behrynge" and found - like you - nothing but references to this page in Harpers, the "Place in Heaven" poem, and this blog. Personally I am inclined to think it was a pseudonym.

However - didn't you ever wonder whether "Francis Behrynge" actually WROTE the "Loving but unloved" poem/song/text - or whether s/he merely wrote down a song that was current at that time?

The question of the melody and its origin still stands. To my ear this is an unusual melody for a folk song - and am I correct that it persists from version to version? (the only version I personally know being Joan's)

Things to think about!

Ancestry.com led me to some Francis Baring's - which could be alternately spelled "behrynge" - so I took this search to Wikipedia, where I discovered:
* a " German and British banking family, descended from Johann (John) Baring (1697–1748), a wool merchant of Bremen."

* "Francis Baring may refer to:

    Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet (1740–1810), English merchant banker.
    Francis Baring, 1st Baron Northbrook, (1796–1866)
    Francis Baring, 2nd Earl of Northbrook, (1850–1929)
    Francis Baring, 3rd Baron Ashburton (1800–1868), British peer and politician
    Francis Thomas Baring, 6th Baron Northbrook (born 1954), British peer and Conservative politician
    Francis Denzil Edward Baring, 5th Baron Ashburton"

Could the dead nobleman have been one of these??

There's a lot to think about here!