CHAPTER VIII. THE PRAYER-BOOK OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, A.D. 1558-1603. 1. Accession of Elizabeth. Upon the death of Queen Mary, Thursday, Nov. 17, 1558, Elizabeth, to the great joy of the mass of the people, succeeded to the throne, and on the 24th of November released all persons confined on account of religion. The Protestant clergy who remained alive came forth from their hiding places, and with others who soon returned from abroad began to occupy the pulpits. 2. Need of Caution. The conduct of the queen was marked by extreme caution. On the one hand it was feared that the Reformers would outstrip the royal prerogative; on the other it was a matter of extreme difficulty to restore the Prayer-Book while the statutes of the late reign were unrepealed, and the benefices were mostly held by Romanists1. The Mass, therefore, still continued, and the Queen was crowned on Sunday, Jan. 15, 1559, according to the ceremonies of the Roman pontifical2. In the first month, how 3. Gradual Changes. ever, of the new reign, an English Litany was printed, and used in the royal chapel, and as early as the beginning of December, certain learned men were named as fit persons to examine the two Prayer-Books of King Edward VI., and a paper of questions and advices was prepared, suggesting the way in which the Reformed religion could be most safely re-established. In the 242. 1 See Froude, VII. p. 10, 11. Hardwick's Reformation, p. 3 Including Dr Bill, Dr Parker, Dr May, Dr Cox, Mr Whitehead, Mr Grindal, and Mr Pilkington. same month a proclamation was issued which, while it forbade preaching, allowed the Epistle and Gospel and the Ten Commandments to be read in English, but without any exposition. 4. Meeting of Parliament. Parliament met on the 25th of January, 1559, and was opened with a speech of Lord-Keeper Bacon to the effect "that laws should be made for the according and uniting of the people into an uniform order of religion," and that while on the one hand all idolatry and superstition should be avoided, on the other "heed should be taken, that by no licentious or loose handling any manner of occasion be given whereby any contempt or irreverent behaviour towards God and godly things, or any spice of irreligion, might creep in or be conceived1." 5. Influence of Cecil and Guest. These were the views which guided the alterations now made in the Prayer-Book. The parties openly engaged in making them were the committee of divines mentioned above, and the royal council. Secretary Cecil, however, had the general supervision, and in the absence through sickness of Archbishop Parker, Guest, a man of great learning2, was appointed with special instructions "to compare both King Edward's Communion Books together, and from them both to frame a Book for the use of the Church of England, by correcting and amending, altering, and adding, or taking away, according to his judgment and the ancient Liturgies.” 6. Restoration of the Prayer-Book of 1552. The commission set themselves busily to work, and on the 18th of April a proposal for the restoration of the Prayer-Book was brought forward in the House of Com 1 Strype's Annals, II. 54. 2 Afterwards Archdeacon of Canterbury, the Queen's almoner, and bishop of Rochester. Strype, Annals, Ch. ii. p. 82. mons. In the Lower House there was no opposition. In the Lords nine bishops and nine temporal peers voted against any alteration of the services. But the great majority favoured the restoration of Cranmer's Liturgy of 1552 with some alterations. The Act of Uniformity passed its three readings in three successive days, and June 24, or the Feast of St John Baptist, was fixed as the day on which the revised Prayer-Book was to be used. Parliament itself was dissolved May 8, and on the Sunday following, May 12, the Queen caused it to be read in her chapel, and on the following Wednesday it was read before a very august assembly of the court at St Paul's 2." 7. General acceptance of the Prayer-Book. The Liturgy thus put forth was gradually accepted with more or less pleasure. Out of 9400 clergy it appears that not more than 189 refused to the last to comply with the statute, and resigned their benefices. Indeed for the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign men of all minds generally went to their parish churches without doubt or scruple. Two changes introduced into the New Prayer-Book evinced a tendency to comprehend as many as possible within the pale of the Church. On the one hand the rubrics of King Edward's Second Book were modified, allowing a larger latitude in the use of ornaments and vestments5. On the other the sentences 1 See Froude, vII. p. 81. 2 Strype's Grindal, p. 24. 3 "The service in the Churches is well received and done, for the most part of the shire (Devonshire). There wanteth nothing but preachers." Sir John Chichester to the Earl of Bedford. Domestic MSS. Roll's House, quoted in Froude VII. 88 n. 4 Strype's Annals, ch. xii. p. 172. 5 See the First Rubric for Morning and Evening Prayer; by Stat. 1 Eliz. I. c. 2. sect. xxv. "the ornaments of the Church and of the ministers thereof" were restored as in employed at the distribution of the Elements in the Holy Communion by the two Prayer-Books of Edward VI.1 were combined, “lest, under the colour of rejecting a carnal, they might be thought also to deny such a real Presence as was defended in the writings of the ancient Fathers"." 8. The other Variations of the Elizabethan Prayer-Book from Edward's Second Book were these: (A) The first rubric now directed the Morning and (1) The words From the tyranny of the (2) To the suffrage for the Queen were added the words strengthen in the true worshipping of thee, in righteousness and holiness of life; (3) The prayers for the Queen's Majesty, and for the Clergy and People, with the Col the 2nd year of Edw. VI. Still the use of the earlier ornaments was not generally introduced; and the notion was plainly expressed among the bishops, that the rubric was not intended to be compulsory, but was mainly introduced to legalize the usages of the royal Chapel. Strype, Annals, Ch. 83. IV. P. 2 See above, p. 26. Heylin 1. 287, quoted in Hardwick's Reformation, p. 245, n. 3 Chancel (Cancellus) is so called a cancellis, from the bars or lattices separating it from the body of the Church. Chancels date from the 13th Century. See Guericke's Manual of Antiq. p. 104. lect, "O God, whose nature and property," &c., were placed at the end of the Litany; (4) The note to the Prayer of St Chrysostom was omitted, and the Litany shall ever end with the Collect following. (C) Elizabeth was styled Our Gracious Queen. 9. Return of the Marian Exiles. Meanwhile the numerous Reformers who, as we have seen above1, had retired to the Continent on the accession of Mary, hearing that the storm of persecution was exhausted by the death of their persecutor hastened home, and speedily began to reproduce their peculiar tenets in this country. 10. Their dislike of the Prayer-Book. Unaccustomed for some years to services, which in any degree recalled the ritual of the Middle Ages, and recognising in Knox's Book of Common Order a fitting Christian service, they no sooner returned to England than they speedily began to find fault with the Book of Common Prayer and with Episcopacy. Their earliest censures more especially concerned the use of the Cross in baptism, "all curious singing and playing at the organs," surplices, saints' days, and most of all, perhaps, the practice of kneeling at the administration of the Lord's Supper2. II. Styled Puritans or Precisians. As early as 1567 the more violent of this party, now called Puritans or Precisians, began to separate themselves from the service of the Church, to meet in private houses where they had ministers of their own3, and to use the Geneva 1 See above, p. 27. 2 See Hardwick's Reformation, p. 251, and the notes. Gualter writing to Beza, July 23, 1566, speaks of the English clergy in general as "wolves, papists, Lutherans, Sadducees, and Herodians." 3 See Strype's Life of Grindal, p. 169; Life of Parker, 11. P. B. 3 |