Prayer Book Through the Ages. William Sydnor
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Learning.” His religious inclinations were supported by the protector, Somerset, and the rest of the Council. So experimentation with services in English began almost immediately. In the spring of 1549, Compline, Matins, the Mass, and Evensong were said in English in London, and the service on the anniversary of Henry VIII’s death was sung in English at Westminster Abbey. These were probably early, perhaps experimental, drafts of the first Prayer Book services.
The work of compiling the first Prayer Book got underway officially when Convocation appointed a committee consisting of Archbishop Cranmer and certain of “the most learned and discreet bishops, and other learned men” to “consider and ponder a uniform, quiet, and godly order.” This committee of six bishops and six learned men met with the Archbishop at Chertsey Abbey on September 9, 1548. Four of them represented the “Old Learning,” two were moderates, and the rest favored the “New Learning.” Their discussions lasted only three weeks, “after which the New Order was delivered to the king at Windsor.”
The committee was supposedly unanimously in favor of the proposed Book, but in the debate in the House of Lords, it was evident that they were not, and when the final vote was taken Day, Skip, and Robertson, Bishops of Chichester, Hereford, and Westminster respectively, voted against it. Moreover, because the committee worked with such speed, they were no doubt working from a previously prepared draft. Cranmer had done a great deal of work on drafts of Matins and Evensong which were already in print. The traditional Epistles and Gospels and the Litany were already in English. “The Order of Communion,” which Parliament had authorized for use in March, 1548, needed little revision. Cranmer had been at work on the services of Baptism and Matrimony. And various primers had Burial services which pointed the way. The principal issue was the Canon of the Mass.
In December, 1548, the Houses of Parliament considered the first Prayer Book, and on January 21, 1549, they passed the Act of Uniformity making it the official Prayer Book of the realm. The bishops in the House of Lords voted 10 to 8 for it. What action Convocation took is unknown (the records of Convocation in this reign are incomplete). On January 23, the king wrote to Bishop Bonner asserting that the Book was “set forth not only by the common agreement and full assent of the nobility and commons of the last session of the late Parliament but also by the like consent of the bishops in the same Parliament and of all other learned men of this realm in their synods and convocations provincial”3 June 9, 1549, was the date fixed by the Act for the Book to be in use everywhere.
That first Book is described by Percy Dearmer as “an English simplification, condensation, and reform of the old Latin services, done with great care and reverence and in a genuine desire to remove the degeneracy of the Medieval rites by a return to antiquity.”4 It went on sale on Thursday, March 7, for 2 shillings in paperback, 3 shillings 4 pence for hard cover. It was first used in “divers parishes in London” on the first Sunday in Lent, March 10. By Whitsunday (June 9), when it was to be in general use, the price had risen to 2 shillings 2 pence for paperback and 4 shillings for hard cover.
The book was entitled THE BOOKE OF THE COMMON PRAYER AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTES, AND OTHER RITES AND CEREMONIES OF THE CHURCHE AFTER THE USE OF THE CHURCHE OF ENGLAND. That long title is saying that the book covers services previously contained in the Breviary, the Missal, the Processional, and the Manual. The Pontifical section was added about a year later.
Were you to leaf through the 1549 Book, here are some details which might catch your eye:
The Lord’s Prayer
Collect for Purity (“Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open . . .”)
Introit Psalm
Kyrie
Gloria in excelsis
Collect of the day
Prayers for the King
Epistle
Gospel
Nicene Creed
Sermon and/or an Exhortation
Offertory
Sursum Corda—“Lift up your hearts”
Sanctus
The Canon, beginning with the prayer for the whole state of Christ’s church and ending with the Lord’s Prayer
The Peace (“The Peace of the Lord be always with you”) “Christ our Pascall lambe is offered for us . . .”
The Invitation (“Ye who do truly and earnestly repent . . .”)
General Confession
Absolution
Comfortable Words
Prayer of Humble Access (“We do not presume to come . . .”) Communion (“In the Communion tyme the Clarkes
shall syng” the Agnus Dei)
Postcommunion Thanksgiving
“The Peace of God . . .”
The rubrics contain directives that those who intend to commune sit “in the quire, or in some convenient place nigh the quire, the men on the one side, and the women on the other side.” They further direct that there be “Communion in both kindes,” that the wafers are to be “without all manner of print” and be placed in the people’s mouths, and that “all must attend weekly, but need communicate but once a year.” There is a significant departure from the medieval Latin rite in the Prayer of Consecration. The Latin rite had no invocation of the Holy Spirit. The Latin rite accented the centrality of the words of institution in the Middle Ages by such new ceremonies as the Elevation of the Host. Cranmer corrected this straying from tradition by inserting the invocation of the Holy Spirit from Eastern practice (mainly the Eastern Liturgy of Saint Basil). He inserted the words, “with thy Holy Spirit and Word vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these thy gifts of the bread and wine,” before the words of institution. In that way he attempted to bring together Eastern and Western ideas.