The First Act of Uniformity, and the First Book of Common Prayer represented the maximum of religious reform which the nation, as a whole, was prepared in 1549 to accept.¹ This Act of Uniformity was the mildest ever passed by the English Parliament; it imposed no penalties for recusancy on the laity, and those imposed on the clergy were lighter than in any succeeding Act. It was a strenuous attempt to effect reform with as little offence as possible. Like all compromises it was received with derision at both ends of the religious scale. But while the Protestants contented themselves with denouncing what they considered the puerilities and absurdities of the new service-book, the Catholics in the west broke out in revolt. It is not, however, clear that the various risings of 1549 had any close connexion with the Book of Common Prayer. There had been many disturbances in the previous year due to the enclosure of common lands and conversion of tillage to pasture, a movement which threw numbers out of work and was at the bottom of most of the rebellions in the sixteenth century. But popular discontent was turned to account by priests of the old persuasion, and even by emissaries from France then on the eve of war with England.¹ Hence the statement of grievances, which were no doubt drawn up by priests, laid more emphasis upon religious matters than the mass of insurgents would naturally have done themselves. The men of Cornwall had, however, a tangible reason for disliking the new service-book, because many of them understood no English. They comprehended the old Latin no better; but they were accustomed to its sound, and men tolerate the incomprehensible more readily than the unfamiliar.

To Cranmer fell the task of replying to the articles² drawn up by the insurgent leaders, and it was a matter of no great difficulty to prove their want of reason and logic. The first article demanded the observance of the decrees of all the General Councils and Popes; but, as Cranmer pointed out, these were full of contradictions. Moreover, one decree declared that whosoever did not acknowledge himself to be under the obedience of the Bishop of Rome was a heretic; but such an acknowledgment would be treason by English law. Another said that all princes’ laws against papal decrees were void; that would invalidate not merely the legislation of Henry VIII. but the statutes of Prœmunire and Provisors, the taxation of the clergy, and all the anti-ecclesiastical legislation of the Middle Ages. A third forbade men to reprove the Pope even though his conduct might be imperilling thousands of souls. The second demand of the insurgents required the restoration of the statute of Six Articles, though this Act was, as Cranmer showed, inconsistent with several decrees of General Councils. The third insisted upon the revival of the Latin mass with no communicants except the priest; the fourth demanded compulsory worship of the sacrament and the execution of all recusants as heretics—a ferocious requisition which deprived its authors of all title to mercy. The fifth would have the sacrament distributed but once a year—at Easter—and then in one kind only; this was a curious illustration of the working of the conservative spirit, for the rebels wished to stereotype a custom which, as Tunstall explained, had grown up “by coldness of devotion.”¹ To the sixth article, requiring the administration of baptism on week-days as well as on holy days, the Archbishop replied that there was nothing to prevent it. The seventh and eighth asked for the restoration of candles, ashes, palms, and holy water, and repudiated the new service because it was “but like a Christmas game,” and the Cornishmen understood no English. The ninth and tenth required prayers for souls in purgatory and the suppression of the English Scriptures because otherwise the clergy would not be able to confound the heretics.¹ The eleventh and twelfth articles demanded the release of two divines in prison, the pardon of Cardinal Pole, and his promotion to the Council. The thirteenth proposal was that no gentleman should keep more than one servant unless he possessed lands worth more than a hundred marks a year; and the fourteenth demanded the restitution of some of the suppressed abbeys and chantries.

These last, and perhaps the seventh and eighth, were the only articles which can be supposed to represent a really popular sentiment; and the inner mind of the authors of this document is best revealed in the reason given for the proposed suppression of the English Bible; illiterate priests wanted protection from the results of their own illiteracy, while their dangerous temper is illustrated by the demand for the execution of all who refused to worship the sacrament. Hard words are used, and not without justice, of the zealots who imperilled the cause of the Reformation by their arrogance; but the fanaticism was not all on one side, and a demand like this enforced by armed rebellion would have driven the most liberal Government into acts of repressive severity. Cranmer took the truest and the most charitable view, when he wrote that the rebels as a body did not know the meaning of that for which they were made to ask.

He was, moreover, to some extent in sympathy with the social discontent which clerical agitators turned to their own account in the West. In his address to the people at St. Mary’s, Oxford, on the day of his death he uttered a solemn warning to the rich, bidding them remember how hard it was for such to enter the kingdom of heaven, and earnestly exhorting them to show compassion to the poor in those days of their penury.¹ The same sympathy impelled Latimer² to denounce the covetousness of the landlords in inclosing lands, and reducing the peasant to poverty, and stirred the Protector to undertake that championship of poor men’s causes which led to his ruin. The bills for their relief which he promoted in Parliament were thrown out, and the commissions he appointed to check inclosures proved powerless in face of the packing of juries, intimidation of witnesses, and perjury practised by the landed gentry and encouraged by the Protector’s own colleagues.³ Baulked of the hopes of redress, which Somerset’s policy held out to them, the peasants rebelled in every direction, and the revolt attained its most serious dimensions in Norfolk, where Robert Kett instituted a poor men’s commonwealth.

Nor were these the only difficulties with which the Protector had to deal. The unscrupulous egotism of his brother, the Lord High Admiral, led him into treason and plot; and the Protector’s consent to his execution, extorted from him by cunning schemers who hoped to profit by his fall, fatally weakened his own position. The rebellions in the West and the East diverted troops which should have been sent into Scotland and France, and the French king seized the opportunity to declare war and attack the English Pale. Both there and in Scotland the English lost ground. In England Warwick defeated the English rebels, and his victory made him the hero of the gentry, who now looked for revenge upon those who had hoped and dared to impede their career of prosperous pillage. The Protector himself was the head and front of offence, and in September, 1549, the party of Warwick determined upon his ruin.

The Earl of Warwick, better known by his later title of Duke of Northumberland, was one of the ablest and most unprincipled party-leaders who have ever turned to their own advantage the resources and wealth of their country. A brilliant soldier, a skilful diplomatist, and an accomplished man of the world, he was aptly described at the time as a second Alcibiades; and few men have exhibited a greater skill in intrigue, or a smaller regard for principle. For the moment Catholic and Protestant alike were to be his tools in contriving the Protector’s destruction. The former disliked the new Prayer Book, so rumours were spread of reaction; the Catholic Southampton was Warwick’s chief ally, and hopes were entertained that Gardiner and Bonner would be released from the Tower. Protestant zealots, on the other hand, were annoyed at the Protector’s tenderness towards the Princess Mary and mass-priests, and anticipated under Warwick a more earnest prosecution of the Gospel’s enemies. The rich men abhorred the patron of Latimer; and the governing classes, with few exceptions, hated the liberty on which Somerset set so much store. All was grist to Warwick’s mill.

With this intrigue the Archbishop had nothing to do. He was in attendance with Somerset, Paget, Cecil, and Sir Thomas Smith upon the young King at Hampton Court in September, 1549, while the cabal assembled in London. In the first week of October the storm burst. On the 6th Somerset hurried the King to Windsor, and from there carried on a war of words¹ with the Council in London. But his cause was hopeless; men daily deserted his side, and his efforts to raise the peasants were defeated by Herbert and Russell, the victorious commanders returning from the West. Cranmer and Paget endeavoured to mediate between the two parties, and obtained from the Council a promise that the Protector should not suffer in lands, in goods, or in honour. Somerset then submitted, and Cranmer and Paget removed his servants.¹ But the Council failed to observe its promises ; the Protector was sent to the Tower, his adherents were driven from office, and the Government fell under the exclusive control of Warwick and his friends.

What was to be their policy—reaction or reform? For months the balance trembled. “Those cruel beasts, the Romanists,” as one Reformer called them, “were now beginning to triumph” over the downfall of the Duke, the overthrow of the Gospel, and the “restoration of their darling the Mass.”² “The papists,” echoed Hooper on 7 November, “are hoping and earnestly struggling for their kingdom”; and if Bonner were restored to his see, Hooper counted on being “restored to my country and my Father which is in heaven.”³ At Basel it was reported that Bucer and other reformers had been arrested with the Protector,⁴ and that Somerset’s fall would bring the Reformation to ruin. Bonner’s appeal against his deprivation by Cranmer in September was under consideration; Gardiner had petitioned for release from the Tower; and Southampton, who was by some credited with the chief share in the successful plot, had re-established Catholic influence in the Council.

It was a critical moment in English history, but there is insufficient evidence to show clearly the forces and circumstances which determined the result. Parliament met, as usual, early in November, and whatever doubt might exist as to its religious attitude there was none about the spirit in which it proceeded to deal with social questions. The landlords were resolved to have heir revenge on the peasants. Acts were passed enabling them to inclose as much land as they liked, and imposing the severest penalties upon all who ventured on opposition¹; and it was actually declared a felony for poor people to meet with the object of reducing rents or prices.² Treason-laws were restored and strengthened, and the Protector’s guarantees against their abuse were abolished. The penalty of treason was extended to offences against Privy Councillors, and even to all assemblies for the “altering of the laws.”³ Never did Henry VIII., or Charles I., or James II., aim such blows at English liberties as the men who controlled the fate of the Reformation in the latter days of Edward VI.

In spite of the apparent success of militant Protestantism during these years, from 1549–1553, the cause of reform and Cranmer had fallen on evil days. There was naturally little sympathy between Northumberland and the Archbishop, and on many questions, political and religious, they came into conflict. Once Northumberland sought to put John Knox into the see of Rochester to serve as a “whetstone to quicken and sharp the Bishop of Canterbury whereof he hath need”¹; and subsequently Cranmer declared that the Duke had often gone about to effect his destruction.² Other leaders of reform were less clear-sighted. Hooper hailed Northumberland as “that most faithful and intrepid soldier of Christ,” and declared that England could not do without him, for he was “a most holy and fearless instrument of the Word of God.”³ In the eyes of foreign Protestants he and his dupe, the feeble-minded Dorset (afterwards Duke of Suffolk),⁴ were “the two most shining lights of the Church of England.”⁵ Some likened Northumberland to Joshua, and Bale compared him with Moses. He had, in fact, made Bale an Irish bishop, and Hooper also had cause for gratitude, for he wrote, “unless he had been on my side, in the cause of Christ, it would have been all over with me five months since, when the Duke of Somerset was in such difficulties.”⁶

Besides these particular reasons for faith in Warwick, the Reformers ascribed to him the overthrow of the Romanist hopes. It is not, however, likely that Warwick would have espoused their cause unless he had thought it the winning side, and he was probably led to this conclusion by the ease with which Parliament and especially the Lower House of 1549–50 passed anti-Catholic and anti-ecclesiastical measures. The most important of these was the Act ordering the destruction of all the old service-books except the Primers of Henry VIII. Another Act was passed once more enabling the Crown to appoint a commission for the reform of the Canon Law,¹ and a third empowered a commission of six Bishops and six others to draw up an Ordinal.² It was, however, evident that the change of Government had widened the breach between Church and State. During Somerset’s rule there had always been a large attendance of Bishops in the House of Lords, and he had always secured a majority of episcopal votes for his measures. Only nine Bishops, however, out of twenty-seven were present at this meeting of Parliament, and a much larger proportion of them voted against the Government. Cranmer, Holbeach of Lincoln, Ridley of Rochester, and Ferrar of St. Davids—all staunch Reformers—as well as the accommodating Goodrich of Ely, and Catholics like Tunstall, Thirlby, Heath, and Day, dissented in vain from the second of the above-mentioned Acts; and such a consensus of Church opinion against a bill promoted by Government was a new thing in the history of the Reformation. The Bishops met with a similar rebuff when they complained that their jurisdiction was openly contemned and derided; and their efforts to strengthen their authority by parliamentary legislation met with no success.¹

The brief period of comparative religious liberty which the nation had enjoyed under Protector Somerset had come to an end, and the expulsion of the remaining Catholics from the Council was soon followed by religious persecution. Early in 1550 Warwick had the Earl of Arundel and Sir Richard Southwell imprisoned, and on the second of February Southampton’s name was struck off the list of members.² Their offices and those of Somerset’s friends were now distributed among the faction of Warwick, who packed the Council, as he afterwards packed the House of Commons with his nominees; and thus was constituted what has gravely been termed the “Reformed Administration.”³ It is probable that no English ministry has been more corrupt. Under its sway, complaints of bribery in the courts of justice grew louder than ever, and the sale of offices was recognised even by Parliament. Somerset had effected a slight improvement in the coinage, but under Warwick it reached a lower depth of debasement than under Henry VIII. Popular discontent led to proposals for Somerset’s restoration, and the fear lest Parliament should take up this cry prevented Warwick from calling it together,¹ while the lack of parliamentary supply compelled the Government to look elsewhere for resources. The Church was the readiest mine to plunder, and the Chantry lands, the bulk of which had hitherto been reserved for application to educational purposes, were laid under requisition. Some of this wealth went to relieve public necessities, but much found its way into the pockets of courtiers. These lands, says Fuller, were regarded as the last dish in the last course of the feast provided by the Church, and in July, 1552, a commission was appointed for taking the surrender of all that remained.² Cranmer in vain resisted, pleading that these endowments might be kept till the King should come of age.³ “I have heard,” wrote Ridley, “that Cranmer and another whom I will not name were both in high displeasure, the one for shewing his conscience secretly but plainly and fully in the Duke of Somerset’s cause, and both of late, but specially Cranmer, for repugning as they might against the late spoil of Church goods, taken away only by commandment of the higher powers without any law or order of justice.”¹ Then greedy eyes were turned on episcopal revenues; the surrender of a manor or two was the general condition imposed on a prelate before his elevation; and Ponet was even made to give up all the endowments of Winchester in return for a stipend of two thousand marks. The bishopric of Westminster was abolished, and a nefarious project of Northumberland’s to suppress the great see of Durham was only defeated by his own expulsion from office.²

Oppression went hand in hand with corruption, and practically all the cases of religious persecution quoted by Roman Catholic writers date from this period of the reign. The Princess Mary had been allowed by the Protector to have mass celebrated in her household; but this licence was now withdrawn.³ Bonner, indeed, had been deprived of his bishopric by Cranmer for contumacy on the eve of Somerset’s fall, but the sentence was not confirmed until February, 1550, when the Catholics had been driven from the Council; and Gardiner, although confined in the Tower, was not deprived until February, 1551. That same year saw the deprivation of Heath of Worcester, and Day of Chichester, and the resignation of Voysey of Exeter, while Tunstall was sent to the Tower on an absurd charge of treason. Two heads of Oxford colleges, Dr. Cole, of New, and Dr. Morwen, of Corpus Christi, were imprisoned and a similar fate befell two of Gardiner’s chaplains ; four other Catholics fled from the country — John Boxall, afterwards Queen Mary’s secretary, William Rastell, the nephew of Sir Thomas More, Dr. Richard Smith, the Catholic controversialist, and Nicholas Harpsfield.

At the other end of the religious scale, Joan Bocher was burnt in May, 1550, and for her execution the Archbishop has been held primarily responsible. He had protected her during the persecution of the Six Articles in 1541–42, but her opinions grew more and more heterodox, and in May, 1549, she was condemned by Cranmer for heresy. She was then left in Newgate prison for a year “in the hope of conversion,” and Cranmer, Ridley, Goodrich, Latimer, Lever, Whitehead, and Hutchinson all tried their hands at persuasion. “I had her,” declared Lord Chancellor Rich,¹ “a sevennight in my house after the writ was out for her to be burnt, where my lord of Canterbury and Bishop Ridley resorted almost daily unto her.” The gravamen of the charge against Cranmer rests upon the story of Foxe that the Archbishop had much ado to persuade the young King to sign a warrant for her execution, and that Edward “lay all the charge thereof upon Cranmer before God.”¹ The alleged incident was used by Foxe to invest the King with a compassion which he certainly did not possess, and this “importunity for blood”² has been objected against the Archbishop by nearly all his critics. But Foxe’s story is a work of imagination; the incident is not mentioned by Edward himself in his journal,³ nor alleged against Cranmer at his trial. As a matter of fact the young King, then only thirteen years of age, could not and did not sign any warrants at all. They were signed by the Council, and upon this authority a writ de hœretico comburendo was issued by the Lord Chancellor to the Sheriff of London. Moreover, at the particular meeting of the Council at which the warrant was signed the Archbishop himself was not present and so did not sign the warrant.¹ Joan’s pitiful story is no evidence against the mildness of Cranmer’s character, but it illustrates the narrowness with which most Reformers interpreted the doctrine of private judgment. Liberalism was no part of their creed, and even the martyr John Philpot, when himself on trial for heresy, declared that Joan was a “heretic, well worthy to be burnt, because she stood against the manifest articles of our faith.”²

Yet the religious persecution of Warwick’s administration must not be exaggerated; for, after all, Foxe is justified in the boast that during the whole reign of Edward no one, save Joan Bocher and George van Parris, lost his life for the sake of religion,³—a striking record compared with the reign of Mary, whose moderation is held to be proved by the reduction of the number of ascertained victims to something short of three hundred! The severity of Warwick’s government was, in fact, directed mainly against his political foes and the poorer classes. Religion to him was really an indifferent matter, and his chief object was to secure himself in power and to please those on whose support he depended. His rival, the Protector, was ultimately brought by the foulest means to the scaffold,¹ and the violence of his rule so disgusted the nation that as soon as the opportunity arose it declared with one voice against him. That he was able to go on so long unmolested was largely due to a most favourable conjunction of foreign affairs. He made a most ignominious peace with France in March, 1550, which, although it surrendered all that the Tudors had fought for in Scotland, and prepared the way for the dangers which threatened England under Elizabeth, yet gave his government temporary security. Then in 1551–52 war approached between France and the Emperor, and the rising of Germany against Charles V.² left Warwick free to pursue his own devices without fear of external alarms.

It was under these circumstances that the Reformation was prosecuted in England during the later years of Edward VI. The new Ordinal, which Parliament had empowered a commission to compile, was published in March, 1550, and it is probable that Cranmer, assisted by Ridley, had the chief share in its composition.³ The commissioners took no advantage of the liberty allowed by the Act to provide for the ordination of “other ministers” — i. e., ostiaries, lectors, exorcists, acolytes, and sub-deacons—below the rank of deacon ; and their formulary swept away a vast mass of gorgeous ritual centained in the old Pontificals. It was a long step in the direction of simplicity, “but all that was necessary to convey the clerical character was nevertheless preserved”¹; and like every other measure that Cranmer took it excited the displeasure of the extremists. Bishop Heath of Worcester was sent to the Fleet prison for refusing to subscribe the book, and on the other hand, Hooper, the favourite of Warwick,² and the most popular preacher at this time in London denounced the Ordinal as soon as it was published. In a letter to Bullinger he spoke of the “fraud and artifices by which they promote the kingdom of anti-Christ especially in the form of the oath.”³ For this he was summoned before the Council at Cranmer’s instance, and upbraided by the Archbishop, but at length, he says, “the issue was for the glory of God.” At Easter Warwick offered him the bishopric of Gloucester.⁴ He was appointed by letters patent on the 3rd of July, but objected to taking the oath by the Saints and using the “Aaronic” vestments required by the Ordinal. After much argument he persuaded the young King to put his pen through this objectionable oath,¹ and to write a letter to Cranmer recommending his consecration in the simpler form. The Archbishop had too much respect for the constitution to obey, and merely referred Hooper to Ridley who endeavoured to remove his scruples. His efforts were vain, and at the end of July Hooper “obtained leave from the King and the Council to be consecrated by the Bishop of London without superstition.” Ridley, however, convinced the Council that Hooper was wrong, and the Bishop-elect of Gloucester was confined to his house. Cranmer, meanwhile, appealed to Bucer and Martyr,² while Hooper sought the advice of John à Lasco. The two former rebuked Hooper’s scruples, but the Pole encouraged resistance. Hooper kept neither his house nor silence; he rushed into print with a confession of faith, and the Council in January, 1551, ordered him into the Archbishop’s custody “either there to be reformed or further to be punished as the obstinacy of his case requireth.”³ A fortnight later Cranmer reported that his prisoner could not be brought to conformity; and he was therefore sent to the Fleet. There, much to the grief of the Zwinglian party, Hooper at length submitted to be made a Bishop in the ordinary way. He draws a veil over his own discomfiture and writes to Bullinger that “as the Lord has put an end to this controversy, I do not think it worth while to violate the sepulchre of this unhappy tragedy.”¹

Cranmer and Ridley had thus vindicated the Church against the “Father of Nonconformity,” but Ridley’s visitation of his London bishopric in 1550, and conversion of altars into communion-tables, indicated that both prelates had made considerable advances towards the Swiss doctrines, of which Hooper was the most uncompromising champion. The fact that these views were held abroad has often been used to involve them in odium — as if Catholic doctrines were not also accepted by foreigners; as if Christianity itself were not a foreign product; and as if theological truth were a matter to be determined by national prejudices! Cranmer took the more liberal view and thought that truth should be admitted even though it did come from a foreign source, and he entertained the idea of assembling in England a body of divines whose weight should counterbalance that of the Fathers at Trent.³ The disturbed state of Germany assisted his efforts, and many a noted Reformer fled from the vengeance of Charles V., and was entertained by Cranmer at Lambeth.

Among those who arrived in 1547 was Pietro Martire Vermigli,¹ a native of Florence, who was better known as Peter Martyr, and like Luther had been an Augustinian monk. He came from Strassburg, stayed for a time with Cranmer before becoming Regius Professor at Oxford, and was invited by the Archbishop to suggest emendations on the First Book of Common Prayer. From the same city came Tremellius,² the Hebraist, a Jew of Ferrara, who found a home and employment at Cambridge; and from Augsburg came Bernardino Ochino,³ a Franciscan and a native of Siena. These three Italians had been driven from Italy by the failure of the Reformation there, and from Germany by the victory of Charles over the Schmalkaldic League. In 1548 the Pole, John à Lasco,⁴ reached Lambeth, and shares with Ridley and Latimer the disputed honour of having sapped Cranmer’s belief in the Real Presence; he was accompanied by John Utenhove,¹ a native of Ghent. The great Melanchthon himself was invited, but preferred to remain at Wittenberg. The second most famous of living German divines was, however, induced to come in the person of Martin Bucer,² who, like his friend Fagius,³ exchanged Strassburg for Cambridge and died there. Lesser lights among this galaxy of distinguished strangers were Francis Dryander, the Spaniard; Martin Micronius, the friend of Bullinger; Valeran Poullain, the superintendent of the colony of Flemish weavers established by Somerset at Glastonbury; Peter Alexander of Aries, once chaplain to Charles V.’s sister Mary, Regent of the Netherlands, and Jean Véron, a Frenchman, who wrote vigorous tracts denouncing the mass.⁴ It is, however, probable that these foreign divines exercised less influence than the Englishmen who had fled from the persecution of Henry VIII., imbibed foreign ideas, and returned under Edward VI. Hooper, for instance, who had sat at Bullinger’s feet, was more potent than Bucer; Coverdale, who had lived abroad for fifteen years, may well be compared with Martyr; and smaller men, such as Bishop Bale, John Rogers, the “proto-martyr,” and Bartholomew Traheron, popularised foreign ideas more effectively than immigrants who knew little English. Yet again it must not be forgotten that the English Church in the sixteenth century assimilated little that had not been taught by the English Wycliffe,¹ and that it involves a distortion of terms to label it at any time Lutheran, Zwinglian, or Calvinistic.²

All these forces were, however, thrown into the balance against the compromise which had been embodied in the First Book of Common Prayer, particularly with regard to the Real Presence. Cranmer had given up that doctrine in 1548, and in 1550 during the controversy with Gardiner¹ maintained that it was not really recognised—at least not in the sense in which Gardiner interpreted it—in the Prayer Book. This controversy may have suggested or emphasised to the Reformers the need for revising the First Book of Common Prayer; and the more important changes in the Second seem designed to enforce and establish that interpretation of the First Book which Cranmer upheld against Gardiner²; the door was at last to be shut on the Old Learning. But these points often and not unnaturally coincided with those in which Bucer insisted that the First Book needed revision, and to his Censura³ has sometimes been ascribed the determining influence in the matter. It is, in fact, impossible to discriminate precisely the respective shares of these collaborating forces in producing the Second Book of Common Prayer; but, on the whole, the changes in the Second Book went farther than Bucer recommended. Bucer represented a compromise between Luther and Zwingli; the First Book was more Lutheran, the Second more Zwinglian than he liked. His advice was taken when he urged the adoption of Zwinglian forms, rejected when he pleaded for the retention of the semi-Lutheran phrases of 1549. At his request words in the Communion Office which might be construed as implying the “permanence of the body and blood of Christ under the species of bread and wine,” and as justifying adoration of the Sacrament, were deleted.¹ On the other hand, his exhortations were neglected when he argued against the excision of certain phrases, the absence of which would, he thought “cast a doubt on the reality of the Act of Communion.”²

Besides Bucer, Peter Martyr also submitted the Book of 1549 to an examination ; but his work was not done with the same care and learning as Bucer’s, and it had little influence on the Book of 1552. Even Bucer’s opinion prevailed only so far as it coincided with those of Cranmer and Ridley, to whom was due the chief share in the compilation of the Second Book of Common Prayer. The principal changes were made in the Communion Office, and the motive for them was doubtless the fact that, the sequence of the 1549 Office being substantially that of the old mass, Catholic priests were able by mumbling the words and repeating the old manual acts to make the new form appear almost indistinguishable from the old “idolatrous Mass.” In the 1552 Office no room was left for this representation or misrepresentation. The service was so arranged as to exclude the ideas of sacrifice and corporal presence which had interpenetrated every word and action in the Mass.¹ The word “altar” was expunged; the Kyrie Eleison instead of being an invocation of the presence of the Lord was changed into an ordinary prayer for grace to keep the Ten Commandments ; the Gloria in Excelsis, instead of being placed at the beginning of the Office and heralding the presence of God, was placed at the end; and the words, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,” were omitted as implying the same conception. The Agnus Dei was also left out, ordinary instead of unleavened bread was to be used, the wearing of the alb, chasuble, and cope were expressly prohibited, and the minister was ordered to stand at the north side of the “communion-table,” which henceforth was to be placed in the body of the church and not at the east end.² Scarcely less drastic were the changes effected in the Orders for Baptism, and Confirmation, and in the revision of the Ordinal published in 1550.

With the exception of several points, the importance of which is variously estimated by different schools of High and Low churchmen, the Prayer Book of 1552 is substantially the same as that of the present day. It has been criticised in recent years as approaching too nearly to continental Protestantism and particularly to the views of Zwingli’s successor Bullinger. But that would seem no ground for objection to Cranmer; the insularity and isolation which is now the pride and the boast of the average Englishman had not then laid so firm a hold upon him, and Cranmer thought that to differ in religion from the rest of the world implied a presumption of error rather than truth. He had no wish to make the Anglican Church national in doctrine or ritual, but only in jurisdiction and government. It was to remain in communion with the Catholic Church purified of papal corruptions. The changes effected between 1549 and 1552 were designed to facilitate an accommodation with the Reformed Churches abroad ; and this purified Catholic Church was by means of a Reformed General Council to bring the whole of Christendom into a new and scriptural unity. No one can describe that ideal as ignoble, and Cranmer cannot be condemned for failing to see that the unity of the visible Church was shattered for ever. To the clearest vision of the sixteenth century it remained hidden that the national and secularising forces which came to birth in that age would go on ever increasing in strength and ever widening the breach between the modern world and that world in which one Church universal was possible and that Church could rival the State.