With Parliament’s Act of Uniformity in January, 1549, and the actual use of the Book beginning in March of that year, the good ship Book of Common Prayer was launched on its stormy voyage and as of now has logged some 440 years. During that time it has been overhauled and refitted for service eight times. For each of those eight times, as well as for the issuing of this first Book, the occasion has been one of joy or anguish, relief or disgust, pride or dismay, dedication or revolt. In 1549, such strong feelings as these poured over the Book almost before the ink was dry.
In producing the 1549 Book, Cranmer and his colleagues were sincerely and honestly seeking to lead the Church of England into a genuine revival of its worship practices. They aspired to help worshippers find greater meaning and significance in practices which were grounded in the rich heritage of Christendom. “Cranmer was trying to edge a nation notorious for its conservatism into accepting a reformed service, though, for all its comprehensiveness, the Book turned out to have gone almost too far. He hoped to satisfy the reforming zealots by suppressing all mention of oblation, to pacify the conservatives by keeping the time-hallowed framework, and to supply a positive, reformist-Catholic statement of what all had in common. This would provide the basis for further advance. For the moment, the more doctrinal positions that could be read out of it, the better.” The attempt failed from every point of view. The conservatives disliked its innovations and the omission of old services; the reformers thought it retained too much of the old and did not go far enough in innovation.6 The law required that the Book be used everywhere beginning with Whitsunday, June 9, 1549. By Monday, ominous, open revolt against the government had erupted in many parts of England. While much of this was smoldering opposition to “the miserable government of the Protector and Council,” some of it at least was due to worshippers’ violent resentment of the new Prayer Book. Because of the danger of insurrection and the fear that France would find the widespread unrest an inviting opportunity to attack its old foe, the government was forced to secure its safety by foreign mercenaries.
The most violent of the revolts was in the West Country and was clearly a revolt by ordinary worshippers against the new changes in religion. They were adamant. “We demand the restoration of the Mass in Latin without any to communicate, and the Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament: Communion in one kind, and only at Easter: greater facilities for Baptism: the restoration of the old ceremonies—Holy-bread and Holywater, Images, Palms, and Ashes. We will not receive the new service, because it is but like a Christmas game; but we will have our old service of Mattins, Mass, Evensong and processions in Latin, not in English.”7 They also demanded the recall of the English Bible “as tending to encourage heresy.”
Parliament’s Act of Uniformity had anticipated opposition to the Book, for it contained a penal statute regarding the enforcement of its use. Extreme measures by the government were therefore legally justified. By the end of August, the uprising had been suppressed. Lord Russell and his foreign mercenaries stamped out all traces of it, distributed rewards, pardons, punishments, and, by the special direction of the Council, pulled down the bells out of the steeples in Devonshire and Cornwall, leaving only one, “the least of the ryng that now is in the same,” to prevent their being used again in the cause of sedition. These were the elaborate steps the government had to take in order to enforce the adoption of the new Book.
All of that violent opposition was “due to the stiffest conservatism of men who did not wish even their least justifiable usage to be disturbed This comment of Proctor and Frere is equally applicable to the reaction against almost every successive revision of the Book of Common Prayer. A characteristic of some Prayer Book worshippers seems to be that often their attachment to the services and ceremonies with which they are familiar is so great that they consider them the ultimate and final expression of Prayer Book worship, the end of liturgical history.
The less violent reactions to the 1549 Book ranged from one end of the ecclesiastical spectrum to the other. Princess Mary simply continued to have the old Mass said by her chaplains. Bishop Bonner took no steps to introduce the new book into the diocese of London until ordered to do so by the Council in August, after which he “did the office . . . sadly and discreetly.” Indeed, the divided sympathies of the country were graphically mirrored in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. While Dean May was eagerly in favor of the reforms, Bishop Bonner was steadfast against them. Consequently, innovations were rapidly made, but old customs lingered on much longer than the reformers liked. Bishop Bonner persisted in his opposition and was finally publicly denounced, imprisoned, and on October 1 deprived of his see.
The conservatives grasped at any pretext to avoid change. “The fall of the Protector, Somerset, in the autumn of 1549 gave rise to the rumor that the Book would be withdrawn, and some of the Oxford colleges actually reintroduced the Mass. The Council, now led by Warwick, reacted vigorously, and issued an Order calling in all copies of the medieval servicebooks (with the exception of the pontificals, which had not yet been superseded), to be defaced and abolished.”8
In the forefront of church leaders who were pushing for even greater reform were Bishops Hooper and Ridley. John Hooper, a leading English disciple of Zwingli, the continental reformer, pronounced the book “defective, and of doubtful construction, and, in some respects indeed, manifestly impious.” He was thrown into prison for refusing to wear the proper vestments at his own service of consecration as Bishop of Gloucester. Eventually, he “agreed to wear the vestments for the occasion, so long as he was not expected to wear them in his diocese.” Ridley, transferred to London in April, 1550, led a drive against those practices which remotely suggested perpetuation of the Mass, such as the priest’s kissing the Lord’s Table, washing his fingers, ringing of sacring bells. He urged incumbents and churchwardens to replace their high altar with a table set in the place “thought most meet by their discretion and agreement” This was done in St. Paul’s in June. The table was placed in a diversity of positions. Bishop Ridley had it standing east and west “in the midst of the upper quire,” with the minister on the south side. At the same time, he had the iron grates of the quire bricked up, to prevent anyone from watching the Communion without communicating.
The 1549 Book expressly referred to “the Altar,” never a holy table. Ridley, along with Hooper, was a prime mover in the widespread destruction of “the altars of Baal.” This was both high-handed