The campaign to bring about reform was reflected in the evolving leadership of the church. Older bishops were gradually replaced by men of the “New Learning.” Gardiner and Bonner were sent to prison for preaching against the new doctrine of the Eucharist; Heath was deprived of his see for refusing to accept the Ordination service, Day for refusing to remove altars, and Rugg resigned.
The influence of the “New Learning” had begun to reach England by the early 1530s. Cranmer had first experienced Lutheran worship in Lent, 1532, at Nuremberg. He was no doubt familiar with Martin Bucer’s book (1524) on “the Lord’s Supper.” This was a new name for the ancient sacrament, a name which found its way into the 1549 Book. Bucer was “the leading light of the religious life” of the city of Strasbourg, Germany. It is not surprising that when life on the continent became intolerable for Protestant reformers, Cranmer invited Bucer to come to England. This he did in April, 1549. By the end of the year Bucer, whose views on the sacrament were somewhere between those of Calvin and those of Zwingli, had the divinity chair at Cambridge. Peter Martyr was another reformer who crossed the Channel. He was an Italian whom the Inquisition drove out of Italy. Zurich and Strasbourg were only temporary havens for him before coming to England. In less than a year he was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He and Bucer were friendly rivals. These two were in the forefront of the continental reformers who put their mark on the second Prayer Book of Edward VI.
Continental pressure for reform reached England by mail packet as well as in person. Calvin, “the Geneva Pope,” was graciously pleased to say that the Book contained “many tolerable absurdities.” He called for more drastic changes. Actually the first Book was too conservative for all of the continental reformers. While they were thankful for it, they obviously hoped for and expected further revision. They considered the retention of ceremonies as only a temporary expedient.
It is not surprising that because of English extremists such as Hooper and Ridley and continental reformers like Bucer and Peter Martyr, the pressure for revising the 1549 Book began almost from the moment of publication. By August, 1549, the translation of the Te Deum had been improved, and the Litany had been placed between Evensong and the Sacrament. (Its 1549 position had been right after the Lord’s Supper.)
One unintentional cause for the extremely reformist nature of the revision came out of the trial of Bishop Gardiner. He was being tried for preaching against the doctrine of the Eucharist. In his defense he presented a paper, “An Explication and Assertion of the true Catholic Faith,” which was a reply to Cranmer’s “Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ.” Gardiner’s method was both clever and exasperating. He picked out various passages in the 1549 Book which appeared to express the Catholic doctrine rather than Cranmer’s, and warmly commended them. The only way to stem this kind of opposition was to alter the text at these points. So the effect of Gardiner’s criticisms was to make the next revision more narrowly Reformed in doctrine and harder for well-disposed Catholics to accept.
No conclusive consideration of the proposed revision took place in the Houses of Convocation. The moderates had been repressed, and their leaders—Bishops Gardiner, Bonner, Heath, Day, Tunstal, and perhaps others—were in the Tower. In Parliament, the second Act of Uniformity was considered for a month and passed on April 14, 1552. The Book was to become official on November 1 of that year.
Perhaps for appearances’ sake that second Act of Uniformity spoke favorably of the 1549 Book. It was “a very godly order, agreeable to the Word of God and the primitive Church, very comfortable to all good people.” Percy Dearmer observed that “the First Prayer Book was indeed too fair-minded for the violent and bitter spirit of the age.”
The Act justifies the revision as having two purposes: “more plain and manifest explication,” and “more perfection of . . . some places where it is necessary . . . to stir Christian people to the true honoring of Almighty God.” In a sort of halfhearted way these purposes were followed. For example, in relation to the former, “The Purification of Women” is changed to “The Thanksgiving of Women After Childbirth, commonly called the Churching of Women.” The latter may be identified with “the requirement of saying the Office daily . . . more congregational participation, especially in the Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer (though not, as Bucer suggested, in the Prayer of Humble Access and Thanksgiving); communion at least three times a year, instead of once . . . and above all, a new introduction to both Holy Communion, and Mattins and Evensong. In pursuance of a general policy of dropping the old names, the latter are now called Morning and Evening Prayer, while “the Mass,’ ‘anthems,’ and ‘Ash-Wednesday’ no longer appear anywhere in the book. . . . Morning and Evening Prayer are to be said where ‘the people may best hear,’ not necessarily in the quire; but the chancels are to ‘remain as they have done,’ not be shut up, as Hooper wished”9
In the interval between the closing of Parliament (April 14, 1552) and the beginning of use set by the second Act of Uniformity (November 1, 1552), a great controversy arose over kneeling to receive Communion. The reformers were dead set against the practice, and John Knox, who had become the Royal Chaplain, was as outspokenly opposed in London as he had been in the north. The Council awoke to the fact that the Book, now already in print (September 27), specifically required kneeling. The Council held up the Book on the pretext of a printer’s error and wrote Cranmer to reconsider. He refused to take any action and at the same time pointed out “both the crudity of the Scriptural argument which was being alleged against the custom, and also the indecency of sitting to receive, but kneeling both before and after reception.” On October 27, four days before the Book was to go into use, a letter went forth from the Council to the Lord Chancellor “to cause to be joined unto the Book of Common Prayer lately set forth a certain declaration, signed by the King’s Majesty and sent unto his Lordship, touching the kneeling at the receiving of the Communion.” So the Council compromised the matter on the eve of publication with the “black rubric,” which declared in explanation of the requirement to kneel to receive “that it is not ment thereby, that any adoration is doone, or oughte to bee doone, either unto the Sacramental bread or wyne, there bodily receyued, or unto anye reall or essencial presence there beeyng of Christ’s naturall fleshe and bloude.”
Procter and Frere conclude, “Thus against the Archbishop’s will and without the consent of the Church, English religion reached its low water mark and the ill-starred Book of 1552 began its brief career.”10
Take a brief look at the principal changes in this second Book.
