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whole of it should be in English; as a completion of what the Primer at the close of Henry's reign had begun, that is, "a form of public prayer in the mother-tongue." The service 2 commenced, at morning and evening, with the Lord's Prayer; the previous exhortation, confession, and absolution, which we now have, not being as yet supplied. The Psalms were regulated as in the present daily order; the Lessons, with a little variation from the directions now belonging to them. After the first Lesson the noble hymn Te Deum followed; after the second, the Benedictus. The Apostles' Creed, which formerly was wont to be whispered by the officiating priest alone, was then to be publicly recited. Suffrages, translated from the Latin breviary, were the next in order, followed by Collects, adopted from similar ancient forms, in most of which the superiority in the language of our Liturgy is indeed very striking. The Communion service, which contained almost all that had been directed in the office of the preceding year, together with large additions, then presents itself; but the * absolution in it no longer began with proclaim

1 See before, vol. 1. 373.

2 Heylin. Burnet. Collier. Ridley.

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Archbishop Laurence has given some forcible proofs of this in the notes to his Bampton Lectures.

See the form itself. Collier has reprinted it, Ecc. Hist. ii. Records, No. 59. The precatory absolution is precisely the same as in our present communion-service. Ibid. p. 69.

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ing the power of the keys; it was then, as it is now, only precatory. After this service came the Litany; then the office of Baptism, in which, and in the subsequent ones of Confirmation, Matrimony, Visiting the Sick, Burial, and Churching, there were ceremonies at that time to be observed, which have been since abolished. To ceremonies the people had long been accustomed. Reasons were therefore given, which still keep their place at the beginning of our Common Prayer Book, Why some are abolished, and some retained." In the Act a provision was added, authorizing the singing of psalms "at any time." Whether this provision now introduced into the service English versions of the Psalms in metre, is uncertain. But as in 1549 a portion of the Psalms thus translated by Sternhold was published, and by him dedicated to Edward, it leads us to suppose that they were admitted. The same year indeed was fertile of these metrical. versions. By Wyatt, Coverdale, and Crowley, such at that time were published: before it the pen of the accomplished Surrey had been thus employed.

It has been sometimes said that the labour of our Reformers, in this liturgical production, was but small. In answer to those who have thus unjustly depreciated it, Dr. Ridley has replied, that they who represent them as doing little, may observe ten material differences of the Re

formed Common Prayer as it was now framed, and soon afterwards, revised from the Romish. 'I. The service in the language which the people know. II. Scripture lessons instead of legends. III. The Scriptures orderly read through, instead of a broken and interrupted course. IV. The Creed more properly disposed. V. The Lord's Prayer, more agreeable to Christ's appointment, before reading and prayer. VI. Repeated aloud, instead of secretly. VII. The Ave Mary and commemoration of the Virgin omitted. VIII. The monkish metrical hymns rejected. IX. As also prayers for the dead. X. And addresses to saints, together with the superstitious consecrating and exorcising salt, water, bread, incense, candles, palms, leaves of flowers, grapes, fire, bells, images, altars, crosses, vessels, and garments.

Our service-book has been accordingly pronounced "a compilation of ancient forms, selected with prudence, corrected with judgment, and arranged with simplicity." The copy of the first impression of it, printed by Grafton in March 1548-9, Cranmer then presented to Edward. It was reprinted in the following June, if not also before

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3 Ames. Herbert. The price of the book unbound, which is a folio, was straitly charged" to be no more than two shillings and twopence; bound in forel (a kind of parchment) to be not above two shillings and tenpence; in sheepskin to be at three shillings and fourpence; and in calfskin at four shillings.

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that time. In these distinct copies some verbal variations, or arrangements, of the contents, which however are unimportant, 'have been found. Almost immediately after the publication of it, a proclamation was made for the mass to be put down throughout the whole realm; although in the contents of the book the words, "3 commonly called the mass," as yet had not been removed from the title of the Lord's Supper. But Cranmer had removed it, in his manuscript remarks, from the king's Injunctions. What Jewell afterwards eloquently observed to his Romish opponent, was now effected. "5 The mass of itself fell down, and fled away before the holy communion, even as the darkness before the light, and as the idol Dagon fell down at the presence of the ark of the God of Israel."

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The new service-book was directed to come into general use on the Whitsunday of 1549. But by many of the clergy, who had received it immediately after its publication, it began to be used at Easter; and with the liveliest satisfaction congregations now attended to intelligible devotions in the vernacular language. In appearance

1 Dr. Dibdin says, "it is rarely that three copies are found alike." Typograph. Antiq. iii. 464.

Bishop Jewell's Reply to Hardinge, &c. 1565, p. 481.

nearly the whole clergy conformed to it. But some there were who waited only for an opportunity to express, and to instigate, resistance to it. Among these we shall presently find the worthless Bonner, who was slow to disperse the book, and to enjoin the use of it, throughout his diocese. He was watching the issue of the commotions that soon were raised in several parts of the kingdom. To the influence of refractory priests one of the greatest of these commotions is ascribed. After the first reading of this liturgy in the church of Sampford Courtney, in Devonshire, some of the parishioners insisted that on the 'following day the rector should use, as in former times, the Latin mass. To this apparent compulsion the parish-priest himself is supposed to have invited them. Discontented because of inclosures that were made of what was once monastic property, insurgents indeed were now shewing themselves in other parts as well as the west of England. The insurrection of the men of Devonshire and Cornwall, however, which began under the pretence of throwing open the inclosures, was soon found to have been chiefly raised in maintenance of the old religion, and in especial hostility to the new liturgy. Their own proposals to the government exemplify this. Sanders himself admits it. In great numbers under

3 Ibid.