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With protestant interference during the reign of Edward and the Catholic persecutions of Bloody Mary to warn
her, Elizabeth determined to tread warily, but her careful attitude could not stop the rift created by the first Act of Uniformity [See page 57.].
The advanced faction, all of whom had fled to Frankfurt and Geneva during
Mary's reign, returned to England when they saw the bloodless methods of the new queen.
In their hearts nothing short of the
abolition of the Prayer Book - any prayer book - would satisfy them, and the history of the next eighty years is the story of
their continual nagging at ceremonies and vestments until the Book of Common Prayer was ousted in 1645.
The 1559 Book, founded as
it was on the protestant Book of 1552, could not succeed in pleasing the 'Roman' Catholics any more than it did the captious
'Puritans' as they may now be called.
In 1570 Pope Pius V, more downright than his predecessor who had not strongly objected to
the 1559 Book, published a Bull of Excommunication against the English Church, which made further conciliation impossible between
England and Rome.
Those opposed to the Book for protestant reasons included many who unwillingly conformed, others who felt they
could not sincerely conform and the Puritan party who must henceforward be considered as anti-church, though they themselves
thought they were the true Church and had, while in Geneva, brought out a rival book of Forms of Service.
No sooner had James I
ascended the throne in March 1603 than the next month a puritan Millenary Petition, purporting to have a thousand signatures, was
presented to the king.
James called a conference in the following January at Hampton Court and in February issued a few minor
alterations;
but in reality the Elizabethan Book remained as well as the dissensions.
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A Prayer Book was foisted on the nonconforming Scots in 1637 after negotiations between Laud and Maxwell
which had lasted for eight years, but it failed to please and never came into general use.
Its importance lies in its influence on
later revisions:
in the 1662 Book it suggested the rubrics concerning the offertory and the manual acts in the consecration;
its
form of consecration prayer was later incorporated into the Scottish Liturgy, formally adopted in 1731 by the Church of Scotland
which had been disestablished in 1688.
Through this Liturgy it later influenced the American Liturgy of 1789.
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The failure of the Scottish Book may be said to have precipitated the events in England of the next few
years.
By the summer of 1640 the Puritan party had gained enough power to force the ejection from parliament of the bishops.
The
episcopacy was abolished, the bishops themselves imprisoned, and the Church became Presbyterian.
But it was only an interim
measure;
in 1643 a so-called Westminster Assembly, consisting partly of lay members, ousted Convocation and overthrew the Church
of England.
Two years later the 'Directory replaced the Book of Common Prayer for Public Worship of God in Three Kingdoms'.
It
was forbidden to use the Prayer Book in public or private worship and fines and other penalties were to be inflicted on any
minister who did not use, or even spoke against, the Directory.
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Puritanism had triumphed.
Its services and Prayer Book made illegal, the Church of England as an organisation no longer existed, though its buildings were
freely used.
The Directory, true to its title, prescribed no forms of service but merely issued instructions on how 'meetings'
should be conducted.
All vestments were to be put away, the communion-table was to be moved into the body of the church (the
minister as in the primitive church facing the congregation), while west-end fonts, wedding rings and burial services were all
scrapped.
Directions were given for the 'Singing of Psalms' - that is, psalm-tunes - which implied that no choir was necessary.
Music, in fact, apart from psalm-tunes, was strictly banned; organs were silenced,
removed, or in some places despoiled by zealots, while many choir libraries were destroyed in fits of iconoclasm.
The purifying of
public worship was complete.
A model was given for all future nonconformist services.
The puritan mind, indeed, started its
reasoning from the axiom that in public worship all expression is immoral, the inner feeling needing no material manifestation.
Carried to its logical end it becomes Quakerism;
but most of the Puritans of the Rebellion would not go so far.
They allowed
kneeling, they allowed psalm-tunes, though they shuddered at surplices and choir-music.
As a result the history of nonconformist
music is from now on a melancholy tale of hymn-tunes in eight-eight and eight-six.
In Germany it culminated in the Bach Passions;
in England it reaches its climax in revivalist hymn-tunes and the music of the Salvation Army.
Art, say the Puritans, must at any
price be banished from the religious gathering;
hymn-tunes serve a useful purpose, and they alone may remain.
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While Charles II was waiting at the Hague, Presbyterian divines were sent from the House to entreat him not
to use the forms and ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer in his private chapel.
If he did, they asserted, he would scandalise
all religious men.
He replied that he intended to consult parliament about the matter and meanwhile would have surplices worn in
his chapel as he had always done.
He later promised a revision of the Prayer Book and on March 25th, 1661, the nine surviving
bishops and other divines met at the Savoy Hospital intending to make a stand about cere?monies and vestments.
The Puritans in
their usual manner claimed to be representative of the Church of England and submitted long lists of carping criticisms.
The
churchmen, feeling their position stronger as the conference went on, answered their captiousness with curt refutations.
On
December 20th both Houses adopted the Book of Common Prayer, and on May 19th, 1662, it was given the royal assent.
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The Book was provided with a new Preface, Cranmer's preface being retitled 'Concerning the Service of the
Church'.
Scriptural passages were altered to conform to the 1611 Bible and minor alterations to the number of six hundred were
made throughout.
The Psalter was designedly left untouched, the old version being thought more singable.
The musicians, in fact,
were considered not only in this;
in the famous rubric, 'In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem,' they
were given authority for an already old custom.
Choirs and their organists settled down to the business of rebuilding themselves,
their organs and their repertories.
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From now on the Presbyterians, Independents and other non-conforming groups form a sect outside and separate
from the legally established church.
Within the Church there is also peace for a hundred and fifty years, as the 1662 Book broke
little new ground and no doubt churchmen had grown tired of continuous squabbling.
The settlement was a decidedly protestant one,
showing the influence of the puritan mind.
Toleration of some sort had been established and the Church could now go ahead with
its services unmolested by the puritan element.
If toleration degenerated into lethargy the fault could be laid at the door of
secular influences during the next century, of which more later.
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