Henry VIII. Others, however, went further. The returning exiles, and those who had secretly sympathized with them, began to use the Edwardian Prayer-book. [13] There were no statutory penalties to restrain them, and the bishops looked on helpless, or acquiescent. Even in the Queen's chapel, it is said, the English service was used on Easter Day. [14] Long before the Prayer-book was restored to its legal position. Parkhurst was able to write to Bullinger, perhaps with some exaggeration, that it was again in general use: Nunc iterum per totam Angliam in usu passim est. [15]

It was the Prayer-book as used in the last year of King Edward which was thus revived. But meanwhile a committee of divines was at work revising it. Little is known of their proceedings, or of the authority under which they acted, nor am I concerned with this question. [16] There is in the Record Office a paper which roundly asserts that Convocation went over the Book and approved the alterations before it was brought into Parliament. The document is undated, but the calendar assigns it to the year 1559. It is, however, certainly not of this date, and though interesting from another point of view, it cannot be taken to have any value as evidence of fact. [17] The statement cannot be reconciled with what we know of the proceedings of Convocation at the time.

Parliament met on the 23rd of January, 1559, and after some abortive attempts at legislation a Bill for Uniformity was brought into the House of Commons on April 18, and passed within two days; in the House of Lords it was keenly debated, but passed without amendment on April 28, [18] all the bishops present dissenting. By this third Act of Uniformity all the provisions of the former statutes were revived. The same penalties were enacted, with one addition—a fine of one shilling for absence from church on Sundays or holy days, to be levied by the churchwardens of each parish. The Prayer-book is not said to be annexed to the Act, [19] but is identified by reference to the statute of the fifth and sixth of Edward VI., by which it is said to have been "authorized." Certain changes to be made in the Book so identified are specified: it is to be used

with one alteration, or addition of certain Lessons to be used on every Sunday in the year, and the form of the Litany altered and corrected, and two sentences only added in the delivery of the Sacrament to the communicants.

The alterations are said to be "appointed by this statute." I call attention to these points, because they seem to show that Elizabeth and her Parliament assumed the function of amending the Book, and claimed for it a purely statutory authority. Such an assumption is strangely inconsistent with the subsequent actions of the Queen, and we are the more struck by the contrast if we reflect that the Act was introduced in the House of Commons. In 1571, when the Commons began to stir matters of the same kind, Elizabeth sent them more than one sharp message forbidding them to meddle with such concerns. The speed, moreover, with which the Bill passed the Commons leaves little room for doubt that all was fully prepared beforehand, the revision of the Book completed, and the enforcement of its use alone made matter of parliamentary debate. In the Lords there was considerable discussion, and the Book was roughly handled by the opposing bishops; but the debate proceeded on the Book as a whole, and there is no trace of any legislative action dealing with its details. At the same time it is right to observe that the power of Parliament to impose the Book was challenged, and no other sanction appears to have been contemplated. [20] The only possible conclusion seems to be that the Book was revised by the committee of which I have spoken, and that as very few changes were made, no fair copy of the whole Book was submitted to Parliament, but the alterations were, for the purpose of reference, mentioned in the Act. Even this was done without much precision. The wording of the alterations is not specified. More remarkable still is the fact that in all the printed copies of the Book yet other alterations were imported, by what authority is not known. It would seem that no copy of the Prayer-book ever existed which answered exactly to the description given in the Act of 1559. [21] It is impossible, therefore, to say that the form of the Book was precisely determined by authority of Parliament. The purport of the Act was to enforce the use of the Book in a form otherwise determined. That form was settled, with some measure of ecclesiastical sanction, in the time of Edward VI. What sanction there was for the trifling changes now made is not very clear, and possibly men were not meant to inquire too closely.

The obscurity which veils the proceedings of 1559 does not reappear on the occasion of the next revision. In 1660, on the restoration of the monarchy, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, which had been forbidden under severe penalties during the rule of the Long Parliament and of Cromwell, revived as a matter of course. The Ordinances of the previous eighteen years were void in law. Indeed, the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity remained theoretically in force. Charles, however, in the Declaration of Breda, had intimated in some ambiguous words that no attempt should be made to compel conformity. [22] The presbyterian divines, Reynolds, Calamy and others, who waited upon him in Holland, begged him not to insist on the use of the Prayer-book, even in his own chapel. He refused their request, replying that

though he was bound for the present to tolerate much disorder and undecency in the exercise of God's worship, he would never in the least degree, by his own practice, discountenance the good old Order of the Church, in which he had been bred. [23]

The discussions that followed the Restoration turned chiefly on the question of church-government, with which I am not concerned, except so far as to point out that until the powers of the bishops were thoroughly re-established they were practically unable to enforce, by spiritual censures, the use of the prescript order of divine worship. Still it remained as prescribed, and was gradually returning to general use.

In October, 1660, the divines of the presbyterian party once more approached the King with suggestions for a settlement of uniform practice. In regard to the Liturgy, they had no objection to a fixed form imposed by law, provided it was not too rigorously insisted upon; but to the forms contained in the Prayer-book they were rootedly opposed. The King seized the opportunity, and in his declaration of October 25 undertook to appoint a committee of divines of both persuasions to review the Book; in the mean while, he wrote—-

Our will and pleasure is, that none be punished or troubled for not using it, until it be reviewed, and effectually reformed. [24]

On the 25th of March following were issued Letters Patent for the committee thus promised. The conferences held at the Savoy were, however, practically fruitless, and the committee was dissolved by lapse of time on the 24th of July. In the mean time, however, the Convocation of the province of Canterbury had been busy. Meeting on the 8th of May, 1661, the Synod drew up a form of prayer for the 29th of May, the anniversary of the Restoration, and also an office for the baptism of adults, which was approved on the 31st of May. [25] In another group of sessions beginning on the 21st of November, the Synod, in accordance with letters of business received from the Crown, took in hand an exhaustive revision of the Prayer-book. This was completed on the 20th of December, when a fair copy of the Book as revised was subscribed by the whole Synod. [26]

All this was done without the consent or