Book of Common Prayer (1559)
Historian Eamon Duffy considered the Elizabethan prayer book an embedded and stable "re-formed" development out of medieval piety that "entered and possessed" the minds of the English people.
Cranmer's royally authorized 1548 Order of the Communion introduced an English-language devotion into the Latin Mass along the lines of work done by Martin Bucer and Philip Melanchthon in Cologne.
On Pentecost Sunday 1549, the first Book of Common Prayer was issued under an Act of Uniformity and replaced the Latin rites for service in the Church of England.
The Black Rubric, which was added to 1552 text after parliament had approved it, was a notable result of Protestant pressure from Hooper, John Knox, Nicholas Ridley, and Peter Martyr Vermigli.
Her efforts to restore English religion to the state it had existed in before Henry's reforms–alongside her marriage to the Spanish Philip II–brought opposition, not least due to the financial costs involved.
On Christmas, the celebrating bishop refused Elizabeth's request that he refrain from elevating the sacramental host, leading her to leave the chapel after singing the gospel.
J. E. Neale believed this bill's permission for Communion under both kinds indicates that Elizabeth and her advisors were unwilling to pursue a new Act of Uniformity during the queen's first parliament, as this allowance would have been made superfluous by the latter legislation.
[29] On 3 March, the conservative Convocation of Canterbury delivered their decisions in opposition to the supremacy bill to Lord Keeper Nicholas Bacon to no apparent effect.
However, the increasing threat posed by both emboldened Marian conservatives and disaffected reformers in Commons meant that the post-Easter parliamentary proceedings would emphasize liturgical revision.
[33] On 22 March, the Wednesday of Holy Week, Elizabeth intended to issue a proclamation permitting all Englishmen to receive Communion in both kinds in defiance of the Catholic practice.
By Easter, Elizabeth was privately receiving Communion in both kinds, though–contrary to some historical speculation–did not introduce the 1552 prayer book on that date as it would have undermined her legal legitimacy.
This disputation, perhaps arranged during the lull between the Bill of Supremacy's initial debate and passage in the House of Lords, was intended to secure the Protestant side's success.
[40] Printing rights for the newly adopted prayer book were solely extended to the Queen's Printers, a monopoly that reflected the text's value to the state.
Elizabeth exercised this right on 6 April 1560 to publish Liber Precum Publicarum, a Latin version of the prayer book for use in collegiate churches.
Liturgical music, particularly the compositions of Thomas Tallis and the Catholic recusant William Byrd for the Chapel Royal, was built around and in relationship with the Elizabethan prayer book.
[50] In cathedrals, collegiate churches, and chapels, music by Byrd, John Bull, Thomas Morley, Robert White, and others appeared in both in English and Latin for use with organs and choirs at prayer book services.
[53] From 1559 until 1563, episcopal visitations provided a mechanism for enforcing the rubrics of the prayer book and allowed for additional regulation that furthered the reformed cause.
[56] The visitations and regulations established by the bishops between 1559 and 1563 had meant that, outside the exceptions of the Chapel Royal and cathedrals, worship according to a reformed interpretation of the prayer book was becoming normative.
With King James VI of Scotland arriving in England in 1603 to take up the English throne, Puritan ministers gave him the Millenary Petition calling for the full excision of Catholic influence from the church's religion.
[70] The 1559 prayer book could at times provide extensive detail on how a rite was to be conducted, though its silence on some matters meant that individual congregations would often celebrate in distinct fashions.
[72] Morning Prayer took the role of the major Sunday service in smaller parishes,[73] with Communion commonly occurring monthly, quarterly, or even more rarely.
A rubric detailing the place where a priest should stand during the office from the 1552 prayer book was retained within both the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity and 1559 text, though Elizabeth almost immediately abrogated it.
A declaration on the definition of kneeling which implicitly denied the real presence at Communion, it still remained in popular knowledge and contemporary reports maintain that its contents were taught and published.
[83] The litany recited at the beginning of the 1559 diaconal ordination rite is modified to replace Edward's name with Elizabeth's, swap pronouns, and remove the deprecation of the pope's "detestable enormities".
[86] It was a departure from the trajectory the previous prayer books had taken–one of reform growing closer to Continental European Protestant worship–but also not a reversion to 1549, maintaining Protestantism as a crucial component of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement.
[91] Eamon Duffy, in his The Stripping of the Altars, maintained that medieval piety was not replaced by the Elizabethan prayer book but rather "re-formed itself around the rituals and words of the prayer-book."
According to this view, parliamentary debate gave way to resolution through the adoption of the more reformed 1552 prayer book but only with alterations that reduced its Protestant character.
[97][note 12] Some modern historians, including Stephen Alford and Diarmaid MacCulloch, have sought to revise the via media narrative by attempting to demonstrate Elizabeth's deep-seated Protestantism.
Critics of the compromise narrative argue that it requires a narrow view towards historical evidence, which revisionists instead appraise as betraying a fundamentally reformed nature of the 1559 prayer book's origins.
[100] A prayer book printed in 1559 by Richard Grafton and now at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and signed by Elizabeth's privy council is held as evidence for the revisionist view.
