Book of Common Prayer (1604)

It was introduced during the early English reign of James I as a product of the Hampton Court Conference, a summit between episcopalian, Puritan, and Presbyterian factions.

Cranmer, at the behest of Edward VI, had produced the Edwardine Ordinals which were increasingly associated with the prayer book and often bound in with the text.

These strains resulted in the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and the Church of England seeking to strike a via media between Protestant and Catholic influences.

[5] The Calvinistic worship in Scotland when James VI sat on the Scottish throne was the Book of Common Order, in conformity to John Knox's Genevan Form of Prayers.

The young King James VI was gifted an English prayer book by Adam Bothwell and copies were sold in Jacobean Edinburgh.

However, James opposed the "evil mass said in English" and some Puritans were trying remove even the Calvinist Book of Common Order from public worship.

[10] While James was particularly insistent on conformity to the rubrical and vestry requirements of the new prayer book, the degree of enforcement was largely based on demanding ministers promise to consider these mandates.

Enacted in March 1604, these canons consolidated earlier Elizabethan directives and were applied to use of the newly approved prayer book.

[11] The reaction to the 1604 prayer book from the Puritan party was sharply critical of the newly authorized liturgy, rejecting both baptismal regeneration and kneeling to receive Communion.

[7] The ministers in the Diocese of Lincoln issued a petition in 1605 that extensively quoted Reformed divines in opposition to the new prayer book.

Laud's policies in England were also drawing growing Puritan opposition with the Long Parliament spending 1640 and 1641 directly criticizing Laudian practice.

The new administration broadly supported simply reprinting the 1604 prayer book, but both Laudians and Presbyterians successfully lobbied for revision.