Convocation of 1563

The Convocation of 1563 was a significant gathering of English and Welsh clerics that consolidated the Elizabethan religious settlement, and brought the Thirty-Nine Articles close to their final form (which dates from 1571).

More accurately said, the Forty-Two Articles of Edward VI were reduced to a draft at this point, which was widely supported, and eventually enforced after 1571.

[3] Collinson comments that Moves to improve the settlement in the convocation of 1563 were led by the bishops rather than by 'Puritans' in the lower house [...][4]Dawley writes that probably the surprise of the Convocation [...] was not the amount of support given to the Precisians but the unexpected extent of loyalty to the existing regulations,"Precisian" being the term used by Parker for his opponents on the issue of clerical dress.

[5] Of 20 bishops of the time (the see of Oxford being vacant), there were 12 who had left the Kingdom of England under Mary Tudor: the "Marian exiles".

[36] The actual proceedings of Convocation opened on 13 January, when the Litany was sung, and a Latin sermon by William Day preached.