"The interpretation of the second paragraph was debated when it first appeared and became a major issue towards the end of the 19th century during the conflicts over what vestments and ceremonies were legal in the Church of England.
The act itself provided that:"... such ornaments of the Church and of the ministers thereof shall be retained and be in use as were in this Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth shall be retained and be in use, until other order shall be therein taken by the Queen's Majesty with the advice of her commissioners appointed and authorized under the great Seal of England for ecclesiastical causes, or of the metropolitan of this realm; ..."[1] Until June 1549 the Sarum Rite Mass (a version of the Roman Rite) was celebrated in Latin, with certain insertions in English.
[n 1] The ornaments of the ministers would have been the traditional Eucharistic vestments used in that Rite: albs, tunicles, dalmatics, copes, chasubles, maniples, mitres et cetera.
The text of the 1549 Rite is quite explicit and reads for the ministration of the Holy Communion "the Priest shall put upon him...a white Albe plain, with a vestment or Cope.
[4] If this was not the intent in 1559, the language should have been changed to explicate what vestments and ornaments were permissible, if not albs, tunicles, dalmatics, copes, chasubles, maniples, miters, et cetera which ones – gown and surplice only?
On 30 April 1559, it was "glossed" (interpreted) by Dr Sandys, successively bishop of Worcester (1559), London (1570) and York (1575),[6] to mean that "we shall not be forced to use them, but that others in the mean time shall not convey them away, but that they may remain for the Queen.
"[7] Later in 1559, the Queen issued her Injunctions, one of which required the churchwardens to deliver to "our visitors" an inventory of "vestments, copes or other ornaments, plate, books and especially of grails, couchers, legends, processions, hymnals, manuals, portuals and such like, appertaining to their church.