Book of Common Prayer

Book of Common Prayer. By a proclamation of 23 September 1548, Edward VI set up a commission of twelve bishops and clergy to oversee the preparation of ‘one uniform order [of service] throughout the kingdom’. This ‘Windsor Commission’ (so-called from its meeting-place) seems to have refined and emended a draft prayer book prepared by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, for the bench of bishops approved its work only a month later. The Act of Uniformity (March 1549) ordered the exclusive use of the new Book of Common Prayer from Whitsunday (9 June) that year. The Prayer Book contained morning and evening offices, and forms for the administration of the sacraments (e.g. baptism and the eucharist) as well as the psalter. It was a response to the desire of Cranmer and other reformers for a single, convenient provision for the public worship of the church in the vernacular. It drew heavily upon the work of the continental reformers as well as upon existing Latin service books.

After 1549, reformed ideas, particularly from Germany and Switzerland, rapidly gained ground among English scholars, and these were reflected in the Second Prayer Book, issued in 1552. This book was probably little used, as the accession of Mary I saw a temporary return to the older Latin services.

In 1559 a modified 1552 Prayer Book came into use under Elizabeth I, and this in its turn formed the basis of the 1662 book, which remained the norm of Anglican worship until the 20th cent. Attempts to revise the Prayer Book in 1928 were frustrated by Parliament, but since 1980 there has been an authorized Alternative Service Book in England.

Revd Dr John R. Guy