The 1662 Book of Common Prayer: An Unlikely Revolutionary?

Article by James Mawdesley. Edited by Amy Calladine and Tom Hercock. Additional Research by Robyn Hall.

When one thinks of the ‘revolutionary’ texts that were published in seventeenth century England, one is likely to think of tracts written by the likes of John Milton and Gerrard Winstanley. An officially sanctioned church liturgy is unlikely to feature in such a list. However, I think that the amended version of The Book of Common Prayer published in 1662 is 'revolutionary’, not so much for what it stood for (a state-sponsored liturgy was hardly a new phenomenon in England), but for how it acknowledged the changes in English, and indeed, Atlantic society, which had occurred since the last substantially amended version of the Prayer Book had been issued under Elizabeth I in 1559.

The immediate context for amending and re-working the Prayer Book in the early 1660s was the effective collapse of the Church of England as a coherent, working framework during the first half of the 1640s, culminating in the suppression of The Book of Common Prayer and the abolition of episcopacy (i.e. church government by bishops) in 1645 and 1646 respectively, and the attempt to replace them with a Presbyterian liturgy and church structure (whereby the church was governed by a combination of clerics and suitable laymen, without bishops). These attempts had varying degrees of success throughout the country, and it can be argued that the failure to successfully impose a national religious framework contributed to the rise of religious sects such as the Quaker movement during the 1650s, as people sought forms of worship which bypassed a religious structure which, in their locality, may well have been ineffective.

As Lord Protector between December 1653 and his death in September 1658, Oliver Cromwell had attempted to uphold a Presbyterian national church whilst tolerating those worshipping peaceably and in a broadly Protestant fashion outside of it (though the lack of a sustained persecution of Catholics is also a notable feature of the 1650s). However, the restoration of Charles II in 1660 spelt the end for this situation, for, at least at this early stage of his reign, he shared his father’s view that conformity to a restored Church of England was integral to his rule. 

Charles’ new bishops were faced with the conundrum of how to make this ideal a reality. In 1559, the relative compliance of the majority of the population to the religious changes of her father, half-brother and half-sister made Elizabeth’s ideal of religious uniformity a distinct possibility, given time and an adequate enforcement of the legislation. However, in the early 1660s, the bishops were faced with a problem that a sizeable minority of the population had joined the various religious sects which had developed during the previous two decades, some of which had no rite of baptism comparable to an episcopal or Presbyterian rite. The problem was how to re-integrate such sectaries into a uniform national church.

The solution was a novel one, as the new bishop of St. Asaph, George Griffith, set about writing a rite for adult baptism. The 1559 Prayer Book had included no such rite, as then there was no conception of worship separate from the established church. Any adults that would be baptised in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries would have used the infant baptism rite, with the (in the circumstances, perhaps inappropriate) Gospel reading being St. Mark’s famous account of Christ overruling his disciples’ attempt to prevent the children from visiting him. Griffith’s rite used St. John’s description of Christ telling Nicodemus ‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God’. After the Gospel, the minister was then expected to read an exhortation, which included St. Peter’s plea to ‘Save yourselves from this untoward generation’.

The implications of the new rite were clear enough. Sectaries now had a valuable chance by which they could save their souls by submitting to baptism within the Church of England, which would provide them with a spiritual renewal following whatever erroneous religious activities they may have participated in previously. In effect, they were repenting, and thus saving themselves from their ‘untoward generation’. But, in including this rite, the Church of England did something truly new. For the first time in its liturgical history, the Church acknowledged that there was adult life beyond its parameters, and that provision needed to be made for such people to enter the Church.

In post-Interregnum England, with its religious plurality, this may seem a logical decision. However, one native of Sheffield had a grander vision. In his ‘Preface’ to the new Prayer Book, the bishop of Lincoln, Robert Sanderson, acknowledged that the rite of adult baptism had become necessary ‘by the growth of Anabaptism [a specific sect distinguished by their adherence to adult baptism, though Sanderson may have been using this term to refer to religious sects more generally], through the licentiousness of the late times crept in amongst us’. However, he then went on to argue that the rite ‘may be always useful for the baptizing of Natives in our Plantations, and others converted to the Faith’. When Elizabeth I succeeded her half-sister Mary as queen in 1558, England had recently lost Calais, its last possession outside of the British Isles (apart from the Scilly and Channel Isles). By 1662, however, England and Scotland were united under one monarch, new attempts had been made to ‘plant’ new English (and Scottish) settlements in Ireland, colonies had been established on the eastern coast of America (ironically, often by colonisers unsympathetic to either the Prayer Book or episcopacy), and in as recently as 1655, an expedition under William Penn and Robert Venables had claimed Jamaica for the Republic.

Robert Sanderson may have hoped that the Church of England would one day be exported throughout the world. But, in my opinion, the real significance of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is its implicit acknowledgement that the Church of England could no longer assume that everyone in England was a member. Sanderson and his fellow bishops may have had an ideal that in the future, the Church would once again dominate religiosity in England, and expand beyond. For the time being, however, they had to deal with reality, as on 24th August 1662, the day that the new Act of Uniformity enforcing use of the revised Prayer Book was enacted, just over 10% of the parish clergy were either ejected from their livings, or resigned in protest at the new religious regime.

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Robert Sanderson was an English theologian and casuist who later became the Bishop of Lincoln.

The Prayer Book is still used by the Church of England today. It seeks to outline: ‘the particular Forms of Divine worship, and the Rites and Ceremonies appointed to be used therein’.

The first official liturgical text in English appeared in 1544 and the first complete Book of Common Prayer in 1549. It went through several revisions until 1662 since when it has remained unchanged.

The book is commonly attributed to Thomas Cranmer, a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury. It is likely that he gathered his resources and ideas from many sources, especially writings from Germany.

The book was essential for consolidating the new church and making it clearly distinguishable from the old.

The services within it that are still used are The Morning and Evening Prayer, The Litany and Holy Communion.

Today it is used in 50 countries and has been published in 150 languages.

The 1662 prayer book was introduced only two years after the restoration of the monarchy in an attempt to unite the people through religion.

Many ministers refused to accept the new book when it was first produced and as many as 1,760 were denied their livings.

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