ʻFor the More Explanationʼ and ʻFor the More Perfectionʼ: Cranmerʼs Second Prayer Book

http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/documents/Cman_116_3_Beckwith.pdf

[Church Society] 3 Oct 2009--Three years ago we were celebrating the 450th anniversary of the First Prayer Book of King Edward VI and of his Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, which came into use on Whitsunday 1549; and this year, three years later, we are celebrating the 450th anniversary of their Second Prayer Book, which came into use on All Saintsʼ Day 1552. The 1549 Book was in many ways the greater change, for it was the first liturgy in the English language—in every respect an extraordinary achievement—but the 1552 Book was the climax of Cranmerʼs work, for it brought to clear and mature expression the biblical theology which in the 1549 Book was often only implicit. The 1552 Act of Uniformity which introduced the Second Prayer Book expresses Cranmerʼs intentions in the book: it commends the previous book as ʻa very godly order...agreeable to the word of God and the primitive Churchʼ, but says that it has now been ʻexplained and made fully perfectʼ, ʻas well for the more plain and manifest explanation...as for the more perfectionʼ.

The remarkable speed of events during Edwardʼs short reign of little more than six years might seem to show indecent haste, were it not for the remarkable sluggishness of progress during the long reign of his father Henry VIII, when, because of the hesitations of the king, little more than preparations for reform were possible. These preparations included the very important steps of introducing the Great Bible of Tyndale and Coverdale into every parish church,and making the Church of England independent of the authority of Rome; but reformed services and homilies could only be privately prepared, not publicly introduced, with the single exception of Cranmerʼs English Litany of 1544, the first edition of the one now in the Prayer Book.

Edward VI has often been described as a sickly youth and a puppet in the hands of others. He was certainly young, coming to the throne at the age of nine and dying at the age of fifteen, and his health was not robust, butrecent study, summed up in Diarmaid MacCullochʼs book Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation,1 has shown that he was far from being a mere spectator of events. Precociously well informed,and with clear convictions, he showed all the vigorous despotism of a Tudor monarch in driving forward the changes which Cranmer was planning, and which Somerset and Northumberland, the successive Lord Protectors,supported. Indeed, the King and Northumberland might have gone further,without Cranmerʼs restraining hand; but the 1552 Prayer Book is his work, not theirs; it shows the same liturgical mastery as that of 1549, and is in the same succession, completing the reforms that 1549 began. The theory of C.W. Dugmore that Cranmer was not responsible for the 1552 Book—an extremist opposed to him was—and the older theory that he was responsible for it, but only under heavy pressure from continental Reformers with whom he did not really sympathise,2 are contrary to the evidence, and are now generally abandoned.

As we shall see, it is not the case that Cranmer intended to reform the liturgy at a single stroke, and that 1549 represents his true mind and his final goal. On the contrary, being a peaceable man, with a concern for those who found change difficult, he planned his reform by stages, and 1552 represents the final stage.