The First Prayer Book of Edward VI (1549)

Historical background

Under Henry VIII the English Church broke with Rome, but public worship remained in Latin according to the medieval service books, chiefly the Sarum Use. Cranmer had already produced an English Litany (1544), and after Henry’s death in 1547 the government of the young Edward VI pressed reform further. An English Order of the Communion (1548) was inserted into the Latin Mass, and in 1549 Parliament’s first Act of Uniformity required a complete English Prayer Book from Whitsunday (9 June) of that year.

What changed

The book replaced the Breviary, Missal, Manual and Pontifical with one volume in the vernacular. The eight monastic hours were condensed into Matins and Evensong, with the Psalter read through monthly and the Bible read through in course. The Communion (“The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse”) kept much of the shape and some vestments of the old rite, but removed sacrificial language about the offering of Christ, and provided for the people to receive communion. An ordinal followed in 1550.

Notable and controversial

The book was a deliberate compromise. Conservatives disliked the loss of Latin and of traditional ceremony; the introduction of the book helped provoke the Prayer Book Rebellion in Devon and Cornwall in 1549, where rebels complained that the English service was “like a Christmas game.” Reformers, on the other hand, found it ambiguous: Bishop Stephen Gardiner argued that it could be read as teaching the real presence in the traditional sense, which encouraged Cranmer and others to push for a more clearly Reformed revision. The 1549 book has remained influential, however, as a model for later “catholic” revisions, notably the Scottish and American Communion rites.