The Book of Common Prayer (1662)

Historical background

During the Civil War and Commonwealth the Prayer Book was outlawed (1645) and replaced by the Directory for Public Worship. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Savoy Conference (1661) met to reconcile the bishops with Presbyterian divines such as Richard Baxter, but it failed. Convocation then revised the book, and Parliament’s Act of Uniformity 1662 required every minister to use it and to receive episcopal ordination by St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1662.

What changed

The revision was conservative, with about six hundred small changes to the Jacobean book. Scripture readings (except the Psalms, Comfortable Words and some sentences) now followed the King James Version; the Psalter remained Coverdale’s. New services were added: Baptism for those of “Riper Years” (useful for the colonies), Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea, and services for the anniversaries of the king’s accession and other state occasions. In Communion the word “oblations” was added to the prayer for the Church, the manual acts were restored in the prayer of consecration, and the consecrated elements remaining were to be reverently consumed. The Black Rubric returned, but altered to deny a “corporal” rather than a “real and essential” presence. The Ordinal was revised to make the distinction between bishops and priests explicit.

Notable and controversial

Some two thousand ministers who would not conform were ejected in the “Great Ejection” of 1662, creating English Nonconformity as a separate body. The book remains the official standard of the Church of England (alongside the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Ordinal) and was the starting point for Prayer Books across the Anglican Communion. Its language, including the marriage and burial services, has deeply shaped English literature and speech.