The basic facts about the history of the Sarum breviary are worth recalling at the start. Medieval breviaries began as compilations from other sources, conveniently bringing together the necessary rubrics and texts for the celebration of the daily Office, or liturgy of the hours, throughout the year; sometimes they included the music for the services as well. These services consisted largely of psalms, but their other readings, prayers, and sung texts changed day by day according to the calendar, and the details had not yet been standardized into anything like a common rite for the western church in general, as they would be after the Council of Trent.

Instead, there were two large categories of medieval breviaries: monastic ones, elaborated in many different ways by Benedictine houses and simplified considerably by Cistercians and Carthusians, and secular ones, used by all the friars, canons, and secular clergy, from bishops down to men in minor orders. Within the category of secular breviaries, there were a few international varieties, like the official breviaries used throughout Europe and beyond by the Dominicans and the Franciscans, and a large number of regional or local varieties – among them, the breviary of Salisbury, or Sarum.

Although late medieval England had several other secular rites or uses, besides many monastic ones, the importance of the Sarum liturgy is suggested by the bare geographical facts. Hereford Use was approximately coextensive with the diocese of Hereford. The Use of York spread further, but not to the extent of dominating the whole northern province of the English Church; even in the diocese of York itself, some churches followed Sarum instead. Lincoln and London St Paul’s may once have had their own local Uses, but little remains to show how they differed from the dominant Sarum model. If there was ever a distinct Use of Bangor, as Cranmer suggested in his preface to the first Book of Common Prayer, it must have been limited to certain parts of Wales. Everywhere else in Wales, England, Scotland, and even much of Ireland, the Use of Sarum evidently prevailed well before the end of the Middle Ages, having displaced all the other secular rites that might have been its rivals.