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‘Prayers fit for the time’: fasting and prayer in response to national crises in the reign of Elizabeth I
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Special prayers, and masses and processions with a special intention, were well established in English tradition before the Reformation as weapons against adversity, and appear to have been increasingly encouraged under Cranmer’s influence until the Edwardian Articles and Injunctions put paid to processions and sounded a note of caution also about fasting. The English Litany, conceived as a procession in 1544, became a static observance from 1547 but in either mode was (and is) a treasury of supplications against most conceivable adversities. The successive Books of Common Prayer went further than the pre-Reformation service books in furnishing prayers for use in times of dearth and famine, war and tumult, plague and sickness and for a time obviated further special prayers and ceremonies. But scarcely were the 1559 Prayer Book and Act of Uniformity promulgated than the staple ingredients of the former and the minimum requirements of the latter for church attendance on Sundays and feast days came to be seen as inadequate to meet spiritual needs in a crisis. Church and state authorities began regularly to print and distribute special prayers to supplement the Prayer Book, tailored to each emergency: both prayers of supplication while a crisis lasted and prayers of thanksgiving when it was over.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 22: Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition , 1985 , pp. 241 - 250
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1985
References
1 Procter, F., A History of the Book of Common Prayer (Cambridge 1855) pp. 228, 239 Google Scholar. [Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer set forth in the reign of Queen Elizabeth ed W.K.] Clay (Parker Society Cambridge 1847) p. xxxiiin. Instructions for prayers and processions are widely found in bishops’ registers: see, for example, The registers of Thomas Wolsey… John Clerke… William Knyght… and Gilbert Bourne… ed Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte (Somerset Record Society vol 55 1940) nos 530, 561, 583, 609. Visitation Articles and Injunctions, ed W.H. Frere (Alcuin Club 1903) vol 2 p. 124.
2 STC under ‘Liturgies’.
3 The Seconde Tome of Hotnelyes (1563). The edition here cited is that bound in with the first volume, British Library shelf-mark C.15 a. 16.
4 An Homilie against disobedience and wylfull Rebellion (1571) separately printed, and A godly admonition for the time present, issued with the prayers after the earthquake, Clay p. 567.
5 Clay p. 501.
6 The Letter Book of John Parkhurst ed R.A. Houlbrooke (Norfolk Record Society vol 43 1975) p. 84.
7 On Puritan fasts see, most recently, [P.] Collinson, [The Religion of Protestants] (Oxford 1982) pp. 48, 167–8, 260–3. On Catholic observances see Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community 1870–1850 (1975) p. 110 Google Scholar. Collinson concedes (p. 192) that the parish church may have ‘strengthened its hold on the habits and loyalties of the Elizabethan and Jacobean generations’.
8 A Fourme to he used in Common Prayer… for the preservation of those Christians and their Countreys that are nowe invaded by the Turke… (1566) British Library shelf-mark 1026 e. 15 (3).
9 Clay p. 519.
10 Ibid p. 564.
11 Hertfordshire Record Office, papers of the archdeaconry of St Albans, ASA 5/2 no 54.
12 Clay p. 484.
13 See, for example, Cai SPD 1547–80 p. 229 and APC 1578–80 p. 450.
14 Clay pp. 472, 666.
15 Cal SPD IS47-80 pp. 276, 280.
16 Clay p. 50311 and reference there cited.
17 Ibid pp. 489, 478.
18 Ibid pp. 489–90.
19 Ibid p. 480.
20 Ibid p. 607.
21 Ibid p. 490n.
22 Ibid p. 540.
23 Ibid p. 479.
24 Foster, F.F., The Politics of Stability (1977) p. 39 Google Scholar.
25 Clay p. 594.
26 For bibliographical details of all the Forms of Prayer see the list in Clay pp. 458-474.
27 HMC Thirteenth Report, Appendix IV (1892) p. 21.
28 Hertfordshire RO, ASA 5/4 no. 181.
29 The same Hertfordshire source contains the episcopal letters asking for many other prayers in the 1580s and 1590s. See Records of the Old Archdeaconry of St Albans … 1375–1637, ed H.R. Wilton Hall (St Albans 1908) pp. 47, 50–1, 65–6, 70, 90, 112.
30 Clay p. 463n.
31 Ibid pp. 654–64, 679–88.
32 Ibid pp. 585.
33 Ibid p. 604.
34 Ibid p. 693.
35 Ibid p. 681.
36 Ibid p. 690.
37 Collinson pp. 191–2.
38 See, for example, Clay 503 and his Private Prayers (Parker Society, Cambridge 1851) which includes the Book of Christian Prayers reprinted several times during the century.