engraving made from one of two which were found by the present writer under the floor of Over Church, near Cambridge, in 1857. It is of a late date, and has had " In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," in the place of the Angelic Salutation; but it is given as an illustration of the traditional practice, and because it is of special interest from being found in a church.

While these horn-books were thus provided for the poor, the Scriptorium of the Monastery also provided Prymers in English and Latin for those who could afford the expensive luxury of a book. The Latin Prymers are well known under the name of " Books of Hours." Vernacular Prymers exist which were written as early as the fourteenth century, and many relics of old English devotion of that date still remain. These English Prymers contained about one-third of the Psalms, the Canticles, the Apostles' Creed, with a large number of the prayers, anthems, and perhaps hymns. They continued to be published up to the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, and, in a modified form, even at a later date: and they must have familiarized those who used them with a large portion of the Services, even when they did not understand the Latin in which those Services were said by the clergy and choirs.

The style of the language in which these early English Prayer Books were written varies with the age, and the following specimens will shew how much change our native tongue has undergone in the course of the thirteen hundred years during which we can trace it.

1 A still earlier Prymer in Latin and "Anglo-Saxon" is printed at the end of HICKES' Letters, etc. It probably dates from the tenth or eleventh centuries.

2 Coverdale and Grafton the printer wrote to Cromwell on September 12, 1538, in favour of Regnault, the Parisian

printer, at whose press many of the Breviaries and Missals used in England were printed. They say that, among other books, he had printed English Prymers for forty years, that is, from the end of the fifteenth century. [State Papers, Dom. Hen. VIII. i. 589.]

To these early specimens of devotional English may be added a few taken out of a volume of considerable size, the Primer which was in common use about a hundred years before the present English Prayer Book was constructed.1

[Collect for St. Michael and all Angels.]

knowe the glorie of the endeles trinite, and in the mist of mageste to worchipe thee in oonhede :

bisechen that bi the sadness of the same feith we be GOD, that in a merueilous ordre ordeynedist seruisys

kept and defendid euermore fro alle aduersitiees. Bi crist.

of aungels and of men, graunte thou mercifulli that oure liif be defendid in erthe bi hem that stonden ny; euermore seruynge to thee in heuvene. Bi crist. The ancient formularies had, however, by change of circumstances, become unsuitable in several respects for the Church of England. They had grown into a form in which they were extremely well adapted (from a ritual point of view) for the use of religious communities, but were far too complex for that of parochial congregations. When monasteries were abolished it was found that the devotional system of the Church must be condensed if it was to be used by mixed congregations, and by those who were not specially set apart for that life of rule and continual worship for which monastic communities were intended. The Latin Services had, indeed, never been familiar to the people of England, any more than they are to the Continental laity at the present day. In the place of Service-books the laity were provided with devotional expositions of the Services; sometimes in English rhyme, like the "Lay Folk's Mass Book,"1 and sometimes in prose, like "Our Lady's Mirror." When manuscript English Bibles became common in the fourteenth century, they usually contained a list of the Epistles and Gospels, and similar lists are also found in a separate form. Such helps and guides would go far to remedy the inconvenience of a Latin Service to those who could or would use them: but probably the number of such persons was never very large.

3

There was, indeed, a popular service which was held about nine o'clock in the morning on Sundays and Festivals, consisting of the Aspersion with blessed, or holy, water, followed by the Bidding of Bedes, and a Sermon or Homily; and in this service the vernacular was used long before the disuse of Latin. The Aspersion Service, as given, with the musical notation, in a Breviary belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury, is as follows:

Glory be to the

As hyt was yn

"Remember your promys made in baptym.
And chrystys mercyfull bloudshedyng.
By the wyche most holy sprynklyng.
Off all youre syns youe haue fre perdun.
Haue mercy uppon me oo god.
Affter thy grat mercy.

Remember your promys made in baptym.
And chrystys mercyfull bloudshedyng.
By the wyche most holy sprynklyng.

Off all youre syns youe haue fre perdun.

And acordyng to the multytude of thy mercys.
Do awey my wyckydnes.

Remember your promys made in baptym.
And chrystys mercyfull bloudshedyng.

By the wyche most holy sprynklyng.

Off all youre syns youe haue fre perdun.
father, and to the sun, and to the holy goost.

the begynyng so now and euer and yn the world off worlds.
By the wyche most holy sprynklyng.

Off all youre syns youe haue fre perdun."5

1 This commentary on the Mass was published by the Early English Text Society in 1879 under the following title: "The Lay Folk's Mass Book; or, The Manner of hearing Mass, with Rubrics and Devotions for the People." It is admirably edited by the Rev. T. F. Simmons, Canon of York and Rector of Dalton Holme. The book is a medieval "Companion to the Altar," and was written in the twelfth century.

This was written about A.D. 1430, and printed in A.D. 1530. It was reprinted by the Early English Text Society in 1873, with the title, "The Myroure of oure Ladye, containing a devotional treatise on Divine Service, with a translation of the Offices used by the Sisters of the Brigittine Monastery of Sion at Isleworth, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Edited from the black-letter text of 1530, with Introduction and Notes, by John Henry Blunt," etc. It is a commentary upon the Hours, or Services for every day of the Week, and upon the Mass: the whole of the former, and the laymen's part of the latter, being translated.

In the library of St. John's College, Oxford, there is also a Processionale [MS. 167] with English rubrics, which once belonged to Sion, and was written in the middle of the fifteenth century. [Mirror, Introd. p. xliv.]

4

So be hytt.

3 The following is the title of one of these books, and a specimen of the references is annexed :

"Here begynneth a rule that tellith in whiche chapitris of the bible ye may fynde the lessouns, pistlis and gospels, that ben red in the churche aftir the vse of salisburi: markid with lettris of the a. b. c. at the begynnynge of the chapitris toward the myddil or eende: aftir the ordre as the lettris stonden in the a. b. c. first ben sett sundaies and ferials togidere: and aftir that the sanctorum, the propre and comyn togider of al the yeer: and thanne last the commemoraciouns: that is clepid the temporal of al the yere. First is written a clause of the begynnynge of the pistle and gospel, and a clause of the endynge therof.” Rom. xiii. c. d. we knowen this tyme.

"The first sonenday

of aduent.

Mattheu xxi. c.

a, whanne ihs cam
nygh.

ende. in the lord Ihs Ct.

ende. osanna in high thingis."

The

4 This Breviary, perhaps the finest which has been preserved, belonged to the Parish Church of Arlingham in Gloucestershire, then in the Diocese of Worcester, and was written in the early part of the fifteenth century. Aspersion Service was inserted at a later time, the writing being dated by experts of the highest authority as belonging to the middle of the century, from A.D. 1440 to 1460. There is a critical paper on this Aspersion by Mr., now Bishop, Kingdon, in the Wiltshire Archeological Magazine for 1879, pages 62-70, with a photograph of the words and music.

5 At a later date the Aspersion was followed by the dis

While this anthem was being sung the priest, with the aquæ-bajulus, or holy water-bearer, and the choir walked in procession down the nave of the church, the former sprinkling the congregation with the water; and it is probable that the whole of the fifty-first Psalm was sung. After this followed the Bidding Prayer in English, several Collects in Latin, and then the Sermon.

But although this English Service was evidently in very general use, it does not seem as if the idea of entirely Vernacular Services spread very widely among the clergy and people of England until after the dissolution of the monasteries. Then the gradual but slow approximation to such a system received a great impetus, and Latimer found a very hearty response in the minds of the clergy when, speaking of baptism in his sermon before the Convocation of A.D. 1536, he exclaimed, "Shall we evermore in ministering it speak Latin, and not English rather, that the people may know what is said and done?" [LATIMER'S Sermons, i. 52, ed. 1824.] The assent to this change was in fact so unanimous among the clergy that Archbishop Cranmer wrote to Queen Mary respecting the Committee appointed for the revision of the Services by Henry VIII., that although it was composed of men who held different opinions, they "agreed without controversy (not one saying contrary) that the Service of the Church ought to be in the mother tongue." [JENKYNS' Cranmer's Rem. i. 375.] Ridley also writes to his chaplain that he had conferred with many on the subject, and "never found man (so far as I do remember), neither old nor new, gospeller nor papist, of what judgment soever he was, in this thing to be of a contrary opinion." [RIDLEY'S Works, p. 340.]

With this general inclination of the national mind towards the use of the national language alone in Divine Service there arose also that necessity for condensed services which has previously been referred to. There are no means of deciding how far the original Use of Salisbury differed from that which is known to us. The copies remaining belong to a much later period than the eleventh century, and there is reason to think that some accretions gathered around the ancient devotions of the Church of England from the prevalence of Continental influences during the reigns of the Norman and Angevin kings, and from the great increase of monastic establishments: the shorter and more primitive form of responsive public service being found insufficient, especially for those who formed themselves into societies for the purpose of carrying on an unceasing round of prayer and praise in the numerous Minsters which then covered the face of our land. But now that the "religious" of the Church were to be a separate body no longer, Divine Providence led her to feel the way gradually towards a return to the earlier practice of Christianity; the idea of a popular and mixed congregation superseded that of a special monastic one; and the daily worship being transferred from the Cloister to the Parish Church, its normal form of Common Prayer was revived in the place of the Prayers of a class or the solitary recitation of the Parish Priest. No blame was cast upon the former system for its complexity; but the times were changed, a new order of things was becoming established, and, although the principles of the Church are unchangeable, so entire a remoulding of society entailed of necessity a corresponding adaptation of her devotional practice, both for the honour of God and the good of souls, to the wants that had come to light.

Some slight attempts were made at a reformation of the Sarum Offices in editions of the Breviary which were printed in 1516 and 1531, and a Missal of 1509 is even described as "amended." There was little variation, indeed, from the old forms; but there was a distinct initiation of the principles which were afterwards carried out more fully in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549. The rubrics were somewhat simplified; Holy Scripture was directed to be read in order without omission; and in carrying out the latter direction the Lessons, which had been much shortened in actual use [see note to Table of Lessons], were restored to their ancient length.

tribution of the eulogia or blessed bread. The two are explained in the ninth of the Ten Articles of A.D. 1536 in the following words: "As concerning the rites and ceremonies of Christ's Church; as sprinkling of holy water to put us in remembrance of our Baptism, and the blood of Christ sprinkled for our redemption upon the cross; giving of holy bread, to put us in remembrance of the Sacrament of the altar, that all Christian men be one body mystical of Christ as the bread is made of many grains, and yet but one loaf: and to put us in remembrance of the receiving the holy sacrament and body of Christ, the which we ought to receive in right charity: which in the beginning of Christ's Church, men did more often receive than they use nowadays to do.' LLOYD'S Formul, of Faith, p. 15.] The fourth of some injunctions issued by the King's Visitors in A.D. 1548, also

orders both rites to be used every Sunday, with the words given above. "And in like manner before the dealing of the holy bread these words:

'Of Christ's body this is a token,

Which on the cross for our sins was broken;
Wherefore of his death if you will be partakers,
of vice and sin you must be forsakers.'

And the clerk in the like manner shall bring down the Pax,
and standing without the church door shall say boldly to the
people these words: This is a token of joyful peace, which
is betwixt God and men's conscience: Christ alone is the
Peacemaker, Which straitly commands peace between
brother and brother.' And so long as ye use these ceremonies,
so long shall ye use these significations." [BURNET's Reform.
v. 186, Pocock's ed.]

In 1531 this revised edition of the Salisbury Portiforium or Breviary was reprinted, and two years later a revised Missal was published; in the latter special care being taken to provide an apparatus for enabling the people to find out the places of the Epistles and Gospels. And though no authorized translation of the Bible had yet been allowed by Henry VIII., Cranmer and the other Bishops began to revise Tyndale's translation in 1534, and encouraged the issue of books containing the Epistles and Gospels in English, of which many editions were published between 1538 and the printing of the Prayer Book.1 A fresh impulse seems thus to have been given to the use of the old English Prymers, in which a large portion of the Services (including the Litany) was translated into the vulgar tongue, and also a third of the Psalms, and to which in later times the Epistles and Gospels were added.

In 1540 the Psalter was printed by Grafton in Latin and English [Bodleian Lib., Douce BB. 71], and there seems to have been an earlier edition of a larger size about the year 1534. The Psalter had long been rearranged, so that the Psalms were said in consecutive order, in some churches at least, according to our modern practice, instead of in the ancient but complex order of the Breviary. [See Introd. to Psalter.]

In 1541 and 1544 other amended editions of the Salisbury Breviary were published in the titlepages of which it is said to be purged from many errors. By order of Convocation [March 3, 1541] the Salisbury Use was now also adopted throughout the whole Province of Canterbury, and an uniformity secured which had not existed since the days of Augustine. Nor is it an insignificant circumstance that the book was now printed by Whitchurch (from whose press issued the Book of Common Prayer), instead of being printed in Paris as formerly.

That these revisions of the ancient Service-books were steps towards a Reformed English Breviary or Portiforium is confirmed by the course of events. Something in the nature of a confirmation is also afforded by a comparison of these attempts with others of a similar kind which were made abroad towards obtaining a Reformed Roman Breviary. Some years after the Convocation of the Church of England had issued the 1516 edition of the Salisbury Use, Leo X. gave directions to Zaccharia Ferreri de Vicence, Bishop of Guarda, in Portugal, to prepare a new version of the Breviary Hymns. This was done, and the volume published under the authority of Clement VII. in 1525, with this prominent announcement of a Reformed Breviary on the title-page: "Breviarium Ecclesiasticum ab eodem Zach. Pont. longe brevius et facilius redditum et ab omni errore purgatum propediem exibit.” The promised reform was actually effected by Cardinal Quignonez, a Spanish Bishop, and was published under the same authority as the Hymnal, in 1535-36. But this Reformed Roman Breviary was intended chiefly, if not entirely, for the use of the clergy and monks in their private recitations; and its introduction in some places for choir and public use eventually led to its suppression in 1568. No provision whatever was made (as there had been in connection with the English reform) for adapting it to the use of the laity. During the whole forty years of its use there is no trace of any attempt to connect the Breviary of Quignonez with vernacular translations of Prayers or Scriptures. And, although it was undoubtedly an initiatory step in the same direction as that taken by our own Reformers (who indeed used the Breviary of Quignonez in their subsequent proceedings), yet it was never followed up, nor intended to be followed up; and the object of the Roman reform throws out in stronger light that of the English.2

A very decided advance towards the Prayer Book system had been made in 1536, when in the Province of York, and almost certainly in that of Canterbury also, an Archiepiscopal order was issued that "all curates and heads of congregations, religious and other, privileged and other, shall every holy-day read the Gospel and the Epistle of that day out of the English Bible, plainly and distinctly; and they that have such grace shall make some declaration either of the one or of both (if

1 See the List of Printed Service-Books according to the ancient Uses of the English Church, compiled by Mr. F. H. Dickinson, and reprinted from the Ecclesiologist of Feb. 1850. 2 The Reformed Breviary of Cardinal Quignonez was begun under Clement VII.—“ejusque hortatu et jussu "--who excommunicated Henry VIII. It was afterwards approved and recommended to the clergy by Paul III. in a Bull dated in a Paris edition of 1536 as issued on February 3, 1535, but in an Antwerp black-letter edition in the Bodleian Library as issued on July 3, 1536. It appears to have gone through at least seventeen editions, being printed at Paris, Lyons, Antwerp, and Rome, in folio, quarto, octavo, and duodecimo. The

latest edition was printed in 1566, and the Breviary was suppressed in 1568. The title-pages vary, and so do the prefaces, and if there are not two recensions of the Breviary, there certainly are two of the preface to it; which, as is shewn further on, was largely used by the writer of the Preface to the Prayer Book of 1549.

For a full account of Quignonez's Breviary, see CLAUDE JOLY'S De verbis Usuardi Dissertatio, Senonis, 1669, pp. 93-103; ZACCAR. Bibl. Rit. i. 110, 113, 114; CLAUDII ESPENCAI Opp., Paris, 1619, Digress. I. xi. 156; CIACONII Vit. Pontif. Roman. III. 498, Rome, 1677; GUÉRANGER'S Instit. Liturg. i. 376, 383, and note B; Christ. Rememb. lxx. 299.