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Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England
This book explores the culture of conformity to the Church of England and its liturgy in the period after the Reformation and before the outbreak of the Civil War. It provides a necessary corrective to our view of religion in that period through a serious exploration of the laypeople who conformed, out of conviction, to the Book of Common Prayer. These "prayer book Protestants" formed a significant part of the spectrum of society in Tudor and Stuart England, yet until now they have remained an almost completely uninvestigated group.
- GenresHistory
332 pages, Paperback
First published July 23, 1998
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February 4, 2015
This is one book which will definitely benefit from more than one reading. Canon Maltby hooks her reader in chapter by chapter & as such I found that I paced myself one chapter at a time, allowing a few days free between reads to think about what I’d just read; and pondering on how easy it is to feel utterly exasperated by the present day Church of England, yet knowing realistically that human nature doesn’t change, even over centuries, and there never has been a time of widespread accord in the Church; the political nature of man(kind) sees firmly to that!
Therein lies the compelling fascination of this book: the day to day evidence found in the historic parish records. Our ancestors really weren’t that different from us: the laity conformed whilst the clergy rebelled. I can certainly think of hothead English clergy today who (sadly) would choose to side with Mr Jones, curate at Tarporley (Cheshire) who was reported as saying (around 1641) that the Book of Common Prayer was “composed by the imps in hell”!(p.151). I wonder if the present vicar of Whaplode spends the afternoon of Palm Sunday drinking ale (as his forebear did in 1638) instead of teaching and testing knowledge of the faith of the young?
Canon Maltby also periodically succeeds in injecting wry punning into her (serious) text: “The second Edwardian Prayer Book (1552) considerably reduced the ceremonies associated with baptism. One unsinkable survivor, however, was making the sign of the cross on the forehead of the baptised person …”
It has to be said that this is a specialised book for a specialised market. If you’re in that market, then you are in for a real treat here. However, I cannot but feel that there is the potential for the screenplay of a superb film here.
Therein lies the compelling fascination of this book: the day to day evidence found in the historic parish records. Our ancestors really weren’t that different from us: the laity conformed whilst the clergy rebelled. I can certainly think of hothead English clergy today who (sadly) would choose to side with Mr Jones, curate at Tarporley (Cheshire) who was reported as saying (around 1641) that the Book of Common Prayer was “composed by the imps in hell”!(p.151). I wonder if the present vicar of Whaplode spends the afternoon of Palm Sunday drinking ale (as his forebear did in 1638) instead of teaching and testing knowledge of the faith of the young?
Canon Maltby also periodically succeeds in injecting wry punning into her (serious) text: “The second Edwardian Prayer Book (1552) considerably reduced the ceremonies associated with baptism. One unsinkable survivor, however, was making the sign of the cross on the forehead of the baptised person …”
It has to be said that this is a specialised book for a specialised market. If you’re in that market, then you are in for a real treat here. However, I cannot but feel that there is the potential for the screenplay of a superb film here.
Displaying 1 of 1 review