There were several editions of the Book of Common Prayer during the Reformation. The first English language prayer book, replacing the ubiquitous Latin, was in 1549. This was further strengthened in a more Reformed theological direction by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1552, after advice from the continental reformers Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli. The prayer book was done away with under the Roman Catholic “Bloody Mary,” but returned under Elizabeth I with only a few changes to the 1552 volume. That Elizabethan edition was the prayer book of Shakespeare.
From then on, there were only minor changes, until Oliver Cromwell made the Book of Common Prayer illegal during the troublesome days of the Civil War and Protectorate. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a new revision was undertaken and published in 1662. This was essentially the same in its essence as Cranmer’s 1552 Reformed liturgy, but with some Restoration curlicues and idiosyncrasies. Over the century or so, from 1549 to 1662, those who pushed for further reform of the Church of England, often known as Puritans, made various complaints about the Book of Common Prayer. The Calvinist consensus in church and state that prevailed until the 1630s, however, meant they were generally content with the Calvinist nature of its underlying theology, as well as with infant baptism and the Reformed understanding of the Lord’s Supper in Cranmer’s book (for which Cranmer himself, of course, was martyred).
- 1549 – Thomas Cranmer writes/compiles irst edition ofBCP under Edward VI (Henry VIII’s son)
- 1552 – Cranmer’s second edition of BCP under Edward VI
- 1553-1558 – “Bloody Mary” bans the BCP
- 1558-1603 – Elizabeth I restores the BCP
- 1653-1658 – Oliver Cromwell declares the BCP illegal
- 1662 – After the 1660 Restoration of the Stuarts, Charles II orders a revision of the BCP
