nd passed by

ember 5th, the lection of the agreed upon House, but to One of these according to of the King's adjoined and that statutes ecclesiastical and assent." still awaiting forward, in a a document cated that he under both

of fifty-eight

on the principle involved. If this had been the case, or even the absence of such an objection, it is probable that t promoters of the bill may have thought it desirable to obta from Convocation some declaration which might further t progress of their measure. It would appear that the docume to which the clergy were asked to assent was not the form whi was afterwards issued as the Order of the Communion, but son thing of the nature of an "ordinance"; and its charac perhaps, rather than its contents, may have been the cau of the method employed for the declaration of assent December 2nd. For on December 9th, in urging the Bisho to take steps for the fulfilment of two of the petitions present on November 22nd, the Lower House pointed out that und the Act of the Submission of the Clergy they were unable, wi out licence from the King, which they had not received, to ena any canons or ordinances, and desired that such licence mig be obtained.1 It is likely that the Lower House, having th position thus in view, would avoid the adoption, by their us methods, of any form of "ordinance," regarding such a course one which might involve them “in pain of peril promised,” a would rather indicate their assent in some less regular a formal manner which could not be described as enactment."2

It is clear that Convocation did not move in the matter all till after the bill "for the receiving of the Sacrament s utraque specie" had made its appearance in Parliament. A whatever the document proposed to the Lower House may ha been, the assent given to it on December 2nd had not, and w understood by the House not to have, any legislative effect.

1 The terms of the address may be seen in Dixon's History of the Church England, vol. ii, p. 473, where they are cited from the Stillingfleet MS. 1108.

2 Abbot Gasquet and Mr. Edmund Bishop, whose account of the proceedings Convocation is here followed with regard to the sequence of events, seem inclined think that the method adopted was chosen as an easier means of obtaining asse when an attempt to obtain subscriptions by surprise on November 30th had fail That is quite possible; but the circumstances seem to account for the method, ap from any idea of manipulation. See, however, Edward VI. and the Book Common Prayer, ed. 1890, pp, 74-77.

the proceedings of the Upper House there is no record. Nothing suggests that the Bishops were asked to express any opinion or the matter of communion in both kinds, save in the House of Lords. It is true that Strype refers to this Convocation certain sets of questions touching the Mass, to the first of which answers seem to have been desired from seventeen Bishops. The second set of questions are answered only by three. The third set which Strype describes as a reply by Cranmer to the answers of the three Bishops, has no answers appended. It is only in this third set that any mention is made of the question of communion in both kinds, and it is there referred to as a point already determined. The third set of questions may not have been drawn up for some time after the first set was framed. There must, indeed, have been some interval between the two, to allow of the preparation of the answers to the first set, the propounding of the second set, and the making of the answers which elicited the third. But the absence of any reference to the subject in the first series of questions seems clearly to point to its having been drawn up at a time when the views of the Bishops on the matter of communion in both kinds had already been ascertained. The purpose of the questions was apparently to obtain a declaration of their opinion on certain other matters which had not yet been brought into prominence, but which emerged when the Act for communion in both kinds had been passed, and

1 Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, Book ii, ch. 4. The first and second sets or questions, with the answers in full, may be seen in Burnet's History of the Reformation (Collections, Part II, Book i, No. 25): he does not print the third set of questions, which may be found in Cranmer's Remains (Parker Society, 1846). The fact that Bishops of the northern Province (Holgate of York, Aldrich of Carlisle, and Tunstall of Durham) are among the respondents to the first set of questions, suggests that they have no special relation to the Convocation of Canterbury. The seventeen respondents include all the Bishops who were present in Parliament on November 26th, 1547, with two exceptions (Chambers of Peterborough and Bird of Chester); they include all who were present on December 10th, with the addition of Holgate of York and Sampson of Coventry and Lichfield. The six Bishops who answer jointly are the five dissentients of December 10th with the addition of Parfew of St. Asaph. The second series of questions seems to have been addressed only to Skip, Day, and Heath, for purposes of annoyance.

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skip, Day, and

when it became necessary to consider what directions should given for carrying out its provisions, and expedient to cons how far it might be safe to make those directions a mean further change.

It would have been possible in this way to require 1 the opportunity of receiving should be given at every n to others besides the priest; and to this point some of questions seem to be directed. Others, if taken toget seem to contemplate the possibility not only of substitu English for Latin throughout the whole service of the M but of making, by means of the introduction of a vernac service, such changes in the rite and ceremonial as mi bring the Mass into conformity with an ideal conception its nature as it was "by Christ's institution." But the ansv of the Bishops must have been felt to be on the whole adv to these changes. On the question whether the custom which the priest alone received the Sacrament should conti only two, Cranmer and Ridley, express, without qualificat the view that a return should be made to the custom of primitive Church. The other Bishops who answer, while t agree that it is desirable that others should communicate the priest, agree also in the opinion that the priest should no hindered from celebrating and communicating by the lac devotion on the part of the lay people,' to which, in reply another question, most of them had rightly attributed origin of the prevailing custom. On the question, "whet in the Mass, it were convenient to use such speech as people may understand," two only, Holgate and Holbeach, unreservedly in favour of the use of English throughout Mass: Goodrich is in favour of it, but is open to argume Aldrich is prepared to submit himself to his "superiors

1 Holbeach, who generally agrees in his replies with Cranmer and Ridley, n a qualification of this sort, though in less distinct terms than Tunstall, Good Bush, and the six who answer together.

2 "Haec iam mea est opinio, sed sic ut auditis melioribus cedam."

betters," wishing for that which may be "most to the quie edification of Christian people"; but he evidently doubts as to the expediency of the change. Bush thinks that a difference from "all other regions" is to be avoided; "therefore, if it may stand with the King's Majesty's pleasure, I think it not good to be said all in English." Cranmer thinks that English should be used "except in certain mysteries, whereof I doubt": Ridley, that the Mass should be in English, and be said audibly, but that the part which relates to the Consecration might be "spoken in silence." The six who answer together reply, "To have the whole Mass in English, I think it neither expedient, neither convenient." Tunstall's view is that Latin, as the common tongue of Western Christendom, should be used in the mysteries of the Mass, "being the common prayer of the whole Church," but that "certain prayers might be in the mother tongue, for the instruction and stirring of the devotion of the people."

The weight of opinion was thus clearly against the introduction of a vernacular service; and the answers to the question, "Wherein consisteth the Mass by Christ's institution,” were not such as to encourage any attempt to construct a purely Scriptural service. If such an attempt had been contemplated, it was now abandoned; and the plan adopted was that suggested by Tunstall, to which it was apparent that none of the respondents were likely to object, unless on the ground that it was but a single step in the direction which some of them desired to take1: it was probable that objectors of this sort might be reassured if suggestions were made to them that further changes would be made in the future. The result of this policy is to be seen in the Order of the Communion.

The rubrics of the Order imply that the parish priest will "minister the Communion not at every mass, but from time to time, upon cccasions of which he is to give notice to his

1 The objections made to the use of English by Bush and the six who answer together are against its adoption for the whole service.

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parishioners. For this purpose a form of exhortation, urgin them to due preparation, is provided for his use: he is no however, restricted to this particular form. On the da appointed no change is to be made in any rite or ceremon of the Mass, save that the communion of the people is t follow immediately after the communion of the priest, an that certain English forms are to be used in connexio therewith. These consist of exhortations, setting forth th necessary qualifications for worthy receiving, and the per of receiving unworthily, an invitation to make confession t God and the Church, a form of confession, followed by a absolution and by certain "comfortable words" of Scriptur a prayer before reception, to be said by the priest in the nam of the communicants, the forms of administration, and benediction of the communicants after reception.

These English forms supply a need which parish priest had formerly had to meet as best they could: the need namely, of assisting the devotions of their people befor communion. That some analogous forms were at leas occasionally employed when communion was about to b administered appears from a specimen preserved in th Harleian MS. 2383, and printed by Maskell. This consist of an English exhortation, warning those intending to com municate not to go to "God's board" without faith, con trition and charity, and a form of confession in English to b repeated by them after the priest, followed by an absolutio in Latin and English. Nor was the interpolation of a confessio and absolution before communion unknown in those cases i which lay persons were communicated in the course of th Mass. Thus in the "Little Device" for the coronation Henry VII., it is directed that after the communion of th celebrant the King and Queen "shall say their Confiteor, a the prelates answering, Misereatur, and the Cardinall sayin

1 Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, vol. iii, p. 408 (ed. 1882). TH script of the MS. seems to be of a date somewht later than 1500.