'PURITAN PRAYER BOOKS' AND 'GENEVA BIBLES': AN EPISODE IN ELIZABETHAN PUBLISHING

Cambridge Bibliographical Society

'PURITAN PRAYER BOOKS' AND 'GENEVA BIBLES': AN EPISODE IN ELIZABETHAN PUBLISHINGAuthor(s): Ian GreenSource: Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1998), pp. 313-349Published by: Cambridge Bibliographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41154874 .

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'PURITAN PRAYER BOOKS' AND 'GENEVA BIBLES': AN EPISODE IN ELIZABETHAN PUBLISHING

Ian Green

Ttie origins of the theory of a 'Puritan Prayer Book*

It has long been known that copies of an abbreviated version of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer were bound into the prefatory material of a number of late Elizabethan and Jacobean copies of the Geneva Bible, and it is usually accepted that the changes in this abridgement were the work of puritans who had no qualms about omitting those portions of the official liturgy they found distasteful. One scholar has called the alterations a 'bold, though silent, attempt' to change the official liturgy; another quite simply a 'Puritan Prayer Book'.1 If this was the case, there is a surprising dearth of strictly contemporary comment about this development: the first allusions we can find date from the 1650s and 1660s, and do not suggest close acquaintance with the pre- cise nature of the changes.2 It would be another two centuries before the full extent of these alterations was uncovered.

For his annotated edition of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer for the Parker Society, published in 1847, William Clay compared it line by line with a number of later Elizabethan copies, including one that was bound into the preface of the large folio edition of the Geneva Bible published in 1578. This last was an evidently much changed version of the Book of Common Prayer: three whole services had been omitted as had several rubrics in other services; Geneva texts had been substituted for Great Bible ones in one section; and a number of apparently offensive words had been replaced by acceptable alternatives. Clay concluded that this must have been the work of

1 Thomas Lathbury, A history of the Book of Common Prayer (1853), 69; A. E. Peaston, Vie Prayer Book tradition in the Free Churches (1964), 22-3, 33-4. All works cited were published in London, unless otherwise stated. 2 H. L'Estrange, Tiie alliance of divine offices (1659), 75 thought the version produced by the 'reformers' dated from the reign of James I; P. Heylyn, Aerius redivivus (1672), 245, heard from a third party that the 1578 edition had been 'falsified' and 'corrupted' but had apparently not seen a copy himself.

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puritans wanting a modified version of the Prayer Book to use alongside the text of the Geneva Bible during church services. He also noted 'several* different versions of this puritan Prayer Book in the decades after 1578, but offered no explanation for them.3

Earlier this century, in their New History of the Book of Common

Prayer, F. Proctor and W. H. Frere suggested that the usual direction of these later versions was back towards the 1559 original rather than in a more radical direction, which led them to believe that the authors of the later variants were not prepared to be as bold as the revisers of 1578, or could not agree on a uniform form of service to replace that of 1559.4 But in 1949 a dissenting voice was heard. In the catalogue of an exhibition of prayer books at Wigan Public Library, J. F. Gerrard

suggested, first, that the versions of the modified Book of Common

Prayer bound into some Geneva bibles might owe less to tampering by puritans than to publishers' concern to provide a simplified prayer book and thus save themselves paper and their customers money; and, secondly, that at least some of the alterations might have been due to careless compositing and a failure to pick up these errors in later editions.5

In 1964, however, Gerrard's views were assailed, with more vig- our than insight, by A. E. Peaston, who claimed to have found at least three different versions of what he was totally convinced was a 'Puritan Prayer Book', a work of 'audacity' whose 'clever and specious likeness' to the authorized liturgy and occasional 'somewhat equivocal' devices 'made detection' by the authorities so difficult that it eluded the gaze of the episcopal authorities and those publishers with a mo-

nopoly of printing the Book of Common Prayer. Firstly, there was

3 Liturgical Services... set forth iti the reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. W. K. Clay (Parker Soci-

ety, Cambridge, 1847), xv-xviii. Clay was followed closely by his co-worker, Lath-

bury, in History of the Book of Common Prayer, 61-2. 4 Proctor and Frere, A new history of the Book of Common Prayer (1902), 133-4. s J. F. Gerrard, Notable editions of the Prayer Book (Wigan, 1949), 13-15; he cited the

case of a persistent error in many psalters from 1561 to 1660: 'the righteous [recte the

unrighteous] shall be punished' (Psalm 37, verse 29) which occurred even in the 1578

Genevan folio already mentioned: J[ohn] R[ylands] U(niversity) L[ibraryJ, R14779,

sig. Ppiiv. (A note inside the cover of this volume equates this error with the 'wicked

bible» - a confusion with a 1631 octavo edition of the Authorized Version: Historical

catalogue of printed editions of the English Bible 1525-1961, ed. T. H. Darlow and H. F.

Moule, revised by A. S. Herbert (1968); hereafter referred to as DMH, 162.)

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the original shortened form in the Geneva 1578 folio identified by Clay, which Peaston found had been copied in the prefatory material of a 1579 Geneva quarto. Secondly, there was a different shortened version in another Geneva quarto published in 1579, and this he argued had been copied a dozen times in other Geneva bibles published between 1580 and 1597. Thirdly, there was a version dating, he thought, from c.1592 and found again in 1607 and c.1613, and a vari- ant of this dating from 1603 and found in eight other copies from 1606 to 1616. Like Proctor and Frere, he conceded that in successive recensions the puritan editors had drawn back closer to the original Elizabethan Prayer Book of 1559, but this, he argued, simply showed the lengths to which puritans were prepared to go to keep their version of the Prayer Book in print and in harness with the Geneva Bible.*

It is not always possible to trace or identify the different versions of the Prayer Book bound into Elizabethan and Jacobean bibles. Ac- cording to a note by Francis Fry, the Victorian bibliographer, inside the cover of the copy of the 1578 Geneva folio now in the John Ry- lands University Library, the 'Common-Prayer is often taken out of the Bible by collectors' of the Prayer Book, so examples are rare; and in many other cases some of the preliminary leaves containing the abridged Prayer Book have been badly damaged or even lost where the front cover of the binding has become detached.7 On the other hand the availability today on microfilm of a number of editions of the Geneva Bible apparently not seen by Peaston, including many in American libraries, and the great advance in bibliography represented by the revision of the pre-1640 Short-Title Catalogue, facilitate a reas- sessment of the matter, and especially the ten editions from 1578 to 1585 which are the only Geneva bibles listed in the revised STC as having a version of the Book of Common Prayer regularly bound into them.

6 Peaston, Prayer Book tradition, 23-31, 33-4; and see below, pp. 323-6. Shortly afterwards, Patrick Collinson showed that he was aware of the charge that there existed a 'Puritan Prayer Book* which was 'a travesty of the legally established one*, but wisely distanced himself from some of Peaston 's conclusions: Tiie Elizabethan Puritan movement (1967), 163,365. 7JRUL, R 14779; for specific examples of damaged copies, see below, nn. 25, 32.

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For this article the relevant prefatory material - on average just over fifty pages - of at least two and sometimes three copies of most of these ten editions has been examined, together with the prefaces of over forty copies of earlier and later editions of the Geneva Bible, the

great majority of them in the Bible Society's collection of scriptures, now housed within the Cambridge University Library.8 To set these in context, I have also examined a number of contemporary psalters and primers with Prayer Book material in them, and the prefatory material - usually over sixty pages - of copies of all fourteen editions of the Great and Bishops' Bibles with which shortened versions of the

Prayer Book are known to have been published, as well as a number of

copies of the abridged Prayer Book published after 1585.9 It must be said at once that this exercise strongly suggests that Gerrard was much nearer the truth than Peaston, in that the forces at work would seem to have been a large dose of commercial pressure to sell bibles and

Prayer Books and only a small dose of reformist zeal - a version of events that might be less striking in terms of denominational conflict, but is much more instructive in the insights it offers into the uses to which the printing press was being put by English publishers in the mid-Elizabethan period.

Abridged versions of the Book of Common Prayer before 1578

The first point to make is that the supposedly 'puritan' versions of the

Prayer Book of 1578-1615 represent not a new departure, but the

« The ten editions are STC 2123, 2126, 2127, 2129, 2129.5, 2131, 2134, 2136.5,

2139, and 2144; and the copies I saw are listed below, nn. 31-2, 34. Since there is

variation between copies, the first time one is cited here it is identified by its number in

A short-title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland and Ireland... 1475-1640 (2nd

edn., by W. A.Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and K. F. Pantzer (3 vols., London, 1976-91), hereafter cited as STC; by its year of publication; and by the location and shelfmark of

the copy seen, or the reel number of the STC films prepared by UM1. Some copies were in the Bodl[eian Library], B(ritish) L[ibrary], JRUL, and the Queen's University of Belfast Library, but most were in the Bible House collection now housed in the

Cambridge] University] L[ibrary], copies of which have the prefix H. I am ex-

tremely grateful to the Revd Alan Jesson, the Librarian of the Bible Society's collec-

tion, for his great help and co-operation in the research needed to prepare this article. 9 The copies of the Great and Bishops' Bibles seen are listed below, in nn. 18-¿U, ¿4-

5, and the post-1585 abridged Prayer Books in nn. 32 and 36; cf. also n. 100 for copies of post-1585 Geneva black letter quartos seen which had no abridgement.

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third in a succession of five phases by which abridged versions of the Book of Common Prayer were made available to the book-buying public in large numbers in order to save the cost of buying a full- length copy of the complete Prayer Book.

Thus in the first phase, under Edward and in the early years of Elizabeth's reign, psalters, primers, and bibles were often printed with useful parts of the official liturgy slotted in at the relevant point. In 1549 Edward Whitchurch produced an edition of The psalter orpsalmes of David targeted at parish clerks, which included a shortened morning prayer and evening prayer,10 and in 1552 Robert Grafton published a similar work.11 Thereafter the line of prose psalters divided,12 but one stream, dating at least from 1562-3 and possibly earlier, included an unofficial adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer.13 Moreover, from the mid-1 560s the publisher of this second stream, William Seres, appears to have offered prospective purchasers two versions of his prose psalter: a longer, with a full range of the 'Certain godly prayers to be used for certain purposes' that were first printed at the end of Whitchurch's 1552 psalter; and a shorter, with fewer of these same 'Godly prayers'. The adaptation of the Prayer Book in Seres' psalters appeared regularly throughout Elizabeth's reign, and was eventually taken over and published by the Company of Stationers under James, which demonstrated at least de facto acceptance by the authorities of the day.14

10 STC 2376.5 (STC films reel 1787), passim, and especially section 6; see also Proctor and Frere, New History, 135; for Whitchurch's publication of both Edwardian Prayer Books and the Great Bible of 1550, see STC 16267,16279, 2081. 11 STC 2380a.5; in this version the Prayer Book collects replaced the 'all that shall

appertain to the clerks to say or sing' in the 1549 one. 12 For the two streams, of which the first was designed to be bound with separate copies of the complete Book of Common Prayer and so did not need Prayer Book material added, see STC, vol. I. 96-7, and no. 2384.5, where reference to the basis of Seres 's claim to a patent to print Prayer Books, primers, and psalters is also provided. 13 STC, vol. I. 96-7. This stream also included an almanac, a calendar, and instructions how to use the psalter. 14 STC, I. 97-8. On the 'godly' prayers, see Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, xix-xxi, 246-57 (and 258-71). Like Clay, I have encountered many examples of the use of different combinations of these 'godly prayers' as a filler on blank pages at the end of

gatherings, including the prefatory material for bibles, usually after the psalter.

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In addition to what was being done in these psalters, individual prayers and collects and sometimes the most commonly used services from the Edwardian and Elizabethan Prayer Books were also regularly published in three other types of work. One was in authorized books of private devotion, such as The primer set furth, published first in 1551- 2 by William Grafton and then in the 1560s by William Seres; A

prymmer or boke of private prayer, published five times between 1553 and 1568 by Seres; and Preces privatae, published perhaps three times between 1564 and 1574, again by Seres.15 A second was in a musical set-

ting of morning and evening prayer and the communion service

published by John Day in 1560 and 1565, 16 and a third the widely used work of elementary instruction, Tlie primer and... catéchisme, which Day printed in increasingly large numbers from at least the early 1570s.17

In this first phase, versions of Prayer Book material were also in-

corporated into copies of the Bible as early as the reign of Edward VI. In 1552, Nicholas Hill printed an abridgement of the Book of Com- mon Prayer on fourteen leaves, as part of a larger set of thirty-four leaves with discrete signatures and a colophon stating 'Imprinted at London by Nicholas Hill, for Abraham Vede' (a London bookseller of the time), and clearly designed to be bought and bound into the preliminary material of the quarto edition of the Great Bible published by Hill in the same year.18 Again, in 1561, an abridgement of the Eliz- abethan Prayer Book was published by John Cawood as part of the

preliminaries of his quarto edition of the Great Bible, though this time on continuous signatures and without a colophon. These preliminaries of 1552 and 1561 consisted of an almanac, the opening tables and calendar to find the correct lessons, psalms, and collects for each day or week of the year, the texts of morning and evening prayer, the litany, and the collects to be said throughout the year, supplemented in this

«5 Proctor and Frere, New History, 126-8; and STC 16053-4, 16057, 16090-92;

20373-73.5, 20735-7; and 20378-81. The Preces privatae are also published in Private

prayers put forth by authority during the reigti of Queen Elizabeth, ed. W. K. Clay (Parker

Society, Cambridge, 1851), 209-428. ><> Proctor and Frere, New history, 125, and STC 6418, 6419. i? ¡bid., 20377.3-77.7, and I. Green, "Vie Christian's ABC": catechisms and catechizing in England, c. 1530-1740 (Oxford, 1996), 65-6, 176-7, 704-5. is STC 2089; the copy I saw was H98 in the CUL; E. G. Duff, A century of the English book trade (1905), 72-3; STC, vol. III. 173.

318



case by half a dozen prayers from the communion service. Both sets of preliminaries occupied just over thirty leaves, and Cawood repeated the exercise in just over twenty leaves of his quarto edition of the Great Bible in 1569, though this last also had an innovation in a table added to the New Testament to help the reader find the epistle and gospel used on different Sundays and holy days throughout the year.19 Meanwhile, a similar but not quite identical abridgement had been printed on twenty leaves at the start of the folio edition of the Great Bible produced by a French printer at Rouen in 1566 'at the cost and charges of an Englishman, Richard Carmarden.20

The idea of making selected material from the official liturgy more widely available in different forms and for different purposes was thus not only current at an early date, but seems to have received no check from those who licensed the publication of new books. It took nearly twenty-five years for the Protestant liturgy to bed down: Cranmer's 1549 liturgy underwent a major overhaul in 1552, was revised again in 1559, and did not reach its final Elizabethan form until the early 1570s.21 At this stage the authorities were apparently concerned to re- move blatant mistakes and insist on a large measure of conformity,22 but not to stand too firmly on the immaculateness of the text if the intention of a selection or abridgement in a psalter, primer, or bible was to encourage familiarity with a protestant liturgy in the vernacular. Moreover, many of the printers and publishers involved either were known to be well disposed to Protestantism or had a close personal or professional bond with a powerful individual who was: Whitchurch and Grafton had been close to Thomas Cromwell in the late 1530s and

>9 STC 2094, 2102 (the copies I saw were HI 10 and H127 and H127a in CUL), and cf. Proctor and Frere, New history, 135. There was a version of the Prayer Book in the 1568 quarto published by Jugge and Cawood (STC 2102.5), but this was full-length and occupied 323 pages: DMH, no. 122. 20 STC 2098. The copy 1 saw was in Queen's University Library, Belfast: yf BS 167 Carm. 21 Proctor and Frere, New history, chaps. 3-5, and on post-1559 alterations pp. 109-10, 321-41; Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, xiv-xv, and 23-245 passim; see also Tlte Book of Common Prayer 1559: the Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. J. E. Booty (Charlottes- ville, 1976), vi-ix, and 33 n. 13. 22 The Latin version of the Prayer Book of 1560, for use in the universities and by clergy in private, contained a number of oddities which were finally removed in a major revision in 1571 : Proctor and Frere, New history, 1 16-25.

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Cranmer in the 1540s; John Day to Somerset and later Parker, Cecil, and Leicester; and William Seres to Cecil again.23

It is not surprising, then, that within a few years of the Bishops' Bible being approved in 1568 as the new translation for use in English churches, copies were appearing with abridgements of the official service book bound at the start. The 1568, 1585, and 1588 folio editions of the Bishops' Bible had only some tabular and calendrical material bound in at the start, but the folios of 1574, 1575, 1578, and 1584 also had the texts of morning and evening prayer, the litany, and the collects - in other words much the same as had appeared in the Great Bibles of the 1550s and 1560s.24 But what marks more clearly the second of our three phases is the fact that the version of the prayer book published in the quarto editions of the Bishops' Bible was much fuller than that published in the folios. From the early 1570s to the mid 1580s, six quarto editions of the Bishops' Bible were provided not

only with the same material as the folios and information on how to find the epistles and gospels (first printed in the Great Bible of 1569), but also with the text of the other services in the Book of Common

Prayer: the Lord's Supper, public baptism, private baptism, confirmation, matrimony, visitation of the sick and communion for the sick, burial, the churching of women, and commination.25

So full was this new version in the quartos that the main differences between it and the original 1559 Prayer Book were minimal: the omission of the Act of Uniformity, the official preface, and a defence of ceremonies, none of which were needed regularly by the faithful for church worship; the omission of the full texts of the epistles and

23 P. M. Took, Government and the printing trade, 1540-1560* (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London, 1979), 186-9, 192-3, 195, 313, 315, 323-4; W. Calderwood, The Elizabethan Protestant press: a study of the printing and publishing of Protestant re-

ligious literature in English* (unpublished, Ph.D. thesis, London, 1977), 200-02, 206-

7, 209; C. L. Oastler, John Day the Elizabethan printer*, Oxford Bibliographical Sodety, Occasional Publications 10 (1975), 19-21. 24 STC 2099, 2143, 2149 (the copies I saw were H125, H188, and H1V8 at LULj; and

2109, 2111, 2124, 2141 (copies seen: H137, and Bodl. Bib.Eng.l574.b.l; H139, and

Bib.Eng.l575c.l; H155, and STC films, reel 1679(2); H185; BL, L.9.g.9. 25 STC 2108, 2114, 2115, 2121, 2122, 2142 (copies seen: H135(l); M14U; tan {i); H150, and STC films reel 1911(2); H151(l); and H186(l) - a partially defective

copy). The first Bishops* quarto, that of 1569 (STC 2105, H126), had morning and

evening prayer only. 320



gospels, which occupied almost half of the space in a copy of the Book of Common Prayer but were completely superfluous if details of the chapters and verses for each Sunday and holy day were being provided in the prefatory material of a bible as they were here;26 and the omission of part of the text of some rubrics of a disciplinary or an explana- tory rather than a practical kind, sometimes with the addition of a cross-reference such as 'And so forth as it is in' (or just 'As it is') 'in the large' (or 'great') 'book of Common Prayer' (this cross-reference was often printed in bold or italic typeface).27 The intention was evidently not to undermine the Elizabethan settlement but to save space by leaving in only the most necessary parts of the text.

There is another intriguing feature of these Bishops' folios and quartos: the most unusual disposition of the psalms. The new translation of 1568 had included a fresh translation of the Book of Psalms, which was printed at the appropriate point in the Old Testament in the first Bishops' folio in 1568 and the first quarto in 1569, and was to be used for all bible readings during church services. But the text of the psalms to be sung or said as part of church worship was still that of Great Bible translation (and would continue to be so until the twenti- eth century). Two ingenious solutions to this anomaly were adopted, both indicative of the flexibility adopted when combining scripture and liturgy. The first can be found in the 1572 folio: at the appropriate point of the Old Testament, two translations of the psalms were

provided side by side on the same page: 'The translation used in common prayer' (that is the Great) in one column, set in black letter, and 'The translation after the Hebrew' (that is, the Bishops' version) in a

parallel column, set in roman.28

26 For contemporary critics' awareness of the disproportionate space taken up by collects, epistles, and gospels, see Proctor and Frere, New history, 130. The tradition lives on in T''e Shorter Prayer Book 1662 published by Oxford University Press today (ISBN 0-19-131606-7). 27 Compare the text of the 1 559 Prayer Book in Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 27- 38, 78-179, 180, and 199, or in Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 5-21, 77-246, 247, and 269, with the relevant portions of the Bishops' quartos cited in n. 25 above:

e.g. H140, 145 (1), and 150, sigs. Biiiv, and Civ in each case. For use of 'great' see below, pp. 338-39. 2* STC 2107 (H132(l)); DMH, p. 75.

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Even more surprising was the solution adopted in the quartos: at the heart of the Bishops' translation of the Old Testament, the Great Bible translation was simply substituted for the Bishops', together with such headers and marginalia (indicating the day of the month and time of day - morning or evening - at which each psalm was to be used) as appeared in all official psalters.29 While the folio editions of the Bishops' Bible retailed at 27 s 6d and copies were probably bought only by those cathedrals, parish churches, colleges, and zealous laymen with sufficient funds to be able to afford a separate copy of the latest edition of the Book of Common Prayer as well, at a price of two to three shil-

lings bound,30 Bishops' quartos were much cheaper, and their prefatory tables, full range of Prayer Book services, and Great Bible translation of the psalms rendered superfluous the purchase of a separate prayer book and indeed (because of their substitution of the Great text for the Bishops') of a separate prose psalter too.

This second phase thus confirms what was clear from the first, that the idea of abbreviating and binding Prayer Book material into the front of bibles was well established by 1578, though by now abridgements existed in at least two versions: the shorter found in Bishops' folios, and the longer in Bishops' quartos. Both were presumably the idea of Richard Jugge, who published all the editions of the complete Bishops' Bible from 1568 to 1577, had official permission to publish Prayer Books as well, and was basically following in the footsteps of Cawood and Seres, and before them of Whitchurch, Grafton, Hill, and Veale. And again there is little reason why the abridgements should have caused controversy since, once allowance has been made for the omission of less frequently needed material, its text followed

faithfully that of the 1559 Prayer Book as modified in the next dozen

years.

29 STC 2108 (H135(l)); DMH, p. 78. 30 Ibid., p. 70, and d. p. 98, and I. Green, Print and Protestantism in early modem bngland

(forthcoming), chap. 2. The octavo editions of the New Testament in the Bishops* Bible translation that appeared from the 1570s were again designed for cheapness and

the prefatory material was therefore kept to a minimum: DMH nos. 134, 136,142,

157, and cf. 163 seqq.

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Tlie abridgements bound into Geneva bibles from 1578 to 1616

It is now much easier to set the appearance of the supposed 'Puritan Prayer Book' in a number of Geneva bibles from 1578 to 1585 - our third phase - in context, and also to set the scene for phase four, from 1585 to 1603, and phase five, from 1603 to 1616 (and in copies of the Authorized Version through to the civil war). But straight away it is necessary to point out that there are problems with Peaston's three- fold, linear classification of the abridgements. A different classification will be suggested here in which the starting point for the first version is the abridgement in the Bishops' quarto, and in which Peaston's two later variants are hybrids of at least two earlier abridgements rather than linear successors. It may be easier to express this in diagramatic form, with the heavy lines indicating the greatest degree of common material, the lighter lines a lesser degree, and the dotted lines only occasional features in common, and the arrows indicating which version influenced another (see Diagram 1). In this scheme, the abridge-

Diagram 1. Relationship of different versions of abbreviated Book of Common Prayer bound into some Geneva Bibles

ment bound into the prefaces of the Bishops' quartos from c.1573 to 1584 was essentially a cut-down version of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. Geneva type A, which is the same as Peaston's first version - the one found in a 1578 folio and a 1579 quarto - had many features in common with that abridgement: the entire basic

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framework, the opening tide, the method of listing episdes and gospels, and the abridged opening rubrics of the communion and confirmation services. At the same time, type A had some clearly novel features, such as the total omission of three services and of a number of rubrics, and the substitution of individual words such as 'minister' for 'priest' and 'morning' and 'evening' for 'matins' and 'evensong'.31

Type B is essentially the same as Peaston's second version. At first it was produced as an integral part of black letter Geneva quartos published on perhaps seven different occasions between 1579 and 1585

(phase three), but from 1585 to 1603 (in phase four) it was published as a separate entity.32 Type B did retain a few features of type A, such as the use of 'morning', 'evening', and 'minister', and to save space and

money it did continue to omit some rubrics in public baptism and commmunion for the sick. But on balance type B is much closer to the Bishops' quarto than type A, as in the restoration of two of the omitted three services and half of the third (the missing half was

probably an oversight in copying, as we will see shortly). In places it is even closer to the unabridged Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer of 1559, as in the restoration of the full-length opening rubrics of the confirmation service which had been abbreviated in the Bishops' quarto. Its orthodoxy is demonstrated in other ways, such as the re- tention of all the saints' days in the calendar and of the Great translation of the psalter divided into thirty days and morning and evening

31 The Bishops' quartos with abridgements are listed above in n. 25; the copies ot the 1578 folio (STC 2123) seen were H154(l) at CUL, and STC films, reel 1679(1); and of the 1579 quarto (STC 2126) H159(l), and BL 3O37.e.l. For more detail on the differences, see above pp. 313-14, and below, pp. 328-40. 32 Copies seen were as follows: STC 2127 (1579), H 160 at CUL, BL 3023.aa.13, and STC films reel 1887(2); 2129 (1580), H164, and reel 1937(1); 2131 (1581), H170, and reel 1865(1) - a damaged copy; 2134 (1582), H174(l), reel 1827(1), and BL

C.110.g.l8 (imperfect); 2136.5 (1583), H179, and BL 675.c.l8(l); 2139 (1584), H182; 2144 (1585), H187(l), and BL 3035.p.2. For editions of separate abridged Prayer Books published from 1586 to 1603, which as J. R. Hetherington noted were

slightly amended in layout to save even more time and paper, see the series listed in STC as Hetherington 41: STC II. 87-90, 94-5; the copies I saw were 16318.5

([1594?], BL 1411.e.l(l); 16316.5 ([1594?], H211 (imperf); 16321.5 (1596), bound with H243; 16323 (1599), BL 3O51.cc.6(l), reel 1778(4), and Bodl. Bib. Eng. 1598.e.3(l). I am extremely grateful to the Ven. D. N.Griffiths for making available to me a copy of the original lists by J. R. Hetherington, which sadly remain unpublished.

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use, while the commercial motives that lay behind its genesis are suggested by the use of red letter in the calendrical material of many copies, and what Clay calls the Very curious* additions to the calendar (about which more later).33

Type C1 may be nearer Peaston's third type (his description is vague), but if so it predates his by up to twelve years, since it can be found bound into bibles printed in 1580 and 1584, as well as one in 1597. This version is so close to the Bishops' quarto abridgement or the full-length 1559 Prayer Book, as in the restoration of Latins' and 'evensong' in the table of scriptures, 'priest' in the text of the services, the full-length rubrics at the start of the communion service, and the missing section of the confirmation service, as to be almost indistin- guishable from them. Only the occasional element of type B was retained, such as the practical solution adopted there to providing the Great Bible version of the psalter: printing it on continuous signatures after the commination.34

Type C2 dominates the last phase of this story, and was almost certainly part of a wider revision of the Prayer Book due to the succession of a new royal family (and so changes to the state prayers) and the lengthening of the official short catechism in 1604. But in all other respects it is distinguishable from C1 only in the case of two or three individual words, such as 'minister', and here there must be a strong likelihood that the compositors who set up the first copies of C2 were working in part from an old type B copy (which was at that date probably more common than copies of C1).35 But C2 was so orthodox

33 For further details on the alterations, see below, pp. 340-1 . 3* Copies seen: STC 2129.5 (1580), H165, and reel 1912(1); 2139 (1584), BL 3035. p.l, and reel 1912 (3); and 2169 (1597), BL: 3O35.p.ll(l). It is conceivable that either the 1580 or the 1584 copies did not have the C1 version bound in until years after the relevant copy of the bible had been published; but I doubt this was true in both cases, and even if it was it does not greatly affect the argument put forward here. Peaston's account of the r.1592 edition and the 'Jacobean revision' in editions from 1603 to 1616 (Prayer Book Tradition, 29, 33-4) was prepared before STC was published; but even so it has often proved hard to trace some of the copies he listed at the locations he gives. 3* Copies seen: 16326.5 (1603), H273, and BL 3O35.p.lO(l); 16330.3 (1606), BL 1411.e.2(l); 16332.4 (1607), 3053.m.4; 16337 (1611), BL 464.b.l, and JRUL R28654; 16338 (1613), reel 1971(1); 16341 (1614), H330(3), H341(2); 16386 (1632), reel 1730(9); 16388a.5 (1632), reel 1799(2); 16417.3 (1639), reel 1604(13). For further details of the differences between types C1 and C2, see below, pp. 337, 345, 348.

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that under James and Charles we find it being published not just in quarto, but in folio, octavo, and duodecimo too, and not just in black letter but roman typeface as well, to be paired with any translation of the Bible. In this way booksellers or purchasers wanting to buy a copy of the Prayer Book to hold or bind with their copy of the new Authorized Version of the Bible were given a choice: either the original full-length 1559 text, which had been published throughout phases three and four, and retained the Act of Uniformity and defence of ceremonies in the preface, and printed the epistles and gospels in full for convenience; or an abridged version (C2) which kept the prefatory material to a minimum and had only the first line and verse numbers of the epistles and gospels, and so required only a fifth the number of sheets and cost correspondingly less.36

How puritan were types A and B?

This situation may have been the outcome, but we still have to explain the genesis of type A and the inconsistencies in type B. It is evident that whoever designed type A knew something about puritan bugbears and was able to take advantage of the measure of freedom implicit in the publication of the pre-1578 abridgements and the ambiguities thus created. It will be suggested here, however, that there are two good reasons for suggesting that type A was not the work of a puritan, but of someone trying to please puritans. The first is that what was taken out does not correspond very closely with what we know of puritan objections to the Book of Common Prayer; and the second is that some features of what was left in or added were even less likely to

please the 'godly*. The earliest complaints about the Book of Common Prayer of

which many details survive consist of Bucer's Censura on the first Ed- wardian Prayer Book, the articles presented to the lower house of Convocation in 1563, the letter of Humphrey and Sampson to Bull-

36 The difference between the two streams is essentially between the one-column versions, which are full-length, and the two-column versions, which are abridged: see the chart on STC II. 87-90. Copies seen of two-column versions other than black letter quartos: 16332 (1607) BL C.130.i.5(l) (folio); 16344 (1615), reel 1577(1) (quarto in roman); 16345 (1615), reel 1665 (1) (octavo); 16347 (1616), BL L12.e.3(l) (folio); 16347a (1616), BL L12.e.2(l) (folio); 16374 (1629), reel 1730(8) (folio); 16418a (1639), reel 1604 (14) (octavo); 16419.5 (1639) (duodecimo).

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inger in 1566, the bills brought before parliament in 1571, 1572, and 1584, and the two 'Admonitions' to parliament published in 1572.37 To these one must add the objections to the 1552 prayer book made by Knox, Whittingham, and others at the time of its first appearance, but not made public until 1574 - as A brieff discours of the troubles begönne at Franckford - and then for tactical reasons, by Thomas Wood, a close ally of the presbyterian leader John Field.38 In later years the number of criticisms lengthened,39 but if we confine our attention to those stated by 1578, and ask what one might have anticipated in a genuine revision of the Book of Common Prayer, we would probably not expect to find what we have in types A and B, and definitely not in C1 or C2.

The most determined critics of the Prayer Book of all would probably not even have bothered to revise it at all, since they had already started to use a totally different liturgy drawn from Knox's Ge- nevan service book and his later Scottish Book of Common Order, and would press this on parliament in 1584.40 The more moderate critics

37 Proctor and Frere, New history, 71-7, 111-15; Tlie Zurich Letters, Vol. I, ed. H. Robinson (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1847), 163-5 (and cf. Grindal's comment on p. 169); W. H. Frere and C. E. Douglas, Puritan Manifestoes (1954), xi-xxv, and passim; though see also T. M. Parker, 'The problem of uniformity, 1559-1604' in Tlie English Prayer Book 1549-1662 (S.P.C.K., 1963), 46-50. 38 STC 25442-3; and P. Collinson, The authorship of A Brieff Discours of the Troubles Begönne at Franckford' ', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, ix (1957), 188-208. Agitation in parliament and the country at this time had already forced Elizabeth to issue a procla- mation against 'the despisers and breakers of the orders prescribed' in the Prayer Book: Frere and Douglas, Puritan manifestoes, xv-xxv, 153-4. The agitation perhaps also helped drive moderate critics of the Prayer Book, like Grindal, Coxe, Humphrey and Sampson, to become fiercer opponents of this budding presbyterian movement: ibid., p. xxv, and P. Collinson, Archbishop Grindal 1519-1583: Vie struggle for a reformed church (1979), 181-2. But see also Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 372-8 for variations of usage of the Prayer Book even among conformists, and Collinson, Grin- dal, 171, for Grindal giving permission to one cleric to abbreviate Prayer Book services to allow more time for the sermon. 39 For explicit and implicit critcisms of the Prayer Book in the Millenary Petition, the debates in the Westminster Assembly, the text of the Directory of 1645, and Baxter's 'Reformed liturgy' of 1661, see E. Daniel, Tlie Prayer-Book, its history, language, and contents (1901), 44-53; Proctor and Frere, New history, 136-43, 163-201; E. C. Rat- cliff, 'Puritan alternatives to the Prayer Book', in Tlie English Prayer Book 1549-1662, 56-81. For the lengthening list of objections, cf. those of 1563, 1603, and 1661. 40 Proctor and Frere, New history, 112-15, 131-3, 143.

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would almost certainly have tried to reduce the number of festivals, and to excise the use of the sign of the cross in baptism, the requirement that communicants should kneel, the wearing of vestments, and the use of organs in church music.41 Also condemned by the mid- 1570s were the liturgical practice of tossing psalms round 'like tennis balls' (as it was colourfully put in 1572), the use of the ring in marriage and of godparents to answer questions and make pledges on behalf of the infant in baptism, the requirement of a married couple to take communion immediately after the wedding, the priest's pronouncing apparently unconditional absolution of the sins of the faithful in the communion service and the visitation of the sick, and a number of other features.42 At the least, the Great Bible translations of the 'comfortable words', canticles, psalms, and other scripture passages dotted throughout the Elizabethan Prayer Book could all have been

replaced by the equivalent passages of the Geneva translation. In the event, virtually none of this was attempted in the abridge-

ments bound with Geneva bibles: at most we have a tinkering rather than a proper revision, and in many ways a not very well informed

tinkering at that. Ninety-five per cent of the material that had been used in the Prayer Book abridgements in the Bishops' Bible quartos in

the 1570s was retained in the Geneva quartos, and by no means all of

the alterations, omissions, or restorations that made up the other five

per cent represented clear moves in a puritan direction. Let us take a

closer look at this five per cent.

Ttie omission of whole services

Where complete services were left out in type A and to a lesser extent

in type B, the assumption has naturally been that this was the work of

the 'godly'. Thus type A omitted the service of private baptism, the

confirmation ceremony, and the churching of women; type B restored

the first and the third of these but only the introductory section of the

second - an oddity to which we will return shortly; while types C1

«> Ibid., 112-113, 130-1; Zurich Letters, I, 164; and Frere and Douglas, Puritan mani-

festoes, 24-5. ... 42 Ibid., 26-29; and as previous note; some might even have welcomed

... the restoration

of the clause in the litany condemnding the *tyranny of the bishoP of Rome and all his

detestable enormities': Proctor and Frere, New history, 102.

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and C2 contained all three services in full.43 Private baptism at a time when large numbers of the population were still Catholic and might wish to have their children baptized by sympathetic priests away from the public and official gaze was a source of concern for not only the

'godly',44 but also the authorities. But the latter appear to have felt that in cases of genuine need and hedged round with rubrics that en- deavoured to ensure that the concession was not abused, the church should make available a service for baptism 'in private houses, in time of necessity', to be administered, in the enforced absence of a minister, by a lay person (such as a midwife, though this was not specified in the rubric).45 Its absence from type A suggests that the author of this

abridgement knew that it gave offence to some of the hotter sort of Protestants, such as John Field and Thomas Wilcox who had attacked it in the first Admonition; but its restoration in types B and C (in both cases complete with the use of the term 'priest', omitted in type A) indicates either official pressure to restore it, or, since we have no hard evidence for this, the publisher's desire to sail less close to the wind, perhaps combined with the hope that its restoration would not be offensive to those more moderate puritans who were prepared to use at least part of the official liturgy.46

The same conclusions may be reached on the churching of women, which was omitted in 1578 but again restored (complete with the term 'priest') in types B and C.47 'The thanksgiving of women after childbirth, commonly called the churching of women', was damned by the more radical critics of the Book of Common Prayer as a 'common' practice among 'papists and Jews' and 'smelling of Jewish purification'.48 But the authors of the 1552 Prayer Book and a bishop

43 See above, nn. 32-5, and 25; for further details see following paragraphs. 44 Proctor and Frere, New history, 112; Zurich Letters, I. 164; Frere and Douglas, Puritan

manifestoes, 26; Daniel, Prayer-Book, 44. 45 Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 277-81, 404-5. 46 Lay baptism was among the longer list of grievances raised in Convocation in 1562, but not on the short list of objectionable aspects of the Prayer Book which nearly passed: Proctor and Frere, New history, 112-13. 47 See above, nn. 33-5; and Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 237-8, and Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 314-15. 48 Proctor and Frere, New history, 131; Zurich Letters, I. 164 ; Frere and Douglas, Puritan

manifestoes, 28-9. Also condemned was the wearing of veils by women being churched, though this appears to have been a popular custom rather than an official

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like Latimer insisted that the service was one of thanksgiving, not purification, and, encouraged by popular demand for it (and the fees it brought in), most Elizabethan clergy seem to have been perfectly ready to conduct the service at the appropriate time.49 An end to churching had not been one of the half dozen widely supported de- mands made by the reformers in Convocation in 1562, any more than private baptism had been, and whatever the stimulus to the initial omission, this state of affairs did not last for more than the few months between the appearances of types A and B.

The case of confirmation at first appears more promising to the

'puritanization' thesis. The total omission of this ceremony in type A

together with some consequential changes - the deletion of rubrics that mentioned confirmation at the end of the public baptism service and the end of the catechism, and a minor addition to the title of the catechism - was probably due to the abridger's awareness that some of the Marian exiles and the authors of the first Admonition had strong objections to the confirmation service, and especially the laying on of hands by the bishop, as if the gift of the Holy Spirit could be trans- ferred by this means.50 But again this was not one of the half dozen

requests which commanded widespread support in 1562, and at least one leading figure among those then demanding changes to the lit-

urgy, Alexander Nowell, Dean of St Paul's, was a sufficient advocate of confirmation, as a revival of an apostolic means by which young people could confirm the vows made on their behalf by their godparents at baptism, to accord it a broadly supportive section in his widely- used catechism for adolescents.51 In type B, there is an oddity in that

requirement: ibid.; and cf. J. Whitgift, Works, Vol. II (Cambridge, 1852), 557-64; K.

Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic (1971), 38, 59-61, and D. Cressy, 'Purification,

Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women in Post-Reformation England*, Past and

Present, no. 141 (1993), 108-9, 132-3. 49 Ibid., 110-11, 126-32, 145-6. 50 H154(l) and H159(l) (as n. 32 above); Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 210, 214-

16, 199, 205; Proctor and Frere, New history, 130; Frere and Douglas, Puritan manifestoes, 27-8; W. K. Lowther Clarke et al, Confirmation or the laying on of hands, 2 vols.

(1926), I. 93-4; and for the later debate between Cartwright and Whitgift, in which

the latter cited Bucer and Calvin in his defence, 94-7. 51 A. Nowell, A catéchisme, or first instruction and learning of Christian religion, ed. U. b.

Corrie (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1853), 210-11; Nowell was anxious that the bish-

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although the rubric at the end of public baptism on the need for confirmation was restored, and the introductory third of the confirmation service was also restored, the essential part of the text, including the ceremony of the episcopal laying on of hands, was not.52

The section on confirmation in the 1559 liturgy was a rather clumsily organized piece of work in three sections that did not reach its present, more logical shape until 1662.53 Prior to that, the first section contained a justification and explanation of the ceremony and a charge to parents to bring their children to the bishop to be confirmed; the second part was a catechism to be learnt by children before they could be confirmed; and the third was the confirmation ceremony itself. Logic would surely have indicated that if the third part was not to be restored in type B, then the first should not either, especially since this opening section contained a rubric which was offensive to the 'godly' in that it informed grieving parents that, if their children had died before they could be confirmed, they had 'all things necessary for their salvation, and be undoubtedly saved' if they had been baptized. Not only was this opening section restored in type B, but it was restored verbatim - presumably direct from the text of the 1559 Prayer Book, since the sentence on baptized infants being 'undoubtedly saved' had actually not appeared in the abridgement in the Bishops' quarto because of the use at this point of the type of

space-saving cross-reference mentioned above.54 This restoration strongly suggests that the author of type B was

either not fully aware of puritan objections to the Book of Common Prayer or had not fully thought through his revisions. The reason for restoration of part one but not part three of the confirmation text was

just possibly a desire to please some puritans, but was more likely to have been confusion by a compositor, using both a 1559 text at the

ops should question those presented for confirmation before he blessed them. Becon felt broadly the same: Lowther Clarke, Confirmation, I. 88. 52 E.g. H 160, sigs. Bvir-viir; and a similar point in all the other type B abridgements listed above in n. 35. The middle third was the catechism which was retained

throughout types A, B, and C. 53 Proctor and Frere, New history, 602-6. 54 Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 282-9; see above, p.321, and H 160, sig.B viiv; H 164, sig. Bviir; HI 170, sig.Bvir; and so on in type B abridgements, compared to

sig.Clv in H 140, H 145, H 150 (Bishops' quartos).

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Start and later on a type A text which skipped straight from the end of the catechism to the rubrics at the very end of the confirmation service. A few months later, in possibly the first extant example of type C1, bound with a 1580 bible, the full text of the 1559 service, including the original title of the catechism and the missing final section, was restored. And if one asks why the absence of the final third was not noticed or objected to by those who bought type B abridgements during phases three or four, one may suggest that confirmations were as yet not the regular events they would later become, and also surmise that the bishops who were doing the confirming and the clergy who were preparing candidates for confirmation would undoubtedly have owned their own full-length Prayer Books, while all the candidates needed was the catechism, which was present in types A, B, and C.

T'xe omission or abbreviation of rubrics

The other main omissions or abbreviations adduced as evidence of

puritan involvement are the introductory and closing rubrics in the office of public baptism, the four rubrics at the start of the Lord's Sup- per, and four rubrics in the service for 'communion of the sick' (one at the start and three near the end).55 The omission of the closing rubric in the section on public baptism (on the need for confirmation) has

already been dealt with, but the opening rubric may have been ob-

jected to on the score that the very last sentence of a very long para- graph permitted baptism at home 'if necessity so require*. This omission may therefore have been a consequence of the omission of

private baptism already noted, though an additional explanation is that the deletion of the rubric also saved well over a dozen lines of type on the printed page.56

In the four rubrics prefacing the communion service Peaston tried hard to find material that would have been objectionable to puritans. The reference to barring 'open and notorious evil livers' from the communion is cited as implying excommunication in the church

courts, though the text itself makes no such reference. On the con-

trary, it puts stress on any disagreements being settled locally in the

ss Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 199, 205, 180, 231-2. Type C abridgements oredictablv printed all the rubrics in fall. 56 See above, pp. 330-1.

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parish. Equally, the reference to the communion table standing 'in the body of the church, or in the chancel' is seen by Peaston as being offensive to those who insisted it should not be at the east end in the chancel, though the option of having the table 'in the body of the church' was put first and was more than would be available under Archbishop Laud.57 Nor was the opportunity taken to add something to these rubrics to the effect that potential communicants should be examined before the service, as was clearly the hope of the authors of some 'godly' catechisms and was demanded in the Millenary Peti- tion.58

In fact, what was done in types A and B was even less drastic than this: in both cases the start of the first rubric was cited as follows: '"So many as intend to be partakers of the holy communion, etc". And so forth as in the great Book of Common Prayer'. This is what Peaston called a 'somewhat equivocal device' on the part of the puritans,59 but the cross-reference hardly amounts to a rejection of the original text. Nor was it a puritan invention, since as already noted it can be found in all the Bishops' quartos published between 1576 and 1584.60 What the 'etc' and the 'and so forth' did do (as in the rubrics at the start of the confirmation service mentioned above) was to save valuable space in the effort to keep the abridged prayer book to as small a number of sheets as possible. The author of types C1 and C2, for whom the saving of space was apparently not as pressing a priority, or who wished to avoid official censure, reproduced the original texts of the opening communion rubrics in full.61

In the case of the rubric before 'the Communion of the sick', omitted in type A and in type B (but restored in type C),62 there was again arguably nothing much to which exception could be taken except perhaps its length. This rubric took several lines to explain why it

57 Peaston, Prayer Book tradition, 30; J. Davies, Tlie Caroline captivity of the church: Charles land the remoulding of Anglicanism (Oxford, 1992), chap. 6. 58 Green, "Christian's ABC", 34-8, 73-6; Daniel, Prayer-Book, 45. 59 H154(l), sig. di'; H159(l), sig. Bii'; H160, sig.,Biv; Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 180; Peaston, Prayer Book tradition, 30. 60 See above, n. 27. 61 E.g. STC films reel 1912(1), sig. B8V; H273, sig.BK 62 The rubric was restored in STC films reel 1912(1), sig. C8V; and BL, 3()35.p.ll(2), sig. C8V.

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was best for members of the congregation to communicate in church, and how curates should regularly, and especially in time of plague, remind their flocks of this fact; but it went on to say how, under special circumstances and when certain preconditions were strictly met, such as advance notice being duly given the day before and a 'good number* being present 'in the sick man's house' to receive the communion with him, it was permissible.63 There is undoubtedly a parallel with the concern mentioned above in the section on private baptism of infants, that services at home might enable church papists to avoid full conformity with the help of conservative clergy. But again the authorities appear to have stuck by their view that with proper preconditions it was necessary for the service to be available for sincere Protestants in urgent need; and the fact that 'communion for the sick'

figures infrequently in puritan objections to the Prayer Book and that the actual text of the service itself appeared in type A - the most far-

reaching of the three abridgements in terms of omissions and alterations - suggests that this perception was not confined to official circles.

The omission of some but not all of the rubrics after the service for communion of the sick is perhaps slightly clearer evidence of an at-

tempt to appease the puritans: the particular ones omitted ordered the

priest to receive communion by himself first, and alone if the sick

person could not swallow and there were no other parishioners present to communicate with him - again we are back to the spectre of collusion between old clergy and church papists. But with the 'Communion of the sick' the compositor was also very close to the end of the Prayer Book abridgement, and the need to save space may well again have been an alternative or additional reason for these omissions.64

63 Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 231; Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 307. 64 Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 232; Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 308.

There was a similar omission of the second and fourth rubrics after 'Communion of

the Sick* in the Latin version of the Prayer Book mentioned above (n. 22); though Proctor and Frere (New history, 122) did not associate these omissions with puritan intervention.

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Alteration of single words

In the case of single words being changed in types A and B, there are three clear examples and one ambiguous one. The three are the replacement of 'matins' by 'morning' and of 'evensong' by 'evening' in the table of lessons to be read each Sunday, and of 'priest' by 'minister' in the rubrics and text of the services in the Book of Common Prayer; the fourth is the replacement of 'good' by 'great' in the rubric at the end of the communion service.65 The first three can readily be accepted as cases where puritans were probably anxious to put distance between themselves and their 'popish' predecessors. 'Matins' and 'evensong' had resonances of the canonical hours of prayer of the Catholic church, such as lauds (often said with matins) and vespers, while 'priest' for some had connotations of the rituals and claims to magical powers from which true protestant clergy were anxious to be dissociated.66 Again, these particular emendations do not figure largely in the earliest complaints about the English Prayer Book, though the use of the term 'priest' was later condemned in the Millenary Petition of 1603 and at the Savoy Conference in 1661, and omitted from both the Directory (1645) and Baxter's 'Reformed liturgy' of 1661; and this and the other substitutions under discussion here are in line with many of the objections raised to the reliance of the official liturgy on 'popish' models.67

However, when viewed in context these alterations appear rather less striking; nor were they applied consistently. If we take the original 1559 Book of Common Prayer and examine the material at the start, we find three tables, one for the 'Order of the psalms, to be said at morning and evening prayer', the next of 'first lessons to be read, both at morning prayer and evening prayer on the Sundays throughout the year', and the same for the lessons to be read at daily services throughout the year. Only in the second do the terms 'matins' and 'evensong' appear, and then only at the head of the columns in the tabular layout, not in the general heading which, as just cited, refers

65 In type A the word 'Public' was also omitted in the headers of the section for

'Baptism to be used in the church', since the omission of 'Private' baptism rendered this redundant: see Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, pp. xvi, and 199. 66 Thomas, Religion and the decline of marie, 32, 35-7, 55-6, 79-80, 326-8, 586-7. 67 Daniel, Prayer-Book, 44, 49; RatclifF, 'Puritan alternatives', 64-71, 75-9.

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quice specifically to morning and evening prayer; nor do the terms 'matins' and 'evensong' appear anywhere in the text of the relevant Prayer Book services themselves.68 In short, the established liturgy was not ineluctably wedded to the older, 'popish' terms and was already moving towards substituting acceptably Protestant alternatives, but a measure of inertia in 1547 and 1559 and slavish page-for-page copying by compositors - as in the case of 'the righteous shall be punished' -

appear to have ensured the survival of the older terms in subsequent editions of the Prayer Book and in the tables inserted into the prefaces of editions of the Bishops' Bible printed in the 1560s and 1570s.69

Now, in the abridged Prayer Book types A and B the words 'matins' and 'evensong' are indeed replaced by 'morning' and

'evening', which suggests someone was aware of puritan susceptibili- ties; but in type C1 the older terms reappear, which suggests either that someone had noticed and objected to the alteration, or (perhaps more

likely) that in the case of type C1 the compositors were at that point copying from the tables being inserted into quarto editions of the

Bishops' Bible. Such a cross-over in the case of type C was all the more likely in that in June 1578 Christopher Barker, who had already published the first editions of the Geneva Bible to be printed in Eng- land, received a patent for the sole printing of the Bishops' Bible as well as the Book of Common Prayer.70

In the case of the substitution of 'minister' for 'priest', a similar

pattern is evident. The authors of the original Edwardian and Eliza- bethan Prayer Books were not completely consistent but regularly used the term 'minister' (or 'curate' or 'parson') much more often than the word 'priest', for example in morning prayer, the rehearsal of the Ten Commandments in the communion service, private baptism, the

68 For the 1559 usages, see Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 39-68; or Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 22-67. There is an isolated reference to evensong in a rubric at

the end of the confirmation service: Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 216, n. 1; but

this is most untypical. <» See the tabular material in, e. g., H125, H126, H132(l), HlJ^l), MlJ/, ana ail

other editions of the Bishops' Bible cited in nn. 24-5 above. See also above, n. 5. ™ Types A and B: H154(l), sig. al'; H159(l), sigs. qivv-qqii'; H160, and H170, sigs.

qivv-qqii' in both cases; STC films reel 1912(1), sigs. [2v-3']; type C: H330(3), sigs. iiiv-ivr; and H342(2), sigs. iv, and iiiv; A dictionary of printers and booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland and of foreign printers of English books 1557-1640, ed. R. B. McKer-

row, et al (1910), 19-20.

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order for the visitation of the sick, and the commination against sin- ners. In other cases the terms were used interchangeably, as in holy matrimony where the terms 'minister' and priest' were both used over ten times each. Only in the rest of holy communion, in public baptism, and in the burial service was the use of 'priest' more numer- ous than that of 'minister', due perhaps to a degree of conservatism or caution in 1549, reinforced by inertia thereafter.71 When therefore those who set up the type A and B abridgements of the Prayer Book inserted 'minister' on every occasion where the official liturgy still retained 'priest', they were certainly changing its text but were not

greatly in breach of its spirit. Moreover, once again in type C1 and in a

growing proportion of type C2 the original mixture of 'minister' and

'priest' was restored at the points where they had been in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer and in the Bishops' quartos of the late 1570s.72

Two smaller points may be made. The author of the changes from 'priest' to 'minister' in types A and B was not hostile to the idea of episcopacy since, on those occasions in the communion service where the 1559 rubrics referred to 'the priest or bishop (being present)', he simply substituted 'the minister or bishop (being present)'.73 Moreover, when the services for private baptism and the churching of women which had been omitted in type A were restored in type B (as mentioned above), also restored was the term 'priest' where it had been used in the 1559 liturgy.74 Puzzled by the reappearance of 'priest' in this way, Clay, followed by Proctor and Frere, suggested that this was 'a silent but intelligible sign' to puritans that these services were added for apparent conformity but their use was to be discouraged.

71 The pattern can quickly be established by looking at either the Clay or Booty editions of the 1559 Prayer Book cited in previous notes. But for conservative episcopali- ans' reinsertion of 'priest' for 'minister' at some points of the prayer book during the 1662 revision, see Daniel, Prayer-Book, 50-2. 72 See above, nn. 34-6, for copies seen. For examples of the increase in cases where C2

copies restored 'priest', see H330(3) (1614) (burial service); reel 1730(8) (morning and

evening prayer); and the 1639 quarto, octavo and duodecimo on STC reel 1604(13), (14) and (15) (morning and evening prayer, and communion). 73 H154(l), sigs. diii', div'; H159(l), sigs. Biv'., Bv'; and H160, sigs. Bm' Bivv; H164, sigs. Biiiv, Bivv; etc. 74 H 160, sigs. Bvi'-V; and Ciiir"v; H 164, sigs. Bvi' and Cm'-V ; H 170, sigs. Bvv-vi', and Ciir~v.

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However, the evidence on this point is also consistent with a publisher being aware of some moderate puritans' feelings but not inclined to risk his privileges, or with a compositor copying an 'orthodox* text unaware that it had to be doctored at certain points, or perhaps both.75

The fourth emendation - the substitution of 'great' for 'good' in the rubric at the end of the communion service - is also claimed as a puritan innovation but is not. The 1559 Prayer Book had at the end of the communion service a number of rubrics designed to guard against private masses being held by those sympathetic to the old ways and to ensure the eradication of old ideas on transubstantation. Ac-

cordingly it was stated that 'there shall be no celebration of the Lord's

Supper except there be a good number to communicate with the

priest, according to his discretion', though in the case of small parishes with no more than twenty potential communicants, the sacrament could be performed with as few as 'four, or three at the least'. Visita- tion articles issued by the bishops reinforced these precautions,76 but

despite this the puritans concerned at the existence of many old 'mass

priests' in office and of 'church papists' in their congregation wanted the number present at a protestant communion to be as large as possible.77

Now the replacement of 'good' by "great9 in type A and most early (but not all later) copies of type B is certainly consistent with this

complaint, but the irony is that 'great' can be found already well established in the abridged Prayer Book bound with three Bishops' quartos published in 1576-7. The alteration also seems an odd one to make to

please the 'godly', considering their much better documented objections to the rubrics that insisted on communicants being in a kneeling position and to as few as three communicating with the minister, nei- ther of which was tackled in types A or B.78 The difference between a

good and a great number is so much a matter of opinion that one is

75 Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, xvii; Proctor and Frere, New history, 134. 76 Booty, Book of Common Prayer 1559, 267-8, 401-2. 77 Proctor and Frere, New history, 130. 78 Ibid., 113, 130; Zurich Letters, I. 164; Daniel, Prayer-Book, 44, 50. There were other

objections too: to the use of wafer bread, the wearing of vestments for this service, the

repetition of the General Confession by people other than the minister, and more

(sources as cited); Knox insisted on a sermon too: Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, p. xvi.

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tempted to suggest that the latter was a mis-reading for the former by the compositor of the otherwise completely orthodox quarto edition of the Prayer Book published by Jugge in 1576.79 Whatever the reason, this particular substitution remains, like many other features de- scribed so far, a relatively fragile pillar on which to erect a case for a 'Puritan Prayer Book*.

Indeed, the whole range of these 'Puritan' modifications begs the

question 'For whom were these abridgements designed?' The decision to omit private baptism, confirmation, and the churching of women, which had been attacked fiercely by presbyterians such as

John Field and Thomas Wilcox in the first Admonition of 1572 and the earlier critics whose thoughts were published by Field's ally, Thomas Wood, in 1574-5, suggests it could have been for the presbyterians. By contrast the comments on these services made (in print) by moderate puritans like Becon and Nowell were much more circumspect or even supportive.80 And yet it was the hard-liners who had a complete alternative liturgy in mind, based on the work of Knox; and con-

versely it was the moderates - who had been forced by the presbyterians' attacks in the early 1570s to choose between joining them and

rejecting them, and on the whole had chosen to reject them - who were apparently prepared to live with many parts of the Book of Common Prayer and in some cases with the omitted services. Moreover, should we associate puritans with the 'specious' and

'equivocal devices' to fool the authorities that Peaston detected in his 'Puritan Prayer Book', or rather with a dualistic world view of the constant battle between the forces of good and evil, and a refusal to

compromise with mere conformists?81 And why change niggling features, such as 'priest' and 'matins', but leave in the cross in baptism, kneeling at communion, and saints' days, which even moderate puritans had indicated that they would have liked changed?82 Did the

79 Ibid., p. 198, n. 2. Other cases where there is documented opposition in 1603 and 1661 to specific words in the Book of Common Prayer include the use of 'absolution' and of 'Sunday* (rather than Lord's Day): Daniel, Prayer-Book, 44, 49; but these two were also not altered in type A abridgements. 80 Frere and Douglas, Puritan manifestoes, 26-9; and see above, n. 51. 81 See above, pp. 327ff. and nn. 40, 59; and Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan movement, 24-8. 82 See above, pp. 327-8.

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author or authors of these abridgements really have a clear under- standing of what the 'godly* wanted, or the likely circumstances - in church or at home, by laity or clergy - in which the abridgements were to be used?

Features of types A and B likely to have been obnoxious to puritans

The thrust of these questions is reinforced when we consider not only the alterations and omissions discussed above, but also a number of other compositing and liturgical features in types A and B which Peaston did not mention but which seem much more likely to have raised puritan hackles than satisfied their scruples.

First of all, there is the red-letter treatment given to saints' days. We know that in Convocation in 1562 the demand for the abolition of all festivals except Sundays and the 'feasts of our Lord' was one of half a dozen requests that came within one vote of passing, and in the first Admonition to the Parliament (1572) saints' days were condemned because they were contrary to God's commandment and were being 'superstitiously kept and observed'.83 It is therefore surprising to find not only that the prefatory material of types A and B (and, less sur-

prisingly, C1 and C2) includes all the usual calendars and tables of lessons in which all the official saints' days are listed in full, but also that these special days are picked out in red letter, just as in pre-Reforma- tion and some official post-Reformation works, including the Prayer Book abridgement in the Bishops' quartos.84

Secondly, there are what Clay called the 'very curious' additions at the bottom of the calendar which are found regularly in type A and B

abridgements but only rarely outside them.85 What was done in these cases was to add useful information at the foot of each page of the calendar. Thus at the bottom of the page for January was added *1. The

83 Proctor and Frere, New history, 1 12; Frere and Douglas, Puritan manifestoes, 24. 84 For examples of the use of red letter in the calendar (and otner taouiar materni; oi

the abridgements bound with Geneva bibles, see H154(l); H159(l), H160, H164,

H165, H170, H174(l), H179, H182, H187(l), H243, H273, H330(3), and H341(2). 85 Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, pp. xvii-xix. I have found these additions in the

calendars of the abridgements bound with the quarto editions published between 1579

and 1585 which have a complete surviving calendar, except for the second 1580 edi-

tion (STC 2129.5 - see above n. 34), but not in abridgements bound with later bi-

bles.

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first day of this month, Noah, after he had been in the Ark 150 days began to see the tops of the high mountains. Gen. 7.24. and 8.3, 5. Also as upon this day, Christ was circumcised according to the Law. Luke 2.21'. Most of the information was inspired by incidents in the Bible, but there were also references to events in the first centuries of the Christian church and more recently too, such as the death of Hus (8th July 1415), the birth of Melanchthon (16th February 1497), the day Luther issued his theses against indulgence in Wittenberg (31st October 1517), the death of Luther 'the servant of God' (18th Febru- ary 1546), and the day his body was buried in the castle chapel at Wittenberg (22nd February). There were references to the 'great sweat' in England in July 1551, and to the deaths of Somerset and Ed- ward VI ('the Josias of our age') - and the birth and accession of Elizabeth (with the prayer that God would 'long... continue [her] in that government'). The accession of Elizabeth was the most recent event mentioned, and the nearest we get to the Swiss reformation is the elliptical comment under 27th August: 'Religion, as on this day, was reformed, according to God's express truth, in the most renowned city of Geneva. 1535'. (The date is a puzzle, but perhaps was an allu- sion to the dedication of the first edition of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian religion, though the date was actually 23rd August, and Calvin was then still in Basel.)86

The predominance of references to Lutherans points to a Henri- cian or Edwardian date for most of these historical notes, perhaps from an almanac or similar text which the author or printer had to hand.87 Moreover, as Clay conceded, the information at the foot of each page was designed to supplement rather than replace the official calendar, and an earlier copy was spotted by him in a perfectly orthodox Bish- ops' bible published in 1576.88 In short, this feature of types A and B has all the hallmarks of a publisher trying to enhance the attractiveness

86 H 154(1), sigs. aiiiv-biiir; H 159(1), sigs. qqiiir-viiiv. These additions can be most conveniently seen in Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, 444-55 passim; T. H. L. Parker, lohn Calvin (1975), 39. 87 For the historical information and religious material regularly found in almanacs, see B. Capp, Astrology and the popular press: English almanacs 1500-1800 (1979), 30, 144- 63, 215-24. 88 Clay, Elizabethan liturgical services, xvii.

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of his package by using something that was already to hand, and hop- ing that the flattering reference to Geneva might please the 'godly'.

The treatment of the psalms presents a third case where innovation in types A and B represented a conservative move rather than a reformist one. As already mentioned under phase two, the Great Bible version of the psalms remained the one that was used for singing or saying in public service, even after the appearance of the Bishops' translation in 1568.89 Now, the puritans were among the severest critics of old-style performances of church music that they deemed un-

edifying: it was the Genevan exiles who had completed the work of

turning psalms into metre begun by Sternhold and Hopkins, and the first presbyterians had also been highly critical of the way in which alternative verses of the psalms were still (as they saw it) 'tossed* back and forth 'like tennis balls'.90 But the obvious solution - to omit the Great Bible translation altogether, and select appropriate psalms for

particular occasions or purposes rather than adhere to the strict thirty- day rota for the performance of psalms - was simply not taken.

In the 1578 Geneva folio, the same solution was adopted as in the

Bishops' folio: the Great and Geneva translations were printed in parallel columns and with similar descriptions - as 'used in Common

Prayer' for the former, and 'according to the Hebrew' for the latter -

but in contrasting typefaces;91 while in the Geneva quartos, the Great Bible translation together with the Prayer Book rota were always in-

cluded, by one of two means. One was to bind in a copy of the prose psalter that had been published as a completely separate entity, imme-

diately after the Prayer Book abridgement; the other and more usual was to print the Great Bible version, complete with the headers and

marginalia indicating the monthly sequence, on sheets bearing signatures that followed on immediately from those on which the order of

89 For the problem and different solutions in the case of the Bishops' folios and quartos, see above, pp. 321-2. _ . ._ ... 90 R. Zim, English Metrical Psalms: poetry as praise and prayer Í535-Í6Ü1 (Cambridge,

1987), 139-42, 232. For the rota in Prayer Book and Great Bible, see Booty, Book of Common Prayer Í559, 22-4. For criticism, Frere and Douglas, Puritan Manifestoes (1954), 29. 91 H154HÌ: and see above, p. 321, and n. 28.

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commination had been printed.92 (This was also the solution adopted in the most orthodox types - C1 and C2.)93 But why go to such pains to provide in types A and B abridgements the Great Bible version of the psalms, divided according to Prayer Book usage, when puritan readers were more likely to use the metrical psalms? Is this not another case of a smart publisher refining a device found in earlier abridgements in the hope of pleasing potential buyers?

While we are on the subject of translations, it should also be added that Geneva texts were not substituted in the abridgements in the Ge- neva quartos for the relevant Great texts in any of the scripture passages cited during the Prayer Book services, such as the opening sentences in morning and evening prayer, the Venite and Jubilate in morning prayer, the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in evening prayer, the comfortable words in the communion service, and the citation from Mark 10 during public baptism, and so on. The only point at which there was a hint of change was in the section giving the collects and the first lines of the epistles and gospels for each Sunday or holy day of the year, where the Geneva was normally substituted for the Bishops' translation used in the Bishops' quartos of the late 1570s, though even here careless copying did lead to some Bishops' lines creeping into type A and B abridgements, as in the epistle for Advent III, where 'Let a man so esteem of us' (Bishops' version) regularly appears instead of 'Let a man so think of us' (Geneva version) as the first words of 1 Cor. 4, v. I.94

The limited range of Geneva bibles to which the abridgement was attached

There is one further reason for suggesting that type A and B abridgements were not the work of the 'godly': they were bound into only a small fraction of editions of the Geneva Bible published either in phase three or phases four and five. In only one case was an abridgement bound into all copies of a Geneva bible published in the folio format,

92 Separate in both 1579 editions and the first 1580 one; but on continuous signatures after commination in the second 1580 and all subsequent editions. 93 See above, p. 325, and nn. 34-5. 94 E.g. H159(l), sig.Av; H160, sig. A5r; H164, sig. Aiv'; and so on, right through to 1639: 16417.3 (1639), reel 1604(13), sig. A5<; 16418a (1639), reel 1604(14), sig. B5V; and 16419.5 (1639), reel 1604(15), sig. B2'.

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that of 1578, though several other Geneva folios were printed later.95 (The nearest we get to a match is in 1616 when a separate edition of a two-column, black letter Prayer Book abridgement was printed in folio, probably to coincide with the publication of the last folio Ge- neva Bible that year; but the abridgement was the orthodox type C2).96 Otherwise, Prayer Book abridgements are found only in Geneva

quartos, and only in those quartos set in black letter type, and on a

regular basis only in those black letter quartos published between 1579 and 1585.97 If Peaston was right that a 'Puritan' Prayer Book was

something the 'godly' were anxious to own alongside a copy of their

preferred translation of the Bible, then it should have been made available in Geneva quartos printed in roman type, and indeed in all the folio and octavo editions in which it was also printed.

A closer look at those early black letter quarto Geneva bibles in which a Prayer Book abridgement did regularly appear suggests these bibles were probably being targeted at the devout layman of moderate means for private study or family worship. They were affordable, but substantial enough for family details to be recorded on the end-papers. They were also distinctive among Geneva bibles, first, in being printed in a typeface that was already being overtaken by the roman as more suited to scholarly publications (and in continuing after 1587 to have the older version of the New Testament, even when Laurence Tom- son's revision was being printed in the Geneva quartos in roman type). They also usually had instructions for relative beginners on how to read the scriptures, an inspirational verse ('Of the incomparable treas-

ure'), a catechism, and for a few years after 1579 the abridged version of the Book of Common Prayer which is the subject of this article and which needs to be seen as only one of several selling points for a particular type of purchaser.98

In the mid-1 580s, a different marketing strategy seems to have

been adopted for these abridgements. By that date a growing number

of full-length copies of the Book of Common Prayer, and of the metri-

cs STC 2123, but cf. 2133, 2136, 2157, 2165, 2168, and five more after 1600. % STC 16347 (copy seen BL L.12.e.3(l)), and 2244. 97 See above, nn. 8, 31-2, 34, and below, n. 100. 98 These points are developed in chapter 2 of my Print and Protestantism (tortncoming;, but can readily be deduced from DMH and STC.

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cal psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins which by then were were be- coming much more popular, were being produced in the same format - folio, quarto, or increasingly octavo - and the same typeface as the latest edition of the bible, be it Geneva or Bishops'. By this means, customers could buy and bind together the two or three books they would most need in church or for family devotions. Publishers were as ever alert to the possible existence of a niche among those upper and middling rank men and women who comprised one of the fastest growing sectors of the literate, book-buying public, and the ploy of selling matching sets seems to have worked very well from then until the mid-seventeenth century, and rendered superfluous the insertion of an abridgement in the prefatory material of a bible."

The decision round about 1585 to publish an abridged version of the Prayer Book, not as an integral part. of the preface of some Geneva bibles, but as an independent entity with its own title-page, made perfect commercial sense: people could choose either a full-length or an abridged version of the Prayer Book and keep it separately or have it bound with a quarto bible and/or a copy of the metrical psalms if they wished.100 As the lists by J. R. Hetherington ably demonstrate, this venture proved sufficiently successful to sustain not only regular editions from 1586 to 1603 of what has here been called type B abridgements (which were probably viewed as being perfectly orthodox, though to our eyes they seem mangled in places), but also a revision and the correction of earlier omissions near the start of James's reign (type C2), and then a considerable expansion and diversification of works for the abridgement market in the next three decades.101 In

99 Green, Print and Protestantism, chaps. 2, 4, 9. loo Though many owners did not have them bound into a bible; for two dozen cases of black letter Geneva quartos printed from 1586 to 1615 without an abridged Prayer Book bound in, see STC 2145 (1586), H 190 at CUL, BL 3015.p.7, and STC films reel 1618 (2); 2148 (1588), H197, BL 3005.r.6, and reel 1473(1); 2150 (1589), H199, BL 3035.p.7, and reel 1650(2); 2158 (1592), BL3052.cc.ll; 2161 (1594), H219, H221, and reel 1473(2); 2169 (1597), H234; 2182 (1600), H257 and BL 3005.C.5; 2186 (1602), H269, and BL 3052.cc.12; 2194 (1605), BL 3035.p.8; 2200 (1607), H290; 2201 (1607); H291; 2202 (1608), H293, and BL 1472.b.l; 2203 (1608), H294, and BL 3035.p.3; 2214 (1611), H307; 2232 (1614), BL 3005.b.26; and 2241 (1615), H340. 101 The substance of Hetherington lists 41-72, showing revisions and diversification of abridgements into roman as well as black letter type and into formats other than

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this way, what had begun in 1579 as a speculative development headed in one direction - to please the 'godly* - took quite a different turn and was targeted at a much wider audience from the mid 1580s, and in so doing over the next half century earned the print trade a good deal more money than if it had confined its marketing to a few sheets bound into the preface of selected editions of the Geneva Bible.

Wlio was responsible for the abridgements of 1578-85?

Who was the author of the different abridgements here called types A, B, and C1? Most of the clues point in the direction of a publisher, and much the most likely candidate is the printer and publisher Christo-

pher Barker. With the help of his powerful patron, Sir Francis

Walsingham, Barker was allowed to publish a Geneva New Testament in 1575 and a complete bible in 1576; the 'device' used by Barker on his shopfront and on title-pages incorporated Walsingham's crest - a

tiger's head.102 Through Walsingham and his circle, Barker would have known about the 'godly' preference for the Geneva Bible, and

through the first 'Admonition' and the Troubles... at Franckford of the distaste in some quarters for certain features of the official liturgy. But Barker was ambitious, and in 1577 he became Queen's Printer, after he had apparently paid a 'great sum' to the Clerk of the Privy Council;

by 1578 he had the sole right to print all bibles, Prayer Books, statutes, and proclamations.

At this point Barker must have been casting round for ways to sell as many copies of the new translation as possible, to whatever custom-

ers, old or new, he could find. Sales of Bishops' bibles would continue to churches and institutions, but how could he sell more copies of the Geneva? There were three obvious markets: scholars, for whom the small folios and the quartos in roman typeface and includ-

ing the Tomson revision of the New Testament were probably de-

quarto, was incorporated in STC II. 87-90. As Hetherington was well aware, there

are problems of dating the earlier editions, and of mixed sheets being used in later edi-

tions. More work remains to be done on later abridgements (cf. STC II. 97, and note

prior to entry for 16388a.5), but meanwhile the Hetherington lists remain the best

guide we have. »02 DMH, nos. 141, 143, and cf. nos. 144, 146, 148, 153, and 156 for other works

produced by Barker in the late 1570s incorprating Walsingham's crest; Calderwood,

'Elizabethan Protestant press', 211.

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signed; schoolboys and undergraduates, for whom the octavos (in roman again) were ideal; and the laity for whom the quartos in black letter with lots of helps to domestic study and worship were tailor- made.103 At this point Barker might even have asked one of his 'godly' contacts in the Walsingham circle to go through a copy of the abridged Prayer Book in the preface of a Bishops' quarto and mark objectionable words or sections.

But setting up the very long texts of several new editions of the Bible was an expensive business, tying up a lot of equipment and capital. Accuracy was also of the essence in printing the scriptures -

printers of faulty bibles faced heavy fines - so that corners could not be cut, and Barker later claimed that he had laid out the enormous sum of £3,000 in eighteen months in setting up new editions of the Bible in the late 1570s.104 By 1580, therefore, Barker was deeply committed both to selling as many copies as possible and to keeping his

privileges: premature loss of them would have spelt instant ruin. Barker kept his nose clean, and in the 1580s and 1590s he was suffi-

ciently well regarded by conformists such as John Whitgift, Richard Bancroft, and Hadrian Saravia to be entrusted with publishing their works, while 'godly' authors like Edward Dering, John Dod, and Robert Cleaver, and many others were by then going to publishers like Thomas Man, Thomas Woodcock, and Lucas Harrison, and the more extreme to someone like Robert Waldegrave, who probably printed a number of the Marprelate tracts.105

The timing of the appearance of type A fits neatly with this hy- pothesis: it appeared shortly after Barker had taken over publishing all bibles and prayer books, in 1578, and was perhaps contemplating providing an alternative to the Prayer Book abridgements that had been

published by his predecessor, Jugge, in Bishops' bibles in the mid 1570s. The modifications in type B a few months later in 1579, which it has been suggested was intended to be orthodox, and the first appearance in 1580 of a type C1, due to more careful copying from a

Bishops' quarto abridgement, were probably a reflection of Barker's

103 These points will be developed fully in Green, Print and Protestantism, chap. 2. For Barker's early career, see McKerrow, Dictionary, 19-20. 104 Calderwood, 'Elizabethan Protestant press', 212. 105 Green, Print and Protestantism, chap. 1 .

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concern to proceed carefully as far as the authorities were concerned. By the mid 1580s, Barker seems to have been ready to try a different tack - to widen the market for abridgements by publishing them as separate items, not just to accompany Geneva black letter quartos, but to go with any quarto, or a folio or octavo, or even to be used inde- pendently of a bible by those wishing the cheapest Prayer Book possible.

Once the twin streams of full-length and abridged Prayer Books were established, Barker stopped printing them himself in 1587, and

stopped printing bibles in 1588, leaving both to deputies or assigns, presumably to leave himself more time for new works at a time of

growing political excitement.106 Type C2 was probably the work of Barker's son and successor, Robert, who resumed personal control of the printing of bibles and Prayer Books on his father's death in 1599, and who in 1603 would certainly have been revising the text of the

full-length Prayer Book at those points where references to Elizabeth' and 'Queen' had to give way to ones to 'James' and 'King', as well as

adding the supplementary section to the catechism revised in 1604.107 And he would certainly have been maintaining his father's entrepre- neurial approach when he started to produce abridged Prayer Books in roman as well as black letter, and in folio and octavo as well as quarto, for sale with the different types and sizes of Authorized Version and 'Sternhold and Hopkins' then being produced.

The wider implications of this episode

The inclusion of a shortened version of the Book of Common Prayer in the prefaces of some Geneva bibles between 1579 and 1585 was never the prime reason for a member of the public buying a copy of a

particular edition: it was merely a useful adjunct. Moreover, in origin the type A abridgement was probably little more than a commercial

experiment by an enterprising publisher, and a short-lived one at that. Even so, the episode is not without wider significance. Two of the central principles of the Elizabethan settlement - comprehension and

uniformity - were extremely hard to reconcile, and Barker's experiment and subsequent return to orthodoxy confirm how hard it was

106 STC 2147 and 2148 seqq.; and 16311.9 and 16312 seqq. 107 STC II. 95-6, and nos 16,325 seqq.

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and would continue to be to find an agreed middle ground on liturgical matters.108

Above all, however, the story shows the way in which the print trade was flexing its muscles and seeking new outlets in the second half of the sixteenth and first decades of the seventeenth century. It may be true, as Tom Parker said many years ago, that the Elizabethan settlement 'catered for an as yet non-existent demand'.109 But if one looks at the huge production, and presumably therefore sales too, of both full-length and abridged Prayer Books in the early seventeenth

century, or if one examines the role of the Book of Common Prayer in the evolution of a distinctive and very widely disseminated form of

Anglicanism that was apparently strong at many levels under the later Stuarts and early Hanoverians and still strong in the nineteenth cen-

tury, one cannot doubt that by then, at least, the demand for Prayer Books was very much in existence.110 Men like Whitchurch, Seres, Cawood, Jugge, and the Barkers had all helped to create that demand, even if their motives for doing so owed less to their being among the

godly than to their adoption of the idea that 'the Lord helps those who

help themselves'.

Trans. Camb. Bib. Soc. XI:3 (1998)

108 Parker, 'Problem of uniformity*, 51-2, 55; and cf. Ratcliff, 'Puritan alternatives', 80-1. »09 Ibid., 51. 110 Green, Print and Protestantism, chaps. 4-5; J. Maltby, Prayer Book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998), passim; C. J. Stranks, Anglican Devotion (1961), chap. 6; W. M. Jacob, Lay people and religion in the early eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1996), 52-63, 102-3; and F. Knight, Vie nineteenth-century church and English society (Cambridge, 1996), 37, 42-6.

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'PURITAN PRAYER BOOKS' AND 'GENEVA BIBLES': AN EPISODE IN ELIZABETHAN PUBLISHING

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