Act of Uniformity 1552

The Act of Uniformity 1552 was enacted by Edward VI of England to supersede his previous act of 1549.(Bray:281) It was one of the last steps taken by the 'boy king' and his councillors to make England a more Protestant country before his death the following year. It replaced the Book of Common Prayer authorised by the Act of Uniformity 1549 with a revised and more clearly Protestant version. Cranmer, the principal author of both the 1549 and 1552 versions of the liturgy maintained that there was no theological difference between the two.(MacCulloch:87)

Anyone who attended or administered a service where this liturgy was not used faced six months imprisonment for a first offence, one year for a second offence, and life for a third. This Act was repealed by Mary in 1553.

Liturgical changes

The Edwardine reformation represented a combination of moderate reformed theology with relatively traditional structures of the ministry and church government which were justified at the time by an appeal to the Early Church before Romish errors had corrupted it.(Neill:72,120)

Transubstantiation has already been implicitly by the elimination from the 1549 rite of both the elevation of the host and the "shewing of the Sacrament to the people" during the prayer of consecration.(Gibson:223). However late in 1552 after the new prayer book had passed through Parliament, John Knox launched a strong attack on the requirement to kneel to receive communion, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer persuaded the Privy Council to retain the practice and the Council approved a declaration in its defense which is commonly known as the "Black Rubric" which was pasted into the earliest printed editions on a slip of paper.(MacCulloch:101)

The details of the liturgical changes and history are discussed at length in the article on the Book of Common Prayer

Mary I's reforms and Elizabeth I's restorations

After Edward VI's death, his sister Mary I proceeded to bring the English clergy back under the auspices of the Catholic Church. She repealed all her brother's religious laws and imprisoned the country's leading Protestant clerics. In addition, she had her mother's marriage to Henry VIII declared valid. Later on, her husband Philip II of Spain persuaded Parliament to repeal all of Henry VIII's religious laws, thereby returning England to the control of the Church in Rome.(Williams:91)

When Mary I died in 1558 and her sister Elizabeth came to the throne, Catholic clergy sought to block her wish to make reforms that would turn the Church in England back in the direction of Protestantism. Elizabeth was fortunate in that many of the bishoprics of the country were vacant, which meant that the remaining bishops could not outvote the lay members of the House of Lords who supported reform. A new Act of Uniformity was passed in 1559; Mary I's heresy laws were also repealed, in order to make punishments for violating the Act less severe.(Williams:451ff) The Church of England then started to use the 1552 Book of Common Prayer with a few more traditional modifications (notably the omission of the "Black Rubric)".

For more details of the further history of this act see Act of Uniformity 1549.

References

• Bray, Gerald, ed. Documents of the English Reformation. Cambridge: James Clark & Sons(1994). 
• Gibson, E.C.S.. The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI. London: J.M. Dent & Sons(1964). 
• MacCulloch, Diarmid. The Boy King. Berkeley. 
• Neill, Stephen. Anglicanism. London: Pelican(1960). 
• Williams, Penry. The Later Tudors. London.