Men like Grindal and Jewel took no exception to this proviso, which they
certainly would have done had they believed that it ordained the actual
use in time of public worship, of the ornaments used in the second year
of King Edward. The interpretation they gave to the proviso is seen from
a letter from Sandys to Parker (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury),
written two days after the Act of Uniformity had passed the Lords. He
says:
"The last book of service has gone through with a proviso to retain
the ornaments which were used in the first and second year of King
Edward, until it please the Queen to take other order for them. Our
gloss upon the text is that we shall not be enforced to use them,
but that others in the meantime shall not convey them away, but
that they may remain for the Queen."[567]
Sandys and others understood the proviso to mean that recalcitrant
clergy like the Warden of Manchester, who carried his consecrated
vestments to Ireland, were not to make off with the ornaments, and that
churchwardens or patrons were not to confiscate them for their private
use. They were property belonging to the Queen, and to be retained until
her Majesty's pleasure was known. The whole history of the visitations
goes to prove that Sandys' interpretation of the proviso was that of its
framers.
When the Prayer-Book was actually printed it was found to contain some
differences from the Edwardine Book of 1552 besides those mentioned in
the Act as the only ones to be admitted; and early editions have not
always the same changes. But the one thing of importance was a rubric
which, on what seems to be the only possible interpretation, enjoins the
use in public worship of the ornaments (_i.e._ the vestments) in use in
the second year of King Edward.[568] How this rubric got into the
Prayer-Book it is impossible to say. It certainly was not enacted by the
Queen "with assent of Lords and Commons." We have no proof that it was
issued by the Privy Council.[569] The use and wont of the Church of
England during the period of the Elizabethan settlement was as if this
rubric had never existed. It is directly contradicted by the thirtieth
Injunction issued for the Royal Visitation of 1559.[570] It was not
merely contemptuously ignored by the Elizabethan Bishops; they compelled
their clergy, if compulsion was needed, to act in defiance of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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