The service books owe as much to the one university: it is the ‘Cambridge mind’ which sets its seal on these formularies. The Cambridge scholars were the best prepared men: Cranmer knew more about liturgies than any one among the reformers; no one but Andrewes was the equal of the catholic divines in patristic knowledge. The prayer book as it stands is in the main Cranmer’s work; Cox and Grindal were on the Windsor Commission which compiled the Communion service in the first Prayer-book of 1549. Nine years later Elizabeth entrusted the revision of Edward VI.’s 1552 Prayer-book to Parker, and Cox and Sir Thomas Smith were among the revisers. In the final revision of 1660 Cosin rendered great services; and even when the still-born attempt was made to revise the liturgy in the reign of William and Mary, the task was once more assigned to Cambridge men, Tenison, and Patrick who was set to mutilate the collects. The Articles of Religion in their original form and number were the work of Cranmer, their reduction to Thirty-nine was the work of another Cambridge primate, Parker.[403] Whitgift drew up for Elizabeth the famous “Lambeth Articles”; and when the vexed subject of the Athanasian creed agitated the ecclesiastical commission of 1689 as it is agitating the national Church now--then, as now, when Cambridge heads of houses, professors of divinity, and deans and tutors of colleges have signed a declaration in favour of its excision from the public services, two Cambridge men protested--the one against its retention, the other against its unqualified damnatory clauses.[404] Dryden had already made a similar protest. Long however before the reformers had a free hand, Burleigh in his retirement in Lincolnshire had jotted down the names of the eight learned men most fit to carry out the Reform and to settle its formularies when a Protestant queen should succeed. Seven of these men hailed from Cambridge.[405] [Sidenote: The Cambridge martyrs.]