"'This year' [1547] says a contemporary, 'the Archbishop of Canterbury [Cranmer] did eat meat openly in Lent in the hall of Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christian country.' This significant act was followed by a rapid succession of sweeping changes. The legal prohibitions of Lollardry were removed; the Six Articles were repealed; a royal injunction removed all pictures and images from the churches; priests were permitted to marry; the new communion which had taken the place of the mass was ordered to be administered in both kinds, and in the English tongue; an English Book of Common Prayer, the Liturgy, which with slight alterations is still used in the Church of England, replaced the missal and breviary, from which its contents are mainly drawn; a new catechism embodied the doctrines of Cranmer and his friends; and a Book of Homilies compiled in the same sense was appointed to be read in churches. ... The power of preaching was restricted by the issue of licenses only to the friends of the Primate. ... The assent of the nobles about the Court was won by the suppression of chantries and religious guilds, and by glutting their greed with the last spoils of the Church. German and Italian mercenaries were introduced to stamp out the wider popular discontent which broke out in the East, in the West, and in the Midland counties. ... The rule of the upstart nobles who formed the Council of Regency became simply a rule of terror. 'The greater part of the people,' one of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, 'is not in favour of defending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries, the greater part of the nobles who absent themselves from court, all the bishops save three or four, almost all the judges and lawyers, almost all the justices of the peace, the priests who can move their flocks any way; for the whole of the commonalty is in such a state of irritation that it will easily follow any stir towards change.' But with their triumph over the revolt, Cranmer and his colleagues advanced yet more boldly in the career of innovation. ... The Forty-two Articles of Religion, which were now [1552] introduced, though since reduced by omissions to thirty-nine, have remained to this day the formal standard of doctrine in the English Church." _J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 7, section 1._ ALSO IN: _J. Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, book 2._ _G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of Church of England, volume 2, book 1._ _L. Von Ranke, History of England, book 2, chapter 6._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1548. First Act for encouragement of Newfoundland fisheries. See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578. ENGLAND: A. D. 1553. The right of succession to the throne, on the death of Edward VI.