But in any case his nonconformity in the matter of kneeling did not keep Knox from attaining a prominent place among the leaders of his time, for in December, 1551, six months after he had been stationed at Newcastle, he was appointed one of King Edward the Sixth's chaplains, who were six in number, and all of whom were selected because they were "accounted the most zealous and ready preachers of that time." This preferment was a recognition of the ability which Knox had shown. It added much to his consideration and weight in the social scale, while it gave him an opportunity of making his influence felt in ecclesiastical affairs in a manner which has left its mark on the English Prayer-Book even until the present day. To understand how this came about, it is needful to bear in mind that the Second or Revised Book of Common Prayer was completed at the press in August, 1552, and had been appointed by the Parliament of that year to come into use in the churches on the first day of November. Into that book had been reintroduced from the "order of communion," published in 1548,[3] {47} the injunction that the people should receive the bread and wine "kneeling." That had, indeed, been the accustomed posture before, but no instruction for its observance had been contained in the First Prayer-Book published in 1549. There the directions are thus given: "Then shall the priest first receive the communion in both kinds himself, and next deliver it to other ministers, if any be there present (that they may be ready to help the chief minister), and after to the people." But in the two years immediately following the publication of that First Prayer-Book, discussion on the posture at the Lord's Table had been brought up, and as Cranmer, Ridley, and the most of the other Reforming Bishops were opposed to the views and practices of Knox, Hooper, and others, they deemed it advisable to foreclose debate and put an end to diversity of order by an authoritative injunction. For this purpose, in the Prayer-Book in 1552 the rubric was made to read thus: "Then shall the minister first receive the communion in both kinds himself, and next deliver it to the other {48} ministers, if any be there present (that they may help the chief minister), and after to the people, in their hands, kneeling." Thus it came about that what had been left undefined in the former book was expressly limited in the new one; and, therefore, though in other respects the latter was much more in harmony with the sentiments of Knox, it was in this less tolerant than the former. When, therefore, Knox was appointed to preach before the king in the autumn of that year, having probably seen one of the first-issued copies of the book, he took occasion to enter fully into the discussion of the mode of administering the communion, and his discourse was not without immediate effect, for in a letter of John Utenhovius to Henry