The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

It was characteristic of this regime to bring in starker changes under cover of moderation and traditionalism, and then, having offered reform, to attempt to suppress the diversity and license which that reform had encouraged. So the very first Act of Edward's first Parliament was against revilers of the sacrament of the altar, and for communion to be received by all, laity as well as clergy, in the two kinds, of bread and wine. For lay people to receive the consecrated wine was a radical change. Such a change was likely to encourage the 'human and corrupt curiosity', speculation of th grossest kind, into the nature of Christ's presence in the sacrament, which the first part of that Act condemned. All the while Archbishop Cranmer was working towards presenting the people with a new understanding of the way which they should worship their God.
Human corruption and mutability had perverted divine service, as it did every creation of man, observed Cranmer. The task he now set himself was to create, by drawing upon the great variety of rites and uses through England and from the Catholic tradition of Western Christendom, a single, uniform liturgy, in English. Following St Paul, Cranmer asked how the people could 'say Amen to that they understand not?' And Cranmer's intent was more ambitious still. The people must be brought to a proper understanding of their relationship with God in the central, most mysterious, sacrament: the Eucharist. Cranmer's private belief had been changing; not always in concert with the official orthodoxy taunted him for his ambiguity: 'What believe you, and how do you believe, my lord?' Bishop Bonner asked him. Cranmer would insist at his trial in 1555 that he had only ever held two beliefs regarding the Eucharist. He had moved away from the strict doctrine of transsubstantiation during the 1530s and, after 1546, believed in the spiritual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Now he intended to enshrine that belief in the new Order of Communion which was to be universally imposed from Whitsun 1549. Believing firmly that a propitiatory sacrifice had been offered once, and once only, by Christ on the Cross, Cranmer in his new rite sought to remove any implication that the priest was offering a propitiatory sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, here really present in the form of bread and wine. The Mass was not now to be understood as a good work to remit the sins of those for whom it was offered, living and dead. Instead of a sacrifice, the Communion was a celebration, according to Gospel precept, 'a perpetual memory of that His precious death until His coming again'; a sacrifice instead of praise and thanksgiving. No one should doubt Christ's presence in spirit in the sacrament. To all who believe:

He hath left in those holy mysteries, as a pledge of His love, and a continual remembrance of the same, His own blessed body, and precious blood, for us to feed upon spiritually, to our endless comfort and consolation.

But the loss of the elevation at the sacring (the moment of greatest power and benediction), of the pax, of the sharing of holy bread; the obliteration of the great cycle of feast days dedicated to the celestial army of saints; the use of English instead of Latin; and the clear reforming impulse which lay behind the new rite, made the Book of Common Prayer an abomination to all of conservative mind. How many were of conservative mind is uncertain, but perhaps most of the population were, as Cranmer well knew. That the language of the services was so direct, so beautiful, so perfectly suited to the expression of things mysterious that it would last for centuries, could mean nothing at all to parishioners whom it left bereft and bewildered. In Yorkshire, Robert Parkyn, a conservative priest, angrily lamented the loss of the elevation of the elements, of 'adoration, or reservation in the pyx'. The pyx, containing the blessed sacrament reserved, hanging above the altar, had been the focus of popular eucharistic devotion. To many, the new service was blasphemous and absurd; 'a Yule lark', a 'Christmas game', and in various communities its imposition precipitated revolt. The Western rebels' tone was peremptory and vengeful:

We will have the sacrament hang over the high altar and there to be worshipped as it was wont to be, and they which will not thereto consent we will have them die like heretics against the holy Catholic faith.

Yet their rebellious energies were dissipated by a long and fruitless siege at Exeter, and their rising was brutally put down. Their priestly leaders were hanged in chains from the steeples of their churches. The spirit of revolt may have died in the South-West but not, surely, the spirit of inward resistance to the religious changes. The rising's overthrow could not be credited to the Protector's adept intervention, so his opponents in the Privy Council judged.