January 2008

Parish History Episode 81- The 1549 Prayer Book

It was the Sixth Sunday after Easter, in the Year 1549. The bells were ringing, in the tower of the old Norman church in Houghton-le-Spring, and many, perhaps most, maybe even all, of the villagers were walking along narrow tracks leading to the muddy Broadway, with the church on one side and the rectory on the other. They greeted each other affably, and then moved up the footpath to the church porch. Many, perhaps most, of them had walked up that path three days ago, on the previous Thursday, which had been Ascension Day.

They entered the church, cleansed themselves with a sprinkling of holy water from the stoup beside the door, moved inside, and seated themselves upon the benches which stood in serried rows across the width of the church. Once the church had been a large space, empty of fixed furnishings, and people leant against the sandstone pillars, or brought their own crackets - wooden stools, such as coal miners used to crouch upon while they attacked the coal face with their picks - with them. But now, for the last hundred years or so, benches had been provided for the comfort of the congregation.

They heard the service of the Mass beginning, in the chancel, behind the rood screen, but they took no part in it. Some just sat there, resting after a hard week’s work. Others worked through their prayers, telling off the beads on their rosaries. Some, who perhaps did not possess rosaries, just sat, and gaped at the representations of devils and angels in the painted murals on the wall, or in the bright colours of the stained-glass windows. Some left their seats, and moved towards the statuettes of saints standing on the window ledges or on tables, lit candles before them, and prayed to them for favours or for forgiveness.

Very few had books of any sort with them. Some pious old lady had perhaps brought a Book of Hours with her, or a written collection of prayers, and made use of it for her private devotions.

Many, perhaps most, of the congregation could not read. But some of those who could stood around the chained Bible at the back of the church - a very recent innovation - and either read it at the page at which it was open, or found a passage that appealed to them, and then read it in whispered tones to each other, perhaps even commented upon it...

Although they tried to speak quietly, every now and then somebody would whisper a request to them to keep their voices down. These requests became more urgent as the climax of the Mass approached.

On the other side of the rood screen, the “professionals” were at work, saying the Mass, for the benefit of all, and particularly for the benefit of the congregation present at that service. Rector Franklin’s curate, the priest in charge of the parish, took the lead. Some other priests may have been present with him, together with some servants from the Rectory, men in minor orders, and some altar-boys who assisted the priest at the Mass. These boys were also servants, but they had been placed in the curate’s charge so that they could have an education of sorts, would learn to read and write, and would learn some Latin, and would perhaps eventually go on to ordination, and perhaps become priests themselves.

(There were several men-servants present in the chancel, as well as maid-servants with the congregation in the nave : but this does not mean that the curate lived in great luxury. Most of these hirelings worked out of doors, on the priest’s glebe farm, and were not in personal attendance upon him.)

But at this time on a Sunday, they had come in from the fields, and were helping their master, rapidly mumbling the uncomprehended Latin words of the Mass, and assisting the priest in various ways.

The people on the other side of the screen could barely hear them, and for three good reasons could not understand them : they spoke too low, they spoke too fast, and they spoke in an alien language, which the people did not comprehend.

The people did not understand the words, but they did know that it was imperative that they should be present. It was said to be a mortal sin not to hear Mass on a Sunday. And the important part of the Mass, for them, was the moment of Elevation, when an altar-boy rang the sacring bell to attract their attention, and the priest stood up, before the High Altar, his back to the congregation, and held up high the Host that he had just consecrated, so that all could see and adore.

In the last few years, this moment had come to dominate the service even more, because, now that other features had been added, it had become more predictable. Now that there was an authorised translation of the Bible into English, one of the priest’s assistants would step out of the chancel, when the time for reading the Epistle or the Gospel came, to read it out in English to the people in the nave.

He did so now. The lady with her book of prayers laid it down upon her knee, to listen to the Word of God. The young men standing around the chained Bible looked up, and listened for a while. And, after the reading of the lections for that day were concluded, the people knew that it was getting close to the time for the sacring bell to be rung, when they would all be expected to kneel and to adore.

The Service moved on. Expectation was growing. Then the sacring bell was rung. Everyone looked up, and turned their attention towards the chancel. There they saw the priest, his back towards them, lifting up the Consecrated Host high in the air. The people all knelt, and gazed in silent adoration.

The priest gave Communion to his assistants, and perhaps to a few members of the congregation who had confessed to him the previous evening. The other worshippers crossed themselves, silently said some prayers, and then returned to what they had been doing before the Elevation. A few perhaps showed where their priorities lay, by leaving the church and returning to their normal life.

But the Liturgy was coming to an end. The “professionals” in the chancel completed their duties, and the priest turned to face the congregation, and tell them, “Ite·; missa est” (Go; it is over), to which was added (in Latin), “The Lord be with you”; and “Thanks be to God”. The people may not have known Latin, but they did understand this as their permission to depart.

They all trooped out of the church, and some of them immediately departed for their homes. Others stood about on the Broadway, gossiping about various matters. In particular, many wondered what sort of service they would be having on the following Sunday, Whitsunday.

Some tried to ask the priest’s wife what she knew. She had until a couple of years ago been the priest’s housekeeper, and, as everybody knew, his mistress. But now, at last, she was legally married to her partner, and was proud of her new status. She told her husband’s parishioners that there was indeed going to be a totally different form of service from next Sunday, and a load of new printed books had arrived, carried on a pack-horse from Durham, and that her husband was studying them, and preparing for Whitsunday. The whole service, she said, would be in English, and there would be lots of changes.

All that which I have written above is of course speculation. I have imagined what it must have been like on that last Sunday before the new, English-language prayer-book came into use, on Whitsunday, 1549.

If however Rector Franklin’s curate carried out his duties faithfully, in accordance with the instructions laid down in “the Booke of the Common Prayer and Administracion of the Sacramentes”, we know how the service would have been celebrated on the Day of Pentecost that year.

The people would have arrived for Mass, probably a little early. The church-wardens had asked them to come in good time, as there would need to be some explanations given. When they arrived, they found the churchwardens and parish clerk waiting. As the people seated themselves, the lay officers moved around, preparing them for the changes which were about to occur. They were instructed that, when the priest said “The Lord be with you” to them, they were to reply, “And with thy spirit”. The people repeated the phrase, and looked around.

In front of them they could see a wooden table, covered with a white linen cloth, and with a few liturgical vessels standing upon it. They realised that the whole service, including the Consecration, was going to be carried out in front of their eyes.

The bells which had been ringing in the tower above them ceased, and the people sat expectantly in silence. Then the priest entered, from the vestry, accompanied by several assistants in minor orders. The priest was clad, as normal, in a white alb and a brightly-coloured cope, his assistants in albs and tunicles. The priest halted (“afore the middes of the altar”, according to the printed book:; this presumably meant between the altar and the people), faced the people, and addressed them in their own language, saying the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect for Purity. Further prayers and collects followed, some of them in the form of a dialogue between the priest and the parish clerk, and then two Lessons - the Epistle and the Gospel - were read out, aloud, in English, and in a normal speaking voice, to the whole church. Then the congregation were invited to say the Nicene Creed, chanting it along with the priest (they were meant to have learned it off by heart, some months earlier), but they were probably too shy to join in properly.

Then a collection was taken up, the worshippers contributing a few pennies towards the expense of running their parish church. This was nothing new, and people expected a collection to be a part of a church service.

The priest now came forward (or occupied the pulpit if there was one), and he might have preached a sermon, based perhaps on one of the Bible lessons which had just been read. The sermon would, naturally enough, be in English : that had always been the case. Sermons had begun to become a fairly normal part of the Mass during the previous century, delivered normally by the parish priest, or by one of his curates.

Sometimes, however, pardoners (usually laymen) arrived with Indulgences to sell, and they would normally be given the use of the pulpit; and would probably be expected to pay part of their takings to the parish. The benches had probably been installed in Houghton church at much the same time as preaching began to be seen as a normal accompaniment to the Mass - that is, about the start or middle of the Fifteenth Century.

Pardoners were now, of course, a thing of the past. Even in those lands which remained obedient to the Roman Papacy, the decrees of the Council of Trent, which had just begun, in 1545, put an end to the disgraceful practices which had caused the original rift between Luther and Tetzel.

The Council of Trent also greatly encouraged preaching, so sermons were becoming more common in both Catholic and Protestant Europe. On this day, the first day of the new Liturgy, the curate would almost certainly have preached, in order to explain the new service, and the many other innovations coming into the life of the Church. But amongst the books delivered to him by pack-horse from Durham, there was a copy of “the Book of Homilies”, which gave him access to printed copies of model sermons, and very probably he preferred to use these on many Sundays, which would also keep him safe from official criticism - as he would be keeping to “the letter of the book”.

After the sermon was concluded, some very wordy stretches of the service followed, while the people sat and listened, and wondered what it was all about. It was all in English, but it was largely “beyond them”. It was, however, the heart of the service - the Prayer of Consecration.

Then the congregation were invited to take a part in the service. First of all, everyone joined in saying the Lord’s Prayer in English (this had already been taught to the people), and then came the General Confession, probably spoken by the parish clerk on behalf of all those present, for they had not yet learned it, and the Absolution.

The priest then knelt down, and said the Prayer of Humble Access, while the churchwardens began marshalling the people to come up towards the Table, and there kneel down. Communion was then administered to them. The priest gave each of them a Consecrated Wafer, which he placed upon their tongue. That was familiar from the old rite.

But what followed was very new. The priest’s assistants, bearing chalices of Consecrated Wine, followed him along the line of kneeling communicants, and gave each of them a sip. For nearly five hundred years, in the Western Church, the Wine - the Blood of Christ - had not been permitted to the common people. It had been for the Communion of the priest alone.

The climax of the service had been reached. There were more collects to follow, but after having been allowed to communicate fully, in Body and in Blood, the people perhaps hardly noticed.

The Service ended. Plenty of people left the church grumbling about how it all seemed silly, and asked what was wrong with the old service. If George Swallowell, a Houghton man who was to die in Durham in 1594 as a Catholic martyr, was present that day, as a child (he would not then be old enough to have been con-firmed), it might well be that he was one of those who were not favourably impressed.

But others there were who left their parish church that Whitsunday morning, feeling as if the Second Coming had arrived. They felt that they had, at long last, been present at a service where they had not been doled out simply a small token of the Promise of Immortality, but had joined with their priest, and all their fellows, in a Sacrament of Unity, with the whole worldwide Church of God, with all who had lived, and all who would live.

Having spoken the words of the service, they felt themselves part of the whole Body of Christ, not simply as individual recipients of a small part of the Grace of God.

But, probably, in Houghton, the grumblers were in the majority.

Dick Toy

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