Act of Uniformity

Four Acts of Parliament that established orthodoxy within the Church of England, i.e. forced people to accept the forms and manners for church services that are set out in the Book of Common Prayer.

Act of Uniformity 1549

The Act of Uniformity in 1549 defined the Book of Common Prayers as the only legal form of worship. Any clergyman who did not comply and held a different kind of church service lost all his lands and status.

Act of Uniformity 1552

The Act of Uniformity 1552 was enacted by Edward VI in order to make England firmly Protestant. The old Book of Common Prayer was replaced with a revised, more Protestant version. Anyone who attended a church service that did not follow the forms and manners set out in this book could be imprisoned.

Act of Uniformity 1559

In 1558, Elizabeth I succeeded her sister, Mary I, who had re-catholicised the country. Elizabeth restored the Book of Common Prayer, slightly revising the version of 1552. Famously, Elizabeth did not want to "make windows into men's hearts", but she expected outward conformity, not least because religion and politics were intertwined: as queen, she was also head of the Church of England. This is one reason why it became mandatory to attend church service at least once a week. However, Elizabeth's book of Common Prayer made it easier for Catholics to conform because it acknowledged the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The question whether bread and wine really turn into the flesh and blood of Christ (or whether this is just symbolic or an act of remembrance) is an important point of contention between Roman Catholicism and different Protestant confessions.

Act of Uniformity 1662

The Act of Uniformity of 1662 was an Act of Parliament for the Uniformity of public prayers and the administration of sacraments, rites, ceremonies as well as for establishing the form of making, ordaining and consecrating bishops, priests and deacons in the Church of England. This required the use of the rites, ceremonies and church services as stated in the Book of Common Prayers. More than two thousand clergymen left the church as they rejected to accept the above-mentioned conditions. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 was one of the four statutes of the Clarendon Code and marked the time known by Puritans as the "Great Ejection".

Sources

• "Book of Common Prayer." Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Book-of-Common-Prayer.
• Cannon, John Ashton: The Oxford Companion to British history.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Jowitt, William A. The Dictionary of English Law. London: Sweet and Maxwell Publications, 1965.
• Wade, Emlyn Capel Stewart Capel Stewart. Constitutional Law - an Outline of the Law and Practice of the Constitution, including administrative law, English local government, the constitutional relations of the British Commonwealth and Empire and the Church of England. London: Longmans Publishing, 1948.