Making of the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637

THE history of the worship of the Scottish reformed church' begins in the 155os, at a time when the liturgical position among English -speaking reformers was quite unstable. In England the first inroads on the unreformed, Latin service had been made only a very few years earlier, with the introduction, towards the end of Henry VIII's reign, of English lessons and an English litany. Under Edward VI there came in 1548 the English Order of Communion (to be inserted in the Latin mass) and in 1549 the first Book of Common Prayer, followed in little more than three years by a second. Edward's second book was the most protestant of Anglican liturgies, but even so it was not wholly satisfactory to the growing body of puritan opinion and there were already rumours of a third instalment of reform before the king died in 1553 During Mary Tudor's reign the leftward trend continued in the congregations of English- speaking exiles on the continent. Even the more conservative among them, who -if only out of loyalty to their brethren who were being martyred in England- wished to adhere in general to the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, were not disposed to insist on the book in its entirety. A more radical faction, after some of their number had been worsted in a conflict with the `conservatives' at Frankfort, concentrated in Geneva. This party deliberately rejected the Prayer Book, and their service -book, originally composed at Frankfort and in 1556 printed for their use at Geneva, was on distinctly reformed lines