which might be returned to the owners, "so that the sentences of invocation or praier to Sainctes, be blotted or clearlie put out of the same.' In this state, so blotted, is almost every copy which remains of those Prymers.

Queen Mary, on her accession, called in and so far as she was able completed the destruction of all copies of the old books, which according to the edicts of previous reigns had been mutilated, erased, and injured." This unquestionably sprung from a desire to prevent the use in parish churches of defaced and imperfect copies, for by the same enactment all parishes were required to furnish themselves with new complete books, as the Service stood in the last year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth. But the effect was, that to this cause we must attribute, in its degree, a further and not inconsiderable loss of those volumes which, although injured, had yet been spared.

But fast as probably for a time the press worked, to supply the wants of so many thousand parishes, in which the ancient Forms and Offices were to be restored, it was for a time only, and a short time: within five years Elizabeth ascended the throne of England, and the reformed Prayer Book was established as the ritual of her Church, and has so continued to the present time.

Neither is there much difficulty in accounting for the loss of the reprints of Queen Mary's time: no energy and activity in the three or four years which intervened, could have supplied a tenth part of those

90 Burns. Eccles. Law. Art. Public Worship. Gibson. Codex. Tit. xi. Cap. 1.

which had been destroyed. Yet these have in like manner perished, and from the same causes. Commissions of inquiry were issued soon after Elizabeth's purpose had been decided on, or her way clear before her; and orders to deliver up all such superstitious books that they might be destroyed. To cite no more instances, take three from the Collectanea Curiosa.91 One, directed to All Soul's college, with a schedule of Mass Books, Grailes, and Antiphons in their possession. Another, of which Humfrey, President of Magdalen, was a chief and we may suppose how active an agent, aimed at the few copies which had been retained: "Missals, Books, Crosses, and such other idolatrous and superstitious monuments." And a third, to the same effect: "Another order from the same."

No more seems necessary to be cited by way of adding to these royal and parliamentary edicts. Yet one, forty years later, must not be omitted. This is the act, 3rd. James. 1. Cap. 5. It is sufficient to mention it merely, and that it recites several books named in the statute above, 3rd & 4th Edv. vi. with the addition of some three or four later publications; Rosaries, Lady-Psalters, and Catechisms, which are no part of my subject. All "to be burned."

I am bound to say, that having been begun by the one party, the practice of destroying service books was not neglected by the other. An order was soon issued by Queen Mary's council, against "certain heretical books," among which particularly were "the Schismatical Communion Book" and "the English Ordinal." These were to be destroyed and burnt

91 Vol. 2. Nos. xxij. xxv. xxvj.

throughout the realm. Strype, by the way, in quoting this, quietly confounds suspect translations of the old and new Testament, with the Holy Bible, as if that was ordered to be burnt.92

There can be no doubt whatever that orders were not only issued, but acted on, and zealously obeyed. When men spared not holy and solemn buildings,93

92 Memorials of Cranmer. p. 348.

93 Willis, in his Mitred Abbies, gives the following account sent to Cromwell of the destruction of the magnificent church of Lewes in Sussex, taken from a book in the Cottonian library.

"Sussex. March 24. 1538. "My Lord, I humbly commend to your Lordship. The last I wrote to your Lordship was the 20th day of this present month, by the hands of Mr. Williamson: by the which I advertised your Lordship of the length and greatness of this church, and sale: we had begun to pull the whole down to the ground, and what manner and fashion they used in pulling it down. I told your Lordship of a vault on the right side of the high Altar that was borne with four pillars, having about it five Chapels. All this is down, Thursday and Friday last. Now we are plucking down an higher vault, borne up by four thick and gross pillars. This shall down for our second work. We brought from London seventeen persons, 3 Car

penters, 2 Smiths, 2 Plummers, and one that keepeth the furnace : every one of these attendeth to his own office: ten of them heweth the walls about, among the which are the three carpenters. These made props to underset where the other cut away. The other break and cut the walls. These are men exercised much better than other men that we find here in the country. [May we not hope that the country people refused to be partakers of their sin?] Wherefore we must both have more men and other things also that we have need of. By month a Tuesday, they begun to cast the lead, and it shall be done with such diligence and saving as may be. So that our trust is, that your Lordship shall be much satisfied with what we do. Your Lordship's servant, John Portmarus." Vol. ii. Appendix. p. 26.

Surely the pious brethren of the monasteries in those unhappy times must have remembered, and sorrowfully repeated in the ears of the most High, the prophetic words, "Thine adversaries roar

and altars dedicated to the most high God, and the

bodies of the dead, it is not to be supposed (though we had no evidence) that books should have been