English Rite e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The Introduction is not an attempt to write once again the history of the Book of Common Prayer. Primarily and for the most part it is concerned with sources, as a key and a supplement to the first column of the Synopsis. Conse quently, I have endeavoured, as shortly as may be, to indicate the ritual situation in which the English book originated, and those in which it was further modified and developed; to make sufficiently distinct the relations in which the English book stands to its predecessors; and to describe the mani fold influences, documentary and personal, which affected it from time to time, and to put them into their historical con text. I have avoided, I hope, for the most part, both here and in the first column of the Synopsis, mere illustration, abundance of which is to be found in current commentaries, from Hamon l'estrange onwards, and have aimed at con fining quotation to what has certainly, probably, or pos sibly, influenced the text directly to what, originating under the same conditions and in the same period, indicates what was in the air and to what, as traditional, and in every body's mind, explains what might otherwise be obscure. Of the latter two sorts, it is likely that there is a good deal still to be gleaned from medieval and contemporary sources, which would throw light on the work of an absorbent mind like Cranmer's.