The Once and Future Prayer Book

Oct 9, 2023 by

By Peter Hitchens, American Conservative.

There is nothing in the world quite so English as the Book of Common Prayer, and as England fades from existence, you might expect it to do the same. Yet long after England is absorbed into Airstrip One, or sinks giggling into the sea in a cloud of marijuana smoke, or whatever its fate is, Thomas Cranmer’s subversive, disturbing work will continue to have a ghostly existence well into the  future of mankind.

This is because it embodies something very deep, an unusual coincidence of literary beauty and disturbing truth. Other cultures have sought to borrow it. English as it is, and beautifully written, it was translated very early in its life into French, in 1553. I came across Le Livre des Prieres Publiques some years ago in the Channel Island of Sark, still at that time the last feudal territory in the British Isles, a state of affairs now sadly extinguished by progress. Wonderfully, there is even an edition in Latin, which was still used in the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge until the 19th century. There are also versions in Scots and Irish Gaelic, and another in Welsh. It would not surprise me to find it in dozens of other languages.

Even in English, its variations are complex and slightly devious, even shifty. Until 1859, it contained a special anti-Catholic service. This was designed to perpetuate the memory of the attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament and the King at Westminster in 1605 with many kegs of gunpowder. It thanked the Almighty for “the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our late gracious Sovereign” and denounced the “Popish treachery” which, undiscovered, would have slaughtered the entire governing class of England and Scotland “in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the example of former ages.” It urged God to “scatter our enemies that delight in blood. Infatuate and defeat their counsels, abate their pride, assuage their malice, and confound their devices.” 

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