The Dean and Chapter of Peterborough did not get their copies until the 17th of August.  When the new folios reached the lonely parsonages of Cumberland and Durham—­who would care to say?  The Act required a verbal avowal of “unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed in and by the Book of Common Prayer, and administrations of the Sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England, together with the Psalter, and the form of manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons” to be made after the service upon “some Lord’s day” before the Feast of St. Bartholomew, i.e. the 24th of August 1662.  The Act also required subscription within the same time-limit to a declaration of (inter alia) uniformity to the Liturgy of the Church of England “as it is now by law established.”

That this haste was indecent no layman is likely to dispute, but that it wrought practical wrong is doubtful.  The Vicar of Bray needed no time to read his new Folio to enable him to make whatever avowal concerning it the law demanded; and as for signing the declaration, all he required for that purpose was pen and ink.  Neither had the incumbent, who was a good churchman at heart, any doubts to settle.  He rejoiced to know that his side was once more uppermost, and that it would be no longer necessary for him, in order to retain his living, to pretend to tolerate a Presbyterian, or to submit to read in his church the Directory of Public Worship.  Convocation had approved the new Prayer Book, which was in substance the old one, and what more did any churchman require?  As for the Presbyterians and others who were in possession of livings, the failure of the Savoy Conference must have made it plain to them that the Church of England had not allowed the king to keep his word, that compromise and comprehension had failed, and that if they were to remain where they were, it could only be on terms of completely severing themselves from all other Protestant bodies in the world, and becoming thorough Episcopalians.  No Presbyterian of any eminence was prepared to make the statutory avowal.  Painful as it always must be to give up any good thing by a fixed date, it is hard to see what advantage would have accrued from delay.

When the day came, some two thousand parsons were turned out of the Church of England.  Among them were included many of the most devout and some of the most learned of our divines.  Their “coming in” had been irregular, their “going out” was painful.

Save so far as it turned these men out, the Act was a failure.  It did not procure that uniformity in the public worship of God which it declared was so desirable; it prevented no scandal; it arrested no decay; it allayed no distemper, and it certainly did not settle the peace of the Church.  Inside the Church the bishops were supine, the parochial clergy indifferent, and the worshippers, if such a