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Title: The Acts of Uniformity
Their Scope and Effect
Author: T.A. Lacey
Release Date: May 2, 2009 [EBook #28659]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY ***
Produced by Elaine A. Laizure
The Acts of Uniformity
Their Scope and Effect
By
T. A. LACEY, M.A.
VICAR OF MADINGLEY
RIVINGTONS
34, _KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN_
LONDON
1900
_Price One Shilling: net_
NOTE
The following paper, read at Oxford
before certain members of the University,
in November, 1899, is published at the
request of some who heard it.
THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY
The Acts of Uniformity are incidents in a great
movement. They are far from being the most important
of its incidents. Their importance has perhaps
been exaggerated, and their purport is commonly
misunderstood. My object is to place them in their
true relation to other incidents. It is useless to study
them apart; they cannot be understood except as
details of a connected history. I shall confine myself,
however, to a narrow, question: assuming the general
history, I shall ask how the several Acts of Uniformity
come into it, with what purpose and with what ultimate
effect. To study immediate effects would be to
engage in too wide an inquiry.
We owe thanks to the men who drafted the
statutes of the sixteenth century for their long argumentative
preambles. These are invaluable as showing
the occasion and purpose of the Acts. We shall not
go to them for an uncoloured record of facts--their
unsupported assertions will hardly, indeed, be taken as
evidence for facts at all; but they tell us to what facts
the legislator wished to call attention, and in what
light he would have them regarded. The preamble
of the first Act of Uniformity is among the most
illuminating, and with its help we can assemble the
facts in relation to which the purport of the Act must
be determined.
We are in the year 1548. Important changes in
matters of religion had taken place; greater changes
were in prospect. The processions before High Mass
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