Prayer-book,
stating 'that such ornaments of the Church and of the Ministers thereof,
at all times of their ministration, shall be retained and be in use, as
were in the Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the
second year of the reign of King Edward VI.,' was of course not
forgotten--as indeed it could not be--in the eighteenth century. High
Churchmen not unfrequently called attention to it. John Johnson, writing
in 1709, said he was by no means single in his belief that this order
was still legally enjoined.[1079] Archbishop Sharp appears to have been
of the same opinion, and used to say that he preferred the Communion
office as it was in King Edward's Book.[1080] Nicholls, in his edition
(1710) of Bishop Cosin's annotated Prayer-book, insisted upon the
continuous legality of the vestments prescribed in the old rubric, which
was 'the existing law,' he said, 'still in force at this day.'[1081]
Bishop Gibson, the learned author of the 'Codex Juris Ecclesiastici'
(1711), although he marked the rubric as practically obsolete, steadily
maintained that legally the ornaments of ministers in performing Divine
Service were the same as they had been in the earlier Liturgy.[1082] In
Charles I.'s reign the rubric had been by no means obsolete. But after
the Restoration the use of the more ornate vestments was not revived.
Even the cope, though prescribed for use as an Eucharistic vestment in
cathedrals and collegiate churches, had become almost obsolete. Norwich,
Westminster, and Durham seem to have been the only exceptions. At
Norwich, however, the cope, presented by the High Sheriff of Norfolk in
the place of one that had been burnt during the Civil War,[1083] does
not appear to have been much worn. Those at Westminster were reserved
for great state occasions, such as Coronations and Royal funerals.[1084]
It was only at Durham that the cope was constantly used on all festival
days. Defoe wrote in 1727 that they were still worn by some of the
residents, and he then described them as 'rich with embroidery and
embossed work of silver, that indeed it was a kind of load to stand
under them.'[1085] A story is sometimes told of Warburton, when
Prebendary of Durham in 1759, throwing off his cope in a pet, and never
wearing it again, because it disturbed his wig.[1086] Their use does
not seem to have been totally discontinued until 1784.[1087]

The surplice was of course, throughout the period, the universally
recognis