In 1559/60 the parliaments of England, Ireland and Scotland proscribed the practice of Catholicism in their respective kingdoms and prescribed Reformed religious settlements in its place. By the end of the sixteenth century the English and the Scots had become nations of Protestants, but contemporary estimates of the number of Irish Protestants ranged between 40 and 120 individuals. Protestantism in Ireland was born of conquest and colonisation in the seventeenth century. Yet the remarkable contrast in the outcomes of the Reformation across the Atlantic archipelago was not predestined. England and Ireland shared the same Tudor monarchs and the Pale around Dublin was, in effect, an appendage of England. Nonetheless, while Elizabeth I’s religious settlement was a ‘runaway success’ in England it failed to win any significant support in Ireland. Indeed, because Irish women were particularly loath to embrace the new religion no self-sustaining community of Irish Protestants was spawned in the sixteenth century. On the other hand, the Scots created a Reformed Church establishment despite the wishes of their monarch, Mary Stuart, queen of Scots. This chapter adopts a comparative approach to help explain the experiences of Reformation in England, Ireland and Scotland before 1603.

The story I have tried to tell in this book is complex in many ways: in the politics of the authorizing Acts of Parliament, in the evolution of the text itself, and in the rivalries and collaborations between the printers of the successive versions of the prayer book. It has therefore often been been necessary to depart from a strict chronological order. In this final chapter I have therefore tried to recapitulate the overall story, and the numerous separate conclusions, as a more continuous narrative.

Outlines Henry VIII’s attempt to impose uniformity on the English liturgy after breaking with Rome, the early careers of the printers Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch, and the progress through Parliament of the 1549 Act of Uniformity. Closely examines the printing of their first two 1549 editions of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of the Common Prayer, in which various irregularities show that changes and additions were made to the text while those editions were being printed. Concludes that the accepted assignment of priority to the Whitchurch edition known as STC 16267 is mistaken, and that the only extant copies of the real first edition are a few copies supposedly ‘made up’ and incomplete. Explains the evolution of the official limits on the retail price, and how each printer subcontracted parts of his reprints to other printers.

Briefly recounts the parliamentary history of the 1552 Act of Uniformity, the revision of the communion service, and some common misconceptions about the so-called ‘Black Rubric’. Shows that this time it was Edward Whitchurch who began printing from the manuscript copy while Richard Grafton reprinted the text from Whitchurch’s sheets. Explains that each printer once again subcontracted parts of some of his subsequent editions to other printers, and how each reduced the size of his reprints to reduce his costs once the official limits had been imposed on the retail price.

By abandoning the focus on virtue and replacing it with a focus on preservation by means of occasional deception, the Machiavellian discourse throws suspicion on the role of the counsellor, and especially problematises his powerful role in relation to the monarch. This is especially the case in late Tudor England, ruled by monarchs perceived to be ‘weakened’ by their age or gender. Whereas the Henrician humanists had advocated counsellors who ruled their princes, the threat of Machiavellianism and weak monarchs renders such arguments threatening, and the counsellor falls under greater suspicion for his perceived usurpation of power. At the same time – and by contrast – there is a view that such weak monarchs require strong counsel to guide them. If this cannot come from individuals, as they are likely to be self-interested, then it must come different, ‘dis-interested’, sources. Whereas single private counsellors will be self-interested and thus ought not to rule a monarch, especially a female one, assemblies such as parliament will guide the prince according to the good of the commonwealth. For this reason, they need to have a share in the government. Command becomes ‘bridled’ by this source of counsel.