Current rare books and special collections exhibit

The Book of Common Prayer and the English Monarchy

An Exhibit in the Saunderson Rare Books Room of
The John W. Graham Library to Commemorate
The 50^th Anniversary of the 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer
The 350^th Anniversary of the classic 1662 Book of Common Prayer

 The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II

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“The English Book of Common Prayer was the first single manual of worship in a vernacular language directed to be used universally by, and common to, both priest and people. Its original simplicity, which has not been lost in the many subsequent revisions, has ensured its permanence.... It is not least among the achievements of the original compilers that most of what they wrote should still be in use four hundred years later. The language of the Prayer Book is now part of the whole language, often quoted and used even when the original itself is unknown. And, as a source of spiritual inspiration, it is for most Englishmen second only to the Bible.”

      –John Carter, Printing and the Mind of Man, 1967

The first Book of Common Prayer, largely the work of Thomas Cranmer and based on the various Latin service books formerly in use in England, was ordered to be used throughout the realm in 1549 during the reign of Edward VI. Major revisions were made in the 1552 Second Prayer Book of Edward VI and in 1559 during the reign of Elizabeth I, and lesser ones in 1603/4 by James I and 1636 by Charles I. But it is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer from the reign of Charles II that has endured as a unifying force for more than three centuries in churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion, even as “contemporary” alternatives have been authorized for use alongside it.