IIssssuuee NNoo 2222 ·· LLeenntt 22001100 IISSSSNN 11447799--221155XX

THE PBS JOURNALEditorial Board:Charles CleallPrudence Dailey (Acting Editor)The Revd William DoyleProfessor Watson FullerAnthony KilmisterIan Robinson

Address for correspondence:Prayer Book Society, The Studio,Copyhold Farm, Goring Heath,Reading RG8 7RTTelephone: 0118 984 2582E-mail: pbs.admin@pbs.org.ukWebsite: www.pbs.org.uk

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Ecclesiastical Patron:The Rt Revd and Rt Hon. RichardChartres, DD, FSA, Bishop of London

Lay Patrons:The Rt Hon. Lord Hurd of Westwell,

CH, CBE, PCThe Rt Hon. Lord Sudeley, FSA

Vice Presidents:The Revd Professor Raymond ChapmanThe Revd Dr Roger BeckwithThe Rt Hon. Frank Field MPProfessor Roger HomanC. A. Anthony Kilmister, OBE

Board of Trustees:Miss Prudence Dailey ChairmanThe Revd Paul Thomas Deputy Chairman;

Regional Trustee – South East RegionMrs Nikki Sales Company Secretary

19 Heath Road South, Locks Heath,Southampton, Hants SO31 6SJTelephone: 01489 588517

John Wimpress Finance DirectorThe Revd Dr Roger BeckwithStephen Evans Regional Trustee – West and

Central RegionPeter Hardingham Regional Trustee –

Midlands Region

Nicholas Hurst Regional Trustee – Eastern Region

Christopher HyderThe Revd John Masding Regional Trustee –

South West RegionThe Revd Neil PattersonThe Revd Karl PrzywalaIan RobinsonJohn Scrivener Regional Trustee – North

West Region

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The Prayer Book Society, like theChurch of England, is a broad churchwhich embraces a wide breadth ofopinion and churchmanship. Viewsexpressed in the PBS Journal are thoseof their individual authors, and do notnecessarily represent the opinion of theSociety or of the Editorial Board. Theinclusion of any advertisement in thePBS Journal does not imply that theSociety endorses the advertiser, itsproducts or its services

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PBS Trading Ltd,The Studio,Copyhold Farm, Goring Heath,Reading RG8 7RT

Front cover:The East Window of the chapelof the Royal Agricultural College, Ciren-cester, depicting the Benedicite

Photograph:Trevor Butler

AA CCoorrppoorraattee AAcctt ooff PPrraayyeerrMembers of the Society are encouraged to join together in saying the following Collectat the same time in their own homes, at 10.00 p.m. each Sunday evening.

THE COLLECT OF THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITYO LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defendthy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thysuccour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; throughJesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The deadline for contributions for thenext issue is: MONDAY, 3RD MAY 2010

Publication date: 18TH JUNE 2010

© The Prayer Book Society 2010.Individual articles are © the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, inany form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the Editor, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with theappropriate reprographics rights organization

22

What constitutes a ‘Prayer Bookchurch’? This question is lessstraightforward than it might atfirst appear. Does a church have touse the Book of Common Prayerfor every single service in order toqualify as a Prayer Book church?What if it uses Common Worshiponce a month, but all the otherservices are BCP? What if themajority of its Sunday services areBCP, except for the Family Service?

Although we may not like it,we now live with a liturgical‘mixed economy’, where ‘PrayerBook material’ is used inconjunction with CommonWorship in many—perhapsmost—parish churches. Many PBSmembers regularly attend 8.00a.m. Book of Common PrayerCommunion Services in churcheswhere these are the only PrayerBook services on offer.Whilst theymay regret being consigned to‘off-peak’ hours, they havenevertheless come to value thepeace and solemnity of the earlyservice, often conducted with realreverence and dignity. Thoseattending such services are verygrateful that they continue toexist, and so is the Prayer BookSociety.

And yet this can never be thewhole story. To relegate theservices and prayers contained inthe Book of Common Prayer tothe status of ‘Prayer Bookmaterial’, destined always to beslotted into service schedules (andsometimes within individualservices) alongside other types ofliturgical ‘material’, is tomisunderstand their nature. For

the Prayer Book is, and was alwaysintended to be, a completespiritual system, a rule of life.Without churches that are‘devoted to the Prayer Book as thenormative liturgy’ as Ian Robinsonputs it in his piece aboutCorporate Membership, theChurch of England will have lostits spiritual centre.

This is not ‘Prayer Bookfundamentalism’. Our Ecclesiast-ical Patron, the Bishop of London,once said that it is only theopponents of 1662 who insist thatit be used with a rigidity not seensince 1663. The Prayer Booktradition is a living tradition, andthe passing centuries have seenmany innovations, such as harvestfestivals and the inclusion ofhymnody in services, which havewoven themselves seamlessly intothe fabric of our Anglican life. Atthe same time, most of us willhave attended Prayer Book servicesthat seemed to wish they weresomething else, where the personleading the service demonstrated

by his style of delivery, by hisapproach to the text and andperhaps by the interjection of‘friendly’ verbal rubrics to try andmake the service seem moreinformal, that he wasfundamentally out of sympathywith what he was doing. Suchthings matter, because the sense ofthe transcendence of AlmightyGod so gloriously captured by theBook of Common Prayer is part ofits essence.

One of the Prayer BookSociety’s major projects at presentis to identify and forge links withwhat Church of England’sLiturgical Commission hasdescribed as ‘centres of excellence’of Prayer Book worship. It is clearto us that what makes such achurch is not only the number ofBook of Common Prayer servicesit has, but the spirit in which theyare conducted.These churches arethe future of the Prayer Book andof the Society, and the heart of theChurch of England.

Prudence Dailey

33

EEddiittoorriiaall

CONTENTSSome Neglected Collects 4An Exhortation to Corporate Membership 5Patronage and the Prayer Book Society 7Reclaiming Matins - A New PBS CD 10The Spirit of Anglicanism 12Celebrating Charles Darwin 15Singing the Lord’s Song 18Review: An Anglican Psalter 21News from the Branches 22Letters 26Forthcoming Events 28Branch Contacts 30

I have an excellent little book which providesa page for every day of the year containing avery manageable piece of reading from the

Book of Common Prayer.* Recently, I came uponthe page heading ‘Prayers from Holy Communion’under which were three collects, but certainly notany of the collects for particular days.

Assist us mercifully, O Lord, in these oursupplications and prayers, and dispose theway of thy servants towards the attainmentof everlasting salvation; that, among all thechanges and chances of this mortal life, theymay ever be defended by thy most graciousand ready help; through Jesus Christ ourLord. Amen

So they began. Generally familiar—yes, fairly.Perhaps come across in slightly modified form—probably.This was also equally true of the next twocollects reproduced there in my book. But if I hadever heard them in a Holy Communion service itwasn’t in the last thirty years! I quickly turned tomy Prayer Book to see just where these collectswere that were not being heard.

They were easy enough to find—coming afterthe whole of the Communion Service, below theBlessing, under the rubric

Collects to be said after the Offertory, whenthere is no Communion, every such day oneor more, and the same may be said also, asoften as occasion shall serve, after theCollects either of Morning or EveningPrayer, Communion or Litany, by thediscretion of the Minister.

And in the Book of Common Prayer there assix of these collects, from which the three in my

daily book had been selected. (See pages 259–61in the current C.U.P. Pew Edition of the BCP.)

It seems to me that we might conduct a littlecampaign to bring these neglected collects to theattention of clergy for their use not only atMorning and Evening Prayer but in the HolyCommunion as well, as the rubric provides, ‘asoften as occasion shall serve’.

The words of the third and sixth of thesecollects (as found in the Prayer Book) indicate aservice largely completed, and perhaps they arebest used at Morning or Evening Prayer after theThird Collect therein. The other four, however,have suitability for seasons and particularoccasions and could indeed be used at HolyCommunion as the rubric authorises. For instanceon Bible Sunday, or when national or local dangersare to be faced, might we not add,

O Almighty Lord, and everlasting God,vouchsafe we beseech thee, to direct,sanctify and govern, both our hearts andbodies, in the ways of thy laws, and in theworks of thy commandments; that throughthy most mighty protection, both here andever, we may be preserved in body and soul,through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.Amen.

Celebrants please take note. And might ourpublication of these six collects on a single sheet,under their rubric, remind them of a provision forwhich there is permission in the Book of CommonPrayer but, seemingly, little take-up?

Neil Inkley is Honorary Secretary and Treasurer of theBlackburn Branch, a past Vice-Chairman of the Society, andpast Chairman of the Branches Representative Council.

44

Some Neglected CollectsN. J. Inkley

* Daily Book of Common Prayer, compiled by Owen Collins, Fount (HarperCollins)

M embership numbers make the PrayerBook Society a successful organisationand give us some ‘clout’. More than

5000 people are currently signed up to support theObjects of the Society, beginning with ‘upholdingthe worship and doctrine of the Church of England. . . as enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer’.As for corporate members, we have at present all toofew. Would all our individual members know thatthere is such a thing as a corporate member? TheBoard of Trustees believes that the future of thePrayer Book probably has as much to do withchurches as individuals, and that we should thereforebe trying to strengthen corporate membership.

Corporate membership is less demanding thanindividual membership. Under our present con-stitution a body corporate agrees (only) to support atleast one of the Objects of the Society, though somecorporate members in fact support them all.There isno obligation on corporate bodies to use the PrayerBook all the time. What corporate membership doesshow is some degree of affection for the Prayer Book.A corporate member is usually the PCC of a parishchurch, but can it be any group; it is high time someof the cathedrals that use the Prayer Book daily forchoral Evensong, and some colleges and schools,became corporate members.

There are hundreds of churches up and down theland that ought to be corporate members of thePrayer Book Society. A few years ago our energeticNorwich Branch carried out a complete survey of allregular use of the Book of Common Prayer in theirdiocese. How many churches in this one diocesewould you guess use the Prayer Book exclusively? Theanswer then was more than thirty! This and similarnumbers came to the notice of the ChurchesCommittee during its consideration of what began asthe Beacon Churches project. We realised thatpotential Prayer Book ‘centres of excellence’, as theLiturgical Commission calls them, are prosperingchurches, easily accessible, preferably in towncentres, and devoted to the Prayer Book as thenormative liturgy; and we understand them not onlyas defensive strongholds but as centres of

evangelism. They cannot include the little villagechurches sometimes meeting only once a month, oronly at 8.00 a.m, but the Society certainly ought tohave good relations with these churches.Yet even inour most effective Branches it has not been near thetop of the agenda to recruit corporate members, andthe Trustees are now urging the Branches to considerwhat can be done about it.

So what benefits can we offer to corporatemembers? They have, to begin with, the assurance ofnot being alone and out on a limb. They get theSociety magazines and have a vote at the AGM which,if the representative is a member of the Society, isadditional to the vote of the individual representingthem. (Representation should be approved by thePCC and has to be reported to the PBS CompanySecretary in advance of an AGM.) The Branches areurged to befriend corporate members: invite themspecially to Branch events, or hold a Branch servicethere when possible. This can be a real boost to thelittle country church.

Perhaps most important, when it comes toappointing a new incumbent, or to deanery ‘pastoralreorganisation’, is the ‘parish profile’. The inform-ation that a parish is a corporate member of thePrayer Book Society tells applicants something aboutits character, and is probably enough to deter anyone(and there are such) fundamentally unsympathetictowards the Boook of Common Prayer. Further, thePBS keeps a confidential record of clergy wishing tobe informed of vacant livings in Prayer Bookparishes, and so we can bring such vacancies to theattention of suitable applicants. The Society is alsoable and willing to give any PCC advice about itsduties and rights. A parish that finds itself underpressure, for whatever reason, to abandon the PrayerBook, or in the more encouraging situation ofwanting to reintroduce or extend the use of thePrayer Book, is very welcome to ask the Society orhelp and advice.

Our present corporate members vary fromchurches heart and soul devoted to Christianity asfound in the Book of Common Prayer to churcheswhose annual fee is paid by one Prayer Book Society

55

An Exhortation to Corporate Membership

Ian Robinson

member and which have no great attachment. Theyare all welcome, and corporate membership is agood step towards confirming the faint-hearted. Thenormal annual subscription is £48, that is, theequivalent of the personal subscription of only twoindividuals, but small churches struggling with thequota may find it hard to justify spending that much.As with individual membership, the subscription canbe reduced.

Individual members! if your parish is not acorporate member, put corporate membership onthe agenda of the PCC! If you need somebody tocome and explain what the Society does (and to allayfears that it is a dictatorial body) the Branch or theBoard of Trustees can usually send a representative.Application forms for corporate membership areavailable online or from the Copyhold Farm officeand by the time this is printed we shall have awelcome pack for new corporate members. Let us alltry to create a demand for it!

If the Prayer Book Society had 500 corporatemembers instead of the present thirty odd, which isa quite realistic aim, the Church would be in a muchhealthier state in England.

Ian Robinson is a Trustee of the Prayer Book Society and chairmanof the Churches Committee.

66

M any readers will be at least vaguelyfamiliar with the idea that parishes inthe Church of England have someone

called a Patron, may (or may not) be a respected localfigure. This is an attempt to explain some of theterminology, and ask for possibility of help fromthose members of the Society with connections inthe patronage system.

The system of patronage originated in the earlyMiddle Ages, at the time when most of our ancientparishes were first created. The most common wayfor a parish to arise was for a lord of a manor (in thatfeudal age, the sole or at least chief landowner) towish to provide a church for his people. This desiremay have arisen for concern for their souls, but alsoto discourage them from travelling off the estate andpaying both spiritual allegiance and valuable tithes toa neighbouring parish or abbey. The accepted dealbetween the Church and the lords, eventually quiteclearly formalised, was that if the lord would providea church, a house for a priest and some endowmentof land to support him (the living), then the lordwould have the right to choose the priest in questionwith the consent of the bishop (the views of thecommon people were, of course, consideredirrelevant), and that priest would then also receivethe tithe. Under this system the lord was the patron,and the right to appoint (or present) the new priest iscalled the advowson, and is a piece of heritableproperty, to be passed on to heirs and successors.

It also came to be accepted (by the FourthLateran Council of 1215) that the priest so appointedhad a right to remain in office for life, and held thechurch building and house in trust; this right is thefreehold, which is currently in the process of (in myopinion, only partial) abolition. This system offeredsomething for all parties: The bishop secured thebuilding of more churches and livings for clergy,thus promoting the faith, and he retained the powerto refuse to place in a parish (institute) anyone heconsidered unsuitable. The lord secured his ‘own’church, with the power to choose someone he liked,within reason, to minister to his manor, and coulduse this appointment as a reward for clients or junior

members of his family; patronage in the classicalsense. The clergy had more varied opportunities ofsecuring livings through different connections, andonce appointed, were secure in office fromunreasonable pressure from either lord or bishop.

This is the basis of the system still in place. Itshould be stressed that the patron has no other rightsover the church than the appointment of the priest.Patronage is also an entirely separate concept fromthat of the lay rector, which is an office carrying costlyobligations connected only with the possession offormer church lands, now generally called ‘chancelrepair liability’, and originally derived fromappropriation of the ‘greater tithes’ by a monastery.Not all advowsons were ever held by lords; some byabbeys, some by colleges or corporations, somealways by bishops, depending who had establishedthe parish.Those in monastic hands passed into otherownership at the Reformation with other property,but otherwise the system survived remarkably intactdown to the 19th century, with advowsons beinginherited, given, bought and sold betweenindividuals and institutions with some freedom, butthe right of patronage could (and can still) only beexercised by communicants of the Church ofEngland. Advowsons also continued to be created,particularly when parishes were divided, thepatronage usually residing with the incumbent of theoriginal parish.

The nineteenth century saw some change fortwo main reasons. The renewal of the Church’s lifewas associated with leading churchmanship partiessuch as the Evangelicals and Tractarians: church lifewas politicised much more strongly in this way, andparticular institutions which wished to influencechurch life saw advowsons as a tool, whethercampaigning societies like Simeon’s Trustees or theAdditional Curates Society, or Oxford and Cambridgecolleges eager to provide livings for their fellows onmarriage and to spread their influence. There werealso far more advowsons on the market as a result ofthe reform of city corporations in the 1830s: nolonger bound to be Anglican in membership, theywere obliged to sell their advowsons on the openmarket to eligible purchasers.

Patronage and the Prayer Book Society

Neil Patterson

77

One absurd, and at the time scandalous, effect ofthis was that clergy with money to spare could buyan advowson and present themselves at the nextvacancy to a comfortable living. Under an act ofQueen Anne a buyer of an advowson was preventedfrom appointing himself at the first vacancy afteracquisition, leading to the worse scandal of clergyappointing excessively aged or unhealthy clergy totheir livings in the hope that they would soon dieand leave the desired vacancy, until all clerical self-presentation was prevented in 1923. The wholebusiness of ‘securing a good living’ in a period whenclerical incomes varied wildly continued topreoccupy much of the energy of the clergy (andtheir wives and friends) to what now seems anabsurdly unhealthy degree.

The twentieth century saw a substantial shift inthe importance of patronage within the Church. Inthe first place, the equalisation of clergy incomes andhousing has eliminated the unseemly struggle tosecure the more desirable rectory for financialreasons alone. Second, many more parishes,including almost all those of recent creation, areunder the patronage of the bishops, andappointments are therefore wholly ‘diocesan’ incharacter. Third, the majority of rural livings havebeen amalgamated into multiple benefices, whereindividual patrons are able to have far less influence.It is also no longer possible to buy and selladvowsons. Finally, the lay people of the parisheshave been admitted on a statutory basis to theappointments system, and now play anunderstandably leading role in selecting their futureincumbent.

Such independent patrons as exist do, however,continue to play an important role in theappointment of the parish clergy, in particularpreserving a breadth and outward-looking aspect tothe system which could otherwise easily disappear.Certain party societies continue to use patronage toencourage their own school of churchmanship, andthe university colleges (still considered formallyAnglican, whatever the reality) often maintain activelinks with their parishes. Some private patrons aresubstantial local landowners; it will be no surprise toreaders to hear, for example, that the Duke ofBeaufort maintains an active interest inhis patronage of Badminton.

Until recently the Prayer BookSociety has been relatively littleconcerned with this subject, althoughwe have offered advice to patronsseeking suitable clergy. With the moreactive development of work with

clergy and parishes the Board of Trustees is keen tomake what use of patronage is available, albeit lessthan would once have been possible.The Society hasrecently acquired two partial rural advowsons (oneby bequest, the other by gift) and is in the process ofacquiring another, and would be very interested tohear from any members who may be patrons and areconcerned for the wise future exercise of thepatronage in their care. Such patronage as is given orbequeathed to the Society would of course beexercised, with due sensitivity to local custom andtradition, in accord with the Society’s Objects, topromote the Prayer Book in that particular parish.Weshould also be interested to hear from any patronswho wish to retain their patronage (which may havebeen in a family for many generations) but wouldvalue advice on its exercise, in particular findingapplicants for a parish vacancy who are interested inmaintaining and promoting the Prayer Booktradition in the parish concerned.

As I observed above, the historic freehold of theclergy, already curtailed by compulsory retirement, isto be replaced very soon by something calledCommon Tenure, the main import of which is toformalise expectations of and for the clergy, and tointroduce a ‘competency procedure’, to review or ifnecessary remove, the incompetent, and which willbe ‘common’ to all posts, whether incumbencies ornot (i.e. there will be no more priests-in-charge, andteam vicars will have the same security asincumbents). It will probably take some years beforethe real effects of this on the Church become clear.However, even under Common Tenure, the ancientrights of the patrons are preserved, and I think thelawyers have had to argue to less-than-well-informedbishops and Synod drafters that they cannot simplybe taken away. The patrons are heirs, even if bypurchase, of those who centuries ago gave ourchurches and the Church of England’s endowments,and we shall be in a rum do indeed if the Church hasto give them all back.

Neil Patterson is Rector of Ariconium in the diocese of Hereford,and a Trustee of the Prayer Book Society.

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99

I n 1950 when I was young there was acomforting predictability about Anglicanservices. In most churches Holy Communion

might happen, probably at 8.00 a.m., at 11.00 a.m.Matins was sung and at 6.30 Evensong ended the day.The Book of Common Prayer was used; childrenlearnt easily to cope with it, the collects were thoseprescribed in the BCP, it did not seem necessary forparishes to have liturgical committees, and theclergyman’s time now spent inventing andphotocopying his liturgy for the following Sundaywas often spent in pastoral work and in pursuitslearned enough to produce a sermon with a text.

At the heart of all this was the morningcelebration of Matins. I suggest that its loss has beendisastrous and has been one factor which has led thechurch from being a national institution to being adiminishing clique—maybe a holy one but a cliquenonetheless. Matins is a service which contains allthat characterises the essence of Anglican worship—penance, absolution, praise, scriptural readings, arecital of belief and prayer. It didnot require the final commitmentof an approach to the communionrail nor did it invite theembarrassment of abstention. Forthose parishioners who cameoccasionally to church inspiredmaybe by those intangible thoughtsof fragility, anxiety, or thanksgivingwhich come to many people everynow and then Matins kept theirchurch door open. As an experi-ence it was supported bymemorable words which,experienced when young, stuckwhen old. At a recent service ofMorning Prayer a man in his lateseventies said to me ‘That waswonderful. I can’t rememberhearing that service since I was aboy.’ The point of this is to drawattention to the simple fact that hedid remember the service of seventy

years ago.There is little—perhaps nothing—either byway of memorable liturgy or, for most, of regularhearing of the liturgy for children now. When theygrow up and require suddenly words of comfortthere will be only a sad bubble and squeak ofrecollection to call on or, one fears, often just a void.

In this diocese we keep tabs on services and theerosion of Matins is such that on the first Sunday ofthe month there is only one service of Prayer BookMatins in the whole diocese. That is why I feeljustified in slipping into the past tense whendescribing Matins and that is why this new CD ofMatins has been produced.

ensemble 1685 were given a brief when asked tosing the service for us: that the music should befamiliar and not complex. That it should show theaverage small choir that the singing of this servicewas both within their reach and made a fine sound.So this is a parish church and not a cathedral Matins,with settings which many listeners will thereforefind familiar. It follows the liturgy strictly as the BCP

1100

Reclaiming Matins -A New PBS CD

Peter Bolton

intended. All readers of this Journal will beaware of those inevitably distractingmoments in a service when their earshave pricked up at a deviation from theexpected norm. On this CD there arenone. Let me just mention a fewexamples of the real McCoy whichpurchasers will get. The penitentialsentences are there; they are not swappedfor something easier, more comfortableor just different because the clergymanthinks change is good. The psalms arethose set for the day, thus following adiscipline which means that ‘difficult’psalms are properly aired. Some may findthe fact that entire psalms are sung astrange enough thing these days. Here allthe psalms set for the 19th morning aresung. Finally and boldly we have said theso often miserably omitted state prayers.ensemble 1685 have appended to the servicethe Benedicite which we hope very muchwill begin to be heard more often—it hasa proper rationale—and the Jubilate. Thetwo lessons come with the dignity whichthe King James Bible inevitably lends topublic readings.The musical bookends ofthe service are both by Handel and fromthe expectation of the quietly reflective

opening voluntary to the triumphantmarch at the end following theaffirmative hymn by Howells the spirit ofthis is 100% Prayer Book.

The words are clear and the singingcompelling. The choir make a fine soundhelped by good acoustics and excellentrecording. If you have not heard Matinsfor years; if you have not heard properMatins for decades, this CD is for you.There are no guarantees but there is astrong probability that you may find itaddictive. If you have friends—or indeedenemies—who have never heard it thenget another copy and give it to them;there are notes to explain the service fullywith notes on music by the conductor,Richard Jeffcoat. Above all lend it tomembers of your PCC. Make this bigeffort to reclaim your liturgicalbirthright!

Peter Bolton is Secretary of the Coventry Branch ofthe Prayer Book Society and a director of PBSTrading Ltd.

When Neil Inkley—Secretary of theBlackburn Branch, a former Chairman ofthe Branches Representatives’ Council and aformer Vice-Chairman of the Society—recently bought a new car, he took theopportunity to make a statement through aspecial number plate whichwas available. N14 BCP can(and, he hopes, will) bemisread as ‘NI for BCP’.

The Church Times, to whoseletters page Neil Inkley is afrequent correspondent,published the news of hisnumber plate, so now perhapshe can hope to be recognisedby Church Times readerswherever he goes, as well asby members of the PrayerBook Society. Give him a wave(or perhaps even a toot) ifyou see him driving past.

If you would like to display your ownallegiance on your car without going so faras to get a new number plate, don't forgetthat Prayer Book Society car windowstickers are available free of charge from thePBS office.

TThhee DDrriivvee ttoo PPrroommoottee tthhee PPrraayyeerr BBooookk??

1111

The ConstantThe Catholic faith of the Primitive church, the faithonce for all delivered to the saints, summarised in the RegulaFidei or Scripture and the Creeds, is the doctrine ofAnglicanism. She refuses to affirm as de fide anydoctrine not so qualified in or by Scripture or thePrimitive Church. Jewel affirmed in his Apologia, that‘Scripture and the Primitive Church are the criteriaby which the authenticity of a Church and the truthof its teaching are assessed,’ and Bramhall claimedthat the Church of England was not ‘a new Church, anew Religion, or new Holy Orders’. This constant ofthe Anglican spirit is found in different shapes fromthe 16th Century onwards.

DistinctivenessAnglican distinctiveness derives from theologicalmethod not content and emerged with ArchbishopParker’s theological interpretation of the ElizabethanSettlement in the 1571 Thirty-Nine Articles, The SecondBook of Homilies and the ‘Canon of Preaching’. Rooteddoctrinally in Scripture and antiquity, we find thismethod in the works of Anglican divines and ourformularies. Richard Hooker articulated it in his Lawsof Ecclesiastical Polity, and Michael Ramsey describes itsspirit as ‘. . . doing theology to the sound ofchurch bells’ to stress the essential connectionbetween theology, doctrine and Christian worship.The Book of Common Prayer is as much about a wayof doing theology as about liturgy, lex orandi est lexcredendi, and as Athanasius’s theology cannot beunderstood apart from the liturgy of BishopSerapion, so Anglicanism cannot be understood apartfrom The Book of Common Prayer.

For Hooker God’s revelation in Christ and theChurch, the Whole Christ, is authoritative, but thelanguage in which it is expressed is not infallible. Inessence it is rational but mysterious, defying exactdefinition. Lancelot Andrewes, put it succinctly: ‘Onecanon . . . two testaments, three creeds, fourgeneral councils, five centuries and the series of theFathers in that period . . . determine the boundaryof our faith.’

Divine RevelationThis cannot deny God’s presence in creation. C. S.Lewis noted that Hooker’s universe was ‘drenchedwith Deity’, and the implications of the divinepresence in his world keeps together things that caneasily be set in opposition:

Reason as well as revelation, nature as well asgrace, the commonwealth as well as theChurch, are equally though diversely ‘of God’. . . all kinds of knowledge, all good arts,sciences and disciplines . . . we meet in alllevels the divine wisdom shining out through‘the beautiful variety of things’ in ‘theirmanifold and yet harmonious similitude’.

This divine presence is one in revelation andnature, consistent and reasonable, in revelationbringing to a climax what God does in nature and innature giving us the clue to revelation, because ‘TheWord’ that ‘became flesh . . . .’ is the Word or Logosat work in all creation. So the Incarnation becomescentral and primary to Anglican theology.

Scripture, Tradition, ReasonMichael Ramsey claimed that it was the nature ofElizabethan theology rather than imitation of Hookerin the style of Lutherans to Luther or Calvinists toCalvin, that made it possible to creatively appeal toScripture and tradition and it must remain so today.Scripture is the supreme authority because itcontains all things necessary to salvation, but not asregulations for everything in the Church’s life, whichhas authority to decree rites and ceremonies. OurFormularies affirm the Old Testament revealingChrist by pointing to him and the New Testamentrevealing Christ fulfilling what is foreshadowed inthe Old. The Bible is about God’s saving work andself-revelation through law and prophets, Christbeing the head and climax.

Scripture became the self-evident basis butbecause the Bible without the Church becomes amere collection of ancient documents, Scripturalinterpretation depends on the appeal to antiquity asmutually inclusive. Anglicanism maintained the

1122

The Spirit of Anglicanism

Arthur Middleton

Catholic notion of a perfect union between theChurch and Scripture in that the Church’s authorityis not distinct from that of Scripture but rather thatthey are one. Anglican divinity has an ecclesialcontext in which the Church bears witness to thetruth not by reminiscence or from the words ofothers, but from its own living, unceasingexperience, from its catholic fullness that has its rootsin the Primitive Church.This appeal is not merely tohistory but to a charismatic principle, tradition,which together with Scripture contains the truth ofdivine revelation, a truth that lives in the Church. Inthis spirit Anglican divines looked to the Fathers asinterpreters of Scripture.The 1571 Canons authorisepreachers to preach nothing but what is found inHoly Scripture and what the ancient Fathers havecollected from the same, ensuring that theinterpretation of Scripture isconsistent with what Christianshave believed always, everywhereand by all.

The third feature in thistheological method is the appeal toreason. In creation God revealshimself as the principle ofrationality, purpose and unity,described as the divine Logos thatinforms our consciences andminds, enabling us to perceivepurpose and order in the universe.Such knowledge requires revelationto complete it and redemption tocleanse and free the heart and mindfrom things that inhibit and corrupt us. It is anappeal within the context of the appeal to Scriptureand antiquity. Unbalancing in one directiondegenerates into the ghetto mentality of eitherScripturalism, or Traditionalism, or Liberalism.

The fashionable addition of experience isunnecessary because Tradition enfolds past andpresent, and embraces as its source and power thecontemporaneity of the Gospel through which thetrue character of present experience is refracted andthereby critically evaluated. It is a way of looking atand experiencing the world; but with the kingdomof God, the sui generis experience of the Church andnot the world as the ultimate term of reference.

Anglican DivinesThis threefold appeal is found in the Reformers andin divines after Hooker; Andrewes, Laud, Hammond,Thorndike and Taylor to name a few. An ecclesiasticaluse of antiquity and reason is found in DanielWaterland, to defend the scriptural doctrines of the

Trinity and Incarnation against Deists and EnglishArians in the 18th century. Evangelicals like Venn andSimeon emphasised personal experience andcommitment to Christ, but held the doctrinescontained in the Articles, Prayer Book and Homilies,as did the Cambridge Platonists and Bishop Butler intheir concern for a reasonable faith. Evangelicalsenriched the Oxford Movement when heirs fromEvangelical homes became leading Tractarians. The19th century scientific undermining of Christianityfound this threefold appeal able to respond to andabsorb scientific method and historical criticism.

This spirit continued where the Incarnationbecame central, from Westcott, Gore and the LuxMundi school to William Temple, as they illustrated thepresence of the divine Logos to pinpoint the uniquerevelation of God in Christ as the keystone of a

continuous divine activity increation, in nature, history, cultureand civilisation.The doctrine of theOne Person and Two Natures ofChrist defined by the Council ofChalcedon has had a continuousinfluence. Our understanding ofEucharistic sacrifice andsacramental Presence have beenenhanced, and the doctrine of thecommunion of saints seen to beabout the living and departed asone fellowship of common prayerand praise rather than in terms ofmediation.

Reading from the InsideNicholas Lossky’s advice to an Orthodox exploringAnglicanism is to read it ‘from the inside’ in theworks of Anglican divines, The Book of Common Prayer,and The English Hymnal, and not only in Formularies.Here the living tradition of Anglicanism lies hiddenrather than in statements described as corporate actsof the whole Church. It requires sympatheticallyreading the other’s experience with total readiness toput one’s own ‘traditional’ formulations in questionwith absolute confidence in the indestructibility oftruth. The writings of the divine, the hymn, theprayer give commentary to the formulations, adefinition of certain terms lacking in them, andgenerally yield an impression of Anglican spiritualityand doctrine.

Today’s Anglican will grasp its spirit bysuspending most of the responses and unlearningmost of the habits of the modern mind that havecreated the great gulf between this and all precedingages. As we do not translate Shakespeare into modern

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Richard Hooker

English in order to understand him, so in thesedivines there is no easy process of changingthe images. Tampering with their particularexpressions will only result in losing thesubstance of what they are saying because asIan Ramsey claimed, such images are disclosuremodels, specific images with a depth of meaningthat develop an understanding of what ispresented in several directions at once. They‘are rooted in disclosures and born in insight’and hold together two things in such a waythat thought about one produces someunderstanding in depth of the other. Anglicandivines use the language and imagery ofpatristic theology because the poetic vision ofthese Fathers could only be expressed as they,in fact, expressed it. When these divines areallowed to speak in their own language there isno substitute for reading what they say as theysay it, not as mere relics of the past but asliving witnesses and contemporaries with us,so that what constitutes the essential feature ofthese divines, their charismatic life in theChurch, can continue to live in the apostolictradition they have received.

This Lecture was given in the Diocese of Wangaratta,Australia. Canon Middleton is an Emeritus Canon ofDurham Cathedral and a former tutor at St Chad’s College,Durham.

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I nevitably, a major focus in media coverage ofthe 200th anniversary of the birth of CharlesDarwin and the 150th anniversary of

publication of The Origin of Species has been thecontinuing conflicts between evolutionists andcreationists. The Book of Common Prayer predates not onlyDarwin but also the seventeenth-century explosionin understanding of the physical world, identified asthe origin of modern science. For Anglicans whocelebrate the BCP as the most powerful and satisfyingexpression of the Christian faith, acredible response to the impact ofscience on religious belief isimportant not only for their ownfaith and practice but forpromotion of the Prayer Bookmore generally. Unfortunately,formulating such a responsecontinues to take place in theshadow of a highly polariseddebate with strident contributionsfrom biblical fundamentalists onthe one hand and blinkeredatheists on the other.Creationism—increasingly pro-moted as ‘Intelligent Design’—claims the earth was createdduring the last 10,000 years with the various speciesin essentially their present forms. In contrastscientific evidence dates the origin of the universe at13.7 billion years ago with the earth some 4.5billion years old and the species evolving from themost primitive organisms to the diverse families ofplants and animals represented in the fossil recordand populating the earth today. The comment fromthe evangelical preacher and author Brian Edwardsthat ‘most scientists believe in evolution becausemost scientists believe in evolution,’ misrepresentsthe nature of scientific enquiry that thrives throughcontinuing interplay between individual originalityand communal evaluation. Darwin’s theory hassurvived the most rigorous scrutiny with itspredictions abundantly validated, not least throughrecent results on DNA sequencing.This validation has

occurred through application of the same biologythat underpins modern medicine, the same geologythat locates fossil fuels, the same chemistry thatfabricates modern materials, and the same physicsthat circumnavigates the globe.

The enormous successes of science should notblind us to its limitations and the barrenness ofatheism. It is not only Christians who refer to thehuman spirit; yet the persistence of individualidentity through the continuing changes in the

atoms from which the body iscomposed remains an unresolvedscientific phenomenon as does thecapacity for a body consistingsolely of an assembly of atomsinteracting according to physicallaws to exercise free will. Science,in struggling with the basis forhuman identity and free will, isreduced to statements such as ‘thewhole is greater than the sum ofthe parts’, with a recognition thatdespite similarities in basicbiochemistry there is somethingdistinct about human beingscompared with the rest of theanimal kingdom.

Darwin has not lacked official recognition.Buried in Westminster Abbey, his portrait appears onthe current £10 note and a celebratory £2 coinminted for this anniversary year where his head facesthat of a chimpanzee: a juxtaposition echoing theconfrontation at the 1860 meeting of the BritishAssociation when Darwin’s protagonist T. H. Huxleywas asked by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, ‘Whetherhe was descended from monkeys on his grandfather’sor his grandmother’s side’. In 2008 the Church ofEngland issued a posthumous apology to Darwin for‘misunderstanding you and by getting our firstreaction wrong, encouraging others to mis-understand you still’. Not everyone was impressed,with one response that, ‘Christ clearly taught thatwhat Scripture said is what God said. He affirmed thespecial creation of man and woman from the

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Celebrating Charles Darwin

Watson Fuller

Spencer Arnold/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

beginning of creation not billions of years later, frompond scum via the animal kingdom.’ The extent towhich creationists are prepared to go in dismissingevolution is illustrated by this quotation from theinternet: ‘If Christians cannot defend that all humans(including Cain’s wife) can trace their ancestryultimately to Adam and Eve, then how can theyunderstand and explain the gospel? We are not toldwhen Cain married or any of the details of othermarriages and children, but we can say for certainthat some brothers had to marry their sisters at thebeginning of human history.’

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence andintrinsic difficulties of Biblical fundamentalism, pollssuggest between 40 and 50% of the populations ofboth the UK and the USA accept the Creationistrather than the Darwinian view. Critics claim theseresults are misleading because many of those askedhad limited understanding of the rival theories. It ishardly surprising therefore that protagonists on bothsides see education as a crucial battlefield. Thesituation has changed markedly since the notorious‘Monkey Trial’ at Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 whenJohn Scopes was convicted under a law making it anoffence ‘to teach any theory that denies the story ofthe Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible,and to teach instead that man has descended from alower order of animals.’ Now it is Creationists whoare striving for a place in the curriculum; in the UK,most visibly through the influence given to sponsorsof Academies such as Emmanuel College, Gatesheadwhere Steven Layfield, Head of Science, urged ‘Whenan evolutionary/old earth paradigm (millions orbillions of years) is explicitly mentioned or impliedin a text book...we must give the alternative (alwaysbetter) biblical explanation of the same data.’

By claiming the first few chapters of Genesis arehistorically correct rather than a myth rich inuniversal truths, Creationists diminish the Bible bydistracting attention from the great insights into thehuman condition these chapters contain: thecontinuing confrontation between establishedmorality and new knowledge; the passage throughtemptation, guilt and blame explored by artists andwriters through the centuries; the affirmation thatwe do not exist in the cold neutrality of acosmological accident but a created world wherevalue and beauty are to be celebrated. Including theseinsights in a school science curriculum can beexpected to be controversial, as in the recent furoreleading to the resignation of Rev Professor MichaelReiss as biologist director of education at the RoyalSociety after he stated ‘I feel that creationism is bestseen by science teachers not as a misconception but

as a world view. The implication of this is that themost a science teacher can normally hope to achieveis to ensure that students with creationist beliefsunderstand the scientific position.’

A starting point for mature discussion might beDarwin’s conclusion in the final sentences of On TheOrigin of Species: ‘Thus, from the war of nature, fromfamine and death, the most exalted object which weare capable of conceiving, namely, the production ofthe higher animals, directly follows. There isgrandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,having been originally breathed by the Creator, intoa few forms or into one; and that whilst this planethas gone cycling on according to the fixed law ofgravity, from so simple a beginning endless formsmost beautiful and most wonderful have been, andare being, evolved.’ Unfortunately many of theprotagonists of his theory emphasize ‘the survival ofthe fittest’ within lives that are ‘nasty, brutish andshort’ at the expense of an appreciation of theinterdependence of the species and the beauty of thenatural world.

2009 was the 50th anniversary of The Two Cultures,C. P. Snow’s highly controversial Rede lecture,commonly remembered for bemoaning theignorance of people who by the standards of thetraditional culture, are thought highly educated andyet ‘still like to pretend that the traditional culture isthe whole of “culture”, as though the natural orderdidn’t exist. As though the scientific edifice of thephysical world was not, in its intellectual depth,complexity and articulation, the most beautiful andwonderful collective work of the human mind.’Snow is claiming for the inanimate world probed byphysics, a relationship between truth and beauty asfundamental as that recognized for the living worldby Darwin. In contrast to the faithless relativism thatbedevils the humanities in contemporary culture,science is driven by a belief system that has much incommon with that which made Christianity themajor force in shaping expression in European artover much of the last two millennia. The urge tocelebrate Christian truth through human creativityhas seen the most accomplished artists and theirpatrons committed to employing the best techniquesto articulate belief with beauty and faith inextricablylinked.While created to illustrate eternal truths, theseworks were inevitably fashioned within theframework of a culture very different in socialstructures and attitudes from our own.Attempting todistinguish what is meaningful to us from thecontext in which it is expressed is unlikely to beuncontroversial but is crucial if some of the mosteloquent historic expressions of Christian faith are to

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have the influence that our materialistic society sodesperately needs. There is no shortage of agnosticsand atheists who are only too happy to wax lyricalabout the beauty of the language in the Book ofCommon Prayer and the King James Bible but shrinkfrom taking the content seriously because of theirperception that debates between Christians are toooften driven by texts that owe more to historiccontext than universal truth. The challenge of suchperceptions requires a response able to retain theconfidence of believers while enjoying credibilitywith a wider audience. This may not be easy, but tolose faith in the possibility is to lose faith in theGospel. Charles Darwin, by rendering untenablebiblical fundamentalism, is often portrayed as hostileto Christianity. More fairly he should be celebratedfor emphasizing congruence between scientificdescriptions of the natural world and the remarkableinsights of the first few chapters of Genesis. Suchharmony between modern science and traditionalreligion is a crucial element in the complementarityarticulated most famously some 80 years later byAlbert Einstein as ‘Science without religion is lame,religion without science is blind.’

Watson Fuller is Emeritus Professor of Physics at Keele Universityand was for many years Churchwarden of St John the Baptist,Keele, and Lay Chairman of Newcastle-under-Lyme Deanery. Thisarticle is based on a talk given at a supper organised by St John’s inJune 2009.

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1177

‘In choirs and places where they sing’ is perhaps asfamous a rubric as any in the Prayer Book. Whateversudden rupture there might have been with the pastwhen Cranmer penned those words, the centrality ofsinging to Christian worship continued to be takenfor granted. How could it have been otherwise?Singing had been an integral part of worship fromthe very earliest days of Christianity. In this, it wasbut following on from Jewish tradition. After thereconstruction of the Temple by King Herod, a choirof twelve Levite men had been established. Provisionhad also been made for Levite choirboys toaccompany the men so that by their chanting of thepsalms they might ‘add sweetness to the melody’.1

There seems little doubt that such singing fell softupon the ears of Our Saviour Himself as He prayed inthe Temple. It is astonishing to think that, today, twothousand years later, despite the multifariousvicissitudes through which it has passed over thecenturies, the choral tradition still endures.

Or rather, in this country, it endures. Elsewhere,there are but remnants. A practice once common toall of Europe has been swept away by a tide ofpolitical, religious and social change. Germany stillhas a few notable church choirs, as does Austria, butthey do not sing the Offices of the Church daily as doour choirs. In France, the maîtrises (choir schools) allbriefly disappeared after the Revolution, but in 1802the Pope and Bonaparte signed a Concordat and theyreappeared once more. The clergy were paid by theState, but in 1905 Church and State were separatedand state funding came to an end. From that time on,the maîtrises began to disappear. In a land which onceboasted more maîtrises than any other nation inEurope, there are today hardly any decentecclesiastical choirs left, let alone choirs of men andboys of the standard which is common in theseislands. On a recent visit to Notre Dame, I wasshocked to hear how appallingly the liturgy wasexecuted.

We are blessed in this country with a tradition ofcathedral music sans pareil. Michael White, music criticof the Independent on Sunday, once wrote of St Paul’sCathedral Choir:‘Singing of this quality has to be oneof the proudest cultural claims this country canmake. Go where you will—Vienna, Paris, Rome,New York—you’ll find nothing better. Nothing evencomparable.’ And, of course, St Paul’s is but one ofmany cathedrals which produces sublime music on aregular basis. Choral Evensong based on the words ofthe Book of Common Prayer can be heard incathedrals throughout the land just about any day. So,is it then just a case of sitting back and basking in ourglory? That would be ill advised, for only someoneignorant of the many threats assailing ourstupendous choral inheritance could be tempted tosuch complacency.

The stamp of Cranmer’s literary genius is onevery page of the Book of Common Prayer, and overthe years, his Matins and Evensong have been theinspiration for some of England’s greatest composers.Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons and their contemporaries werebut the first in a long line of brilliant musicians towrite specifically for these services. Today, in smallprovincial towns or Oxbridge colleges as well as inthe large metropolises, Choral Evensong is still to beheard. Unhappily, the same cannot be said for ChoralMatins. As long ago as 1934, the Church MusicSociety noted: ‘Only St Paul’s, Lichfield and Wellsmaintained daily matins and evensong.’2 After thewar, it was clear, daily Choral Matins was at an end.Although it continues to survive as a Sunday servicein choral establishments up and down the land, itsfrequency has become less and less. In 2003, twenty-two cathedrals never or hardly ever sang Matins,3 andthe slide has continued since then. As a result, fewerand fewer worshippers have the chance to hear therich corpus of settings for the Morning Canticles; itis no longer available ‘for the comforting of such asdelight in music’.4 Unfortunately, the Church

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Singing the Lord’s Song

Bernard Haunch

1 Velvel Pasternak, The Jewish Music Companion.2 Quoted in Alan Mould, The English Chorister.3 Stephen Beet, ‘Touring the Te Deums’, PBS Journal, Advent, 2003.4 From the Elizabethan Injunctions, quoted in John Harper, The Forms and Order of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eightennth Century.

generally seems little dis-comforted by this state of affairs,even at the highest levels. In aninterview given in 2004 to theFriends of Cathedral Music, of whichhe is Patron, Dr Rowan Williams,while expressing regret that awhole tranche of the repertoireassociated with Choral Matinshad largely fallen out of people’sawareness, said that there was‘no point fantasising about it, asI don’t think people are going torush back in their thousands tomatins.’5

Then there are thosecathedrals and churches whichseem desperate to ‘attract’worshippers, as though they were somehowcompeting with the world of showbiz. This urge toparade their modern credentials has resulted in thoseveritable abominations characterized as ‘raves in thenave’. One such at Truro Cathedral had an ElvisPresley look-alike performing in a ‘service’—part ofthe cathedral’s ‘ongoing exploration of differentstyles of worship’.6 (Don’t you just love that ‘ongoingexploration’!) There is a real danger with this kind ofthing in the air that the choral tradition will be side-lined or junked altogether. No, there is not theslightest indication at the moment that such ascenario is likely or even contemplated, but if theever-growing financial crises affecting just aboutevery choral foundation in the country are notresolved, the future of our cathedral choirs couldwell be on the line.

John Sanders, the former Organist and Master ofthe Choristers at Gloucester Cathedral, believed that‘a mature boy’s voice had within it not only a clarityand purity of tone, but also an urgency and intensitywhich no girl could capture.’ He was fond of sayingthat superb choral singing and solo work ‘is the onlything that a little boy can do better than anyone else.’He was also aware that the choristers loved singingmusic that reached very high notes, even top C, andthey were proud of being able to reach them withoutapparent effort. He put down the difference inquality at this age to the fact that ‘the boys know thatthey can only sing this top-line range for a few years,from eight to thirteen or fourteen, while girls knew

they would be singing the top line from eight toeighty!’7 And Andy Martin, in a column in The TimesMagazine some years ago, paid tribute to theunassuming role of the boy treble in the making ofcathedral music: ‘What makes the voice of thechoirboy such a rare and precious commodity,’ hesaid, was ‘precisely its butterfly-like transience, itsprecariousness balanced on the cusp of innocenceand experience, its intimations of mortality. It seemslike an echo, in its short-lived purity and catastrophicdecline, of our genesis and fall.The male treble voiceachieves its maximum power and resonance just as itis disappearing.’

To end, however, I shall quote from an address SirSydney Nicholson, founder of the Royal School ofChurch Music, gave to the Musical Association in1944:

Shortly before the war, musical critics from allparts of Europe were invited to this country tosee and hear what we had to show them.Theyheard the work of our chief composers, oursoloists vocal and instrumental, our choruses,our orchestras, our opera. But when it wasover and they were asked what most im-pressed them as the outstanding contributionof England to the music of the world, theanswer was the singing of English choirboys.8

Bernard Haunch is co-founder of Campaign for the TraditionalCathedral Choir.

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5 Andrew Palmer, ‘A Crucial Role’, an interview in Cathedral Music with Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, 20046 ‘Elvis Returns! It’s Official’—Truro Cathedral website, 28 May 20077 Alan Charters, John Sanders—Friend for Life.8 Sir Sydney Nicholson, MVO, ‘The Choirboy and his Place in English Music’

Many PBS members have regularly purchased Lettspocket diaries (and recommended them to ourfriends), in the knowledge that the correct names ofthe Sundays based on the Book of Common Prayerliturgical calendar were printed in them.

If you have not purchased a Letts diary for 2010,you may have been disappointed to discover thatLetts have now changed over to naming the Sundaysfollowing the Common Worship calendar. Inresponse to an inquiry, Letts replied that ‘after somecustomer feedback and consultation with the Churchof England, we moved from the Sundays followingthe Book of Common Prayer to those of The Book ofCommon Worship [sic], as this is morecontemporary,’ adding that it would have beenimpractical to show both in one diary.

We do not know who in the Church of Englandadvised Letts, but this is yet another example of themarginalisation of the Book of Common Prayer—which, after all, is just as officially valid and current

as Common Worship. It also has practicalconsequences, since if asked (for example) to readthe Epistle, until this year you could check your Lettsdiary beforehand to see what Sunday it was, and lookup the appropriate lesson in your Prayer Book. Thesame benefit will not accrue to those reading theCommon Worship lessons, since the CommonWorship Lectionary is much more complicated,following a three-year cycle, and ordinarychurchgoers do not have at home the book showingthe Common Worship readings for each Sunday.

Customer feedback is clearly important to Letts.If you share our unhappiness at this development,you may wish to write to them at:

Editorial DepartmentCharles Letts & Co. LimitedThornybankDALKEITHMidlothian EH22 2NE

Letts Pocket Diaries

2200

""KKnnoowwiinngg tthhee BBooookk ooff CCoommmmoonn PPrraayyeerr""

This booklet, published by the Society's ChelmsfordBranch, has been compiled by "one who has lovedand used the Prayer Book over many years". It hasbeen provided with the hope that it will help others tovalue it for themselves.

It contains a basic introduction to the contents of thePrayer Book, and is available free of charge from thePBS office: please send a self-addressed C5 size (6 3/8"x 9") envelope with a LARGE LETTER stamp to theCopyhold Farm address shown on the inside cover ofthis magazine. (A Large Letter stamp is requiredbecause of the thickness of the booklet.)

TThhee AAnngglliiccaann PPssaalltteerred. John Scott, Canterbury Press

ISBN 978-1-85311-988-0£25.00

John Robinson

In The Anglican Psalter John Scott has brought togetheran appealing collection of chants (helpfully indexedand contextualised with succinct information aboutcomposers) and his own sensible style of pointingpsalms. It is a great relief not to be dealing withseparate volumes containing chants and words,folders full of loose sheets, poor handwriting, or anyof the other frequently found hurdles in churchesthe world over. The inclusion of sensible dynamicindications is a very good idea. The usual battery ofextra chants and alternatives comes at the end as wellas a thematic index which interestingly charts themelodic borrowing of many of our chants.The printis clear and easy on the eye throughout, and the‘cursing’ verses readily legible, awaiting more

enlightened times for their re-inclusion. John Scott’spointing is by his own admission a little morecomplex than, say, the Worcester Psalter—with morebars omitted and shorter recitations in general, buthis motivations are always soundly out ofconsideration for what he calls ‘primary verbalstress’. Most often I agree with the results, whichencourage an elegant and articulate style ofrecitation. I rather miss hyphens in the middle ofsplit words though.

If demonstrable evidence were desired of thepracticality and quality of this publication, the verybest is from John Scott’s own choir at St Thomas’s 5thAvenue New York, who use it regularly, and are easilyheard in their regular ‘web casts’ of Choral Evensongstreamed from their website. Rarely has suchheightened expression, understanding and claritybeen found recently in Anglican psalm singingoutside St John’s Cambridge.

John Robinson is assistant organist at Canterbury Cathedral.

Review

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Bath & WellsA warm welcome was extended to allwho attended a very special eveningat Bruton School for Girls to listen toyoung people taking part in theBranch’s annual Cranmer Awardscompetition heat on Tuesday, 10thNovember 2009. The Society’sgrateful thanks go to the Headmaster,Mr John Burrough, for hosting theevent, to Mrs Rachel Robbins fororganising it and to Mrs Sally Brunel-Cohen and Mrs Elspeth Richards forpreparing the candidates. Illness hadhit the numbers of participants—thisyear we had 7 juniors and 4 seniorswho had avoided seasonal coughs andcolds! Welcome too, was extended byMrs Robbins to the judge of thecompetition, Mrs Annie Maw,formerly High Sheriff ofSomerset (2008–9). New-comers were welcomed andalso the brave pupils who haddone it before and come backto take part. The juniors wereon first and on this occasion allpresent were treated tosomething quite special whilstMrs Maw and her adjudicatingassistant, Mark Robbins tookstock of their efforts in a shortinterval. Mr Tim Angel, singingteacher at the school and member ofthe Vicars Choral at Wells Cathedralsang the Magnificat and NuncDimittis in Gregorian plain chant.Thus the quality of singing normallyassociated with the cathedral choirwas enjoyed in the parish of Bruton.After the seniors’ recitations, splendidrefreshments were on offer in theBlensdorf room, where the audiencemixed with the participants overrefreshments and drinks. Thisafforded an opportunity for adults,including parents, PBS members andothers to talk to the pupils from theSchool and to visiting pupils fromSexey’s School who were also takingpart.

Mrs Maw had attended previouscompetitions in Bruton and confessedthat she never ceased to wonder how

well all participants rendered thewonderful words of the Prayer Book.She first reminded us that theposition of High Sheriff was one ofthe oldest in our culture—predatingeven that of bishops, and was rootedin Saxon tradition. Before awardingprizes she proffered a timelyreminder of the man responsible forthe production of the Book ofCommon Prayer, Archbishop ThomasCranmer. He was one of Mrs Maw’sall-time heroes who led a traumaticlife which took him to academichonours at Cambridge where he wasnoticed by Henry VIII, and in duecourse to become Primate of allEngland. He was a Protestant

reformer and saw the great breakwith the Roman Church andestablishment of the Church ofEngland. He was involved in theissuing of the Great Bible in 1539, alandmark in providing the nationwith a reputable English Bibletranslation to replace the Latin Vulgatein all our churches. He composed theBook of Common Prayer and saw itthrough two editions before sadlypaying the high price of martyrdomat the stake under the reign of MaryTudor. Mrs Maw added a snippet ofinformation few would haveknown—that Thomas never cut hisbeard after Henry VIII’s death, suchwas his affection for his monarch,which, she thought, would havemade him look like an Old Testamentprophet! ‘Thomas would have been

very proud to hear this evening’srecitations,’ she declared, ‘and eachone of you taking part this eveningshould be proud too; you will carrythe phrases and cadences of theCollects, Psalms and Bible passages inyour memories for the rest of yourlives.’

Of the juniors, Gemma Daniels(Sexey’s School) was the winner, herbearing, quality of delivery andarticulation being first class. She hadrecited Psalm 23 and Mrs Maw toldher that only today she had read in anewspaper that a commissionedofficer, who took the place of a deadcolleague in Afghanistan, alwayscarried a copy of Psalm 23 in his top

pocket. Runners-up in secondand third places were: NancyTabor and Martha Hemmett,both of Bruton School for Girls.Of the seniors three candidateswere commended for recitingbeautifully but in the endHarriet Sharp was the winnerwith Emily Howard second(both of Bruton School forGirls) and Sydney Ambrose ofSexey’s School third. In onesense all were winners andthere were prizes for everyone,copies of the Prayer Book for

newcomers and chocolates all round!Mrs Maw was presented with

flowers and Bishop NevilleChamberlain, Master of Sexey’sHospital, gave the closing prayer butnot before enunciating the openinglines of St John’s Gospel:

In the beginning was theWord, and the Word was withGod, and the Word was God.

The same was in thebeginning with God.All things were made by him;

and without him was notanything made that was made.

In him was life; and the lifewas the light of men.

P.W.C.

2222

News from the Branches

Competitors in the Bath & Wells Branch heat of theCranmer Awards

ChichesterTwo Brighton College studentsproved they were the best in Sussexat prayer recital after winning theinaugural Chichester diocese heat ofthe Cranmer Awards.

Emma Thomas, 18, from Hoveand 13-year-old Tegh Gurjal ofHassocks will represent the dioceseat the national finals.

The young people had to recitetheir chosen 1662 liturgy and Emmachose two Psalms while Tegh optedfor the opening of the daily serviceof Morning Prayer.They were judgedby the Revd George Butterworth,Branch Vice-Chairman, the RevdAlison Letschka who is a curate inthe parish of St Wilfrid, HaywardsHeath, and Branch Secretary Mrs AdaZahoui.

‘There was a very high standardshown by all the entrants,’ said TrevorButler, who organised the Sussexheat. ‘The judges had a tough job indeciding the winners as the scoreswere extremely close.’

Candidates are marked on avariety of skills and techniques suchas the use of pause and emphasis,fluency and rhythm, as well as anatural, intelligent communicationof the passage in a secure andaccurate rendition.

Trevor Butler

ExeterThe Branch Chairman, The RevdPreb. Paul Hancock, welcomed allmembers to an Advent Quiet Day inthe Upper Room of HamptonManor, situated in the beautifulTamar Valley. He asked members toconcentrate their thoughts and tomeditate on the theme for the day,‘The Messiah’.

The day was conducted by FrGregory Carpenter, Greek Orthodoxpriest from Plymouth. MorningPrayer preceded the first address. FrGregory used for his address, Isaiah40:1–11, which presents theMessianic Prophecies, showing God’scomfort, following sorrow for allthat had previously gone wrong.

Recordings from Handel’s Messiahwere played during a silent lunch.Members could avail themselves of

periods of reflection in the chapel,lounge or beautiful gardens.

After lunch, a second address,developing the Messianic theme, wasfollowed by Evening Prayer.

“He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: heshall gather the lambs with his arm, and carrythem in his bosom, and shall gently lead thosethat are with young.”

LeicesterOn Saturday 22 August 2009, GinaBale of the Leicester branch hosted acoffee morning in aid of theLeicester branch at her home inFleckney. The fine weather helped tomake what has become an annualevent more popular than ever.

This year the event was publicisedin an article in the October edition of

Leicestershire and Rutland Life magazine,which noted the Prince of Wales’spatronage of the society, and statedthe purpose of the society to be ‘topromote and preserve the use in theChurch of England of the Book ofCommon Prayer (1662), which hasbeen replaced in parts by theAlternative Service Book (1980) andCommon Worship (2000)’.

As described in the article, ‘Agrand raffle, home-made delicaciesand cooked ham were just some ofthe delights on offer at the countryestate in the village of Fleckney,’ andthe following photographs, with anumber of others, were alsopublished.

Photographs: Andrew Carpenter

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Father John Green, Ian Stevens, Chris Stephens, Georgina Bale, Tim Brooks, Ann Brooks, HilarySouthall and the Revd Colin Southall at the Leicester Branch coffee morning

Alice Davies (aged three) and Josh Davies (aged eight) at the Leicester Branch coffee morning:the next generation of PBS members?

LichfieldBranch events in 2009 followed afamiliar pattern. On the last Sunday inMay we held our Summer Event atWhitmore Hall, in Staffordshire, bykind permission of Mr and Mrs GuyCavanagh-Mainwaring. The AGM washeld in the afternoon, followingwhich, a short walk down the drivetook us to Whitmore church forevensong. Once again, we werefortunate to have with us the ThomasCranmer Choir singing ‘Lord ofGrace’ as an introit and later in theservice the two anthems, ‘Rejoice inthe Lord’ and ‘Save us O Lord’.Equally splendidly, the choir led thecongregation in the rest of the sungservice and our thanks go to Mr KeithYearsley and all of his choir membersfor travelling from Macclesfield tojoin us.The Reverend James Graham,our Branch Chaplain, was theofficiant and preacher and it was anappropriate occasion to present himand his wife, Amanda, with a copy ofthe Folio Society Book of CommonPrayer, as a mark of appreciation forall the work which they have bothdone for the Branch over many years.Following the service we adjournedto Whitmore Hall for an excellentsupper and some impromptu musicalentertainment provided by membersof the choir.

In October two separate BCPreading competitions were held atMoreton Hall School in Shropshire;firstly the annual Sarah Parkescompetition, which is now firmlyestablished in the school and this

year attracted twenty-seven com-petitors, all of whom demonstated avery high standard, reading withclarity and understanding. A widevariety of readings, includingepistles, gospels, canticles andcollects were chosen by thecompetitors and it was a privilegeand pleasure to hear them all read sowell by pupils whose ages rangedfrom eight to sixteen. The winner ofthe senior competition was PollyBooth and Charlotte Ford won thejunior, with Phoebe Griffin andAbigail Bunce runners up in thoserespective classes. A week later theLichfield heats of the Cranmer Awardwere held at the same venue as partof the Shropshire Festival of Verse andProse and again with a veryencouraging number entering. PollyBooth repeated her success of theprevious week by winning the Senior

Class and Francesca Shanahan was thewinner in the Junior Class.Theadjudicators were Edwina Lloyd, SallyNoble and Michael Stone, all ofwhom had travelled long distances toundertake this duty and are thankedfor carrying out this task so diligently

On All Saints’ Day membersgathered in Shrewsbury to attend anexcellent BCP service of Matins withHoly Communion at St Giles Church,which was followed by luncheon atThe Lion Hotel. Our guests were TheReverend and Mrs P. Williams, whosechurch we had attended earlier andThe Reverend Prebendary and Mrs D.Crowhurst. Following lunch, TheReverend David Crowhurst gave avery interesting and detailed talk onchurch music, with special referenceto The Book of Common Prayer.

F.E.H.

OxfordOn 1st October 2009, the OxfordBranch President, the Revd Dr RogerBeckwith, and Chairman GeoffreyHorne travelled to Salisbury topresent copies of the Book ofCommon Prayer to 21 candidatesfrom the Oxford Diocese on theoccasion of their pre-ordinationRetreat. This is the second such eventin 2009 and presentations have beenmade to a total of 37 new Deaconsthis year; a very encouraging numberfrom our Diocese.We hope that thesebooks will be valued and well used,as the new clergy commence theirservice in the diocese.

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Col. Frank Hewitt, adjudicator; Charlotte Ford, winner of the Junior Class; Mrs Parkes; Dr Parkes,Founder of the Sarah Parkes Prize; Abigail Bunce, runner-up

Col. Frank Hewitt; Phoebe Griffith, runner-up; Merriel Halsall-Williams;, Mrs Parkes; Dr Parkes;Polly Booth,winner of the Senior Class

SalisburyThe Salisbury Branch of the PrayerBook Society held its ninthconsecutive Advent Carol Service onthe day before Advent Sunday. Thisyear, for the second time, it tookplace at St Catherine’s Church,Netherhampton.

The Revd John Staples, a memberof the Branch committee, compiledthe programme of Advent Carols and

Hymns. The bells were rung beforethe service, the lessons were takenfrom the King James Bible and theevent was well attended, with somemembers travelling very longdistances to attend it.

The service was conducted by thePriest-in-Charge, the Revd MarkWood. Afterwards, membersadjourned to the Grasmere Hotel,Harnham, for lunch.

The Chairman of the Branch, MrIan Woodhead, said it was veryencouraging to find this traditionalevent so well supported.

Sodor & ManThe Branch held its heat for theCranmer Awards at St John’s ParishChurch on 10th October 2009. Thephotograph shows three winners, asthe Isle of Man runs a section forunder-11s. The younger childrenreach a very high standard and manygo on to compete in the highersections. The children are eachholding trophies, which they keepfor a year, showing representations ofManx Viking crosses. The threewinner and three runners-up alsoreceive money prizes and certificatessigned by the Lord Bishop.

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Sodor & Man Cranmer AwardsFrom l to r: Domenico Galante (11–14);

Sarah Qualtrough (15–18); Ameilia Crossley(under 11). Behind are His Honour Jack

Corrin (retired Deemster) who presented theprizes and the organiser, Mrs Celia Salisbury

Jones.

HHaalllloowweedd EExxpprreessssiioonnssRe-appreciating the beauty, faith and piety of the Prayer Book

in a post-modern world

A Prayer Book Society Day ConferenceSt John's College, Cambridge

Tuesday 11th May 2010

This day-conference, which is being organised by the Ely branch of the Prayer Book Society,will take place in the beautiful surroundings of St. John's College, Cambridge, by kindinvitation of the Dean.

The speakers will include :REVD ANGELA TILBYREVD DUNCAN DORMORREVD PROFESSOR WILLIAM HORBURYREVD PAUL THOMAS

The Conference will begin at 12.30pm with a buffet lunch and will finish at 6.00pm (with a break for tea)after which delegates are invited to Choral Evensong which will be sung by the world famous choir.

Everyone is welcome at this event, so early registration is advised. The cost is £15.00 or £5.00 withoutthe lunch option.

For more information please contact the Branch Chairman, the Revd Dr Adam Dunning(adamdunning@btinternet.com) or Branch secretary Mr Philip White (pkcwhite@waitrose.com ortelephone 01223 324176).

The theology of the 1662 Communion OfficeThe Very Reverend Keith Jones’sexcellent article ‘Giving Thanks forthe Book of Common Prayer’ (PBSJournal Advent 2009) was asfrustrating as it was enjoyable.ThePrayer Book Society is in desperateneed of a clear rationale of PrayerBook theology. Mr Jones, under-standably, because the article was asermon preached in August,touched lightly on somefascinating issues yet did notdevelop any of them.

Thanks to the sterling work ofJack Trefusis and Tony Kilmister,the matters of formal languageand of Evening Prayer are rarely areal issue, Evensong is invariablysaid or sung in its traditionalform, though the opening andclosing sections are far too oftenomitted.

Yet it is the theology of the1662 Holy Communion that isstill under attack, mainly from theclergy, including, I am sorry to say,some members of the Prayer BookSociety who think that Cranmergot it wrong in 1552.

We are the Prayer Book Society.The service of Holy Communionis what it is and, as Mr Jonespointed out, the climax of theservice is ‘all of [the prayersleading up to and following thereceiving of Communion]: andnone stands alone.’ It is aconsummate piece, enshriningbiblical doctrine with radicalliturgy, giving the people their all-important part, whilst main-taining dignity, humility andaccessibility.

So often the 1662 HolyCommunion is relegated to a mid-week time. Having that service at

8 a.m. is a rare enough blessing. Afull, sung 1662 Holy Communionis much rarer, though thetradition is kept alive in someplaces.

Perhaps we could have somearticles in the Journal explaining thetheology and giving our folk inthe parishes material to persuadethe clergy that the service shouldbe used.

Even better, could we sendpeople into the theologicalcolleges so that the nextgeneration of clergy will see theBook of Common Prayer HolyCommunion Service as valid andeffective.

In the end, the most powerfulargument for any liturgy is that iscommunicates one to AlmightyGod. The efficacy of 1662 for thatpurpose can surely not be indoubt.

Barry WilliamsBeddington, Surrey

Editor’s note: The forthcoming issueof Faith & Worship will contain thepapers from the 2009 AnnualConference, which focused on thetheology of the Book of CommonPrayer including its Eucharistictheology.

Prayer Books for Lay ReadersI was interested to read the letterfrom Mr Christopher Corfield inthe Advent Journal about PrayerBooks for lay Readers. On the Isleof Man we have been presentingPrayer Books to newly licensedReaders since 2005. We also offerPrayer Books to anyone ordainedhere, but some have alreadyreceived these from the Society.Readers, however, are trained onthe Island. We order the 6½” x

4½” larger print copies at adiscounted rate and have so farpresented about 20 copies. As wecontrive to get invited to a servicein the Reader’s Parish to make thepresentation—it is all goodpublicity for the Society. Perhapsother Branches could do likewise.

Celia Salisbury JonesCastletown, Isle of Man

The Prayer Book Society in EuropeThe number of PBS members inmainland Europe is small; they arevery thinly spread and poorlyserved. Even since the appearanceof Transforming Worship (GS 1651),provision of Prayer-Book serviceshas not increased noticeably.Without support or encourage-ment from within the hierarchy, itis difficult to see what can bedone. As a first step, an exchangeof information between PBSmembers could perhaps proveuseful.

Any members who areinterested are invited to contactme by email.

Dr John Osbornejohn.osborne@orange.fr

West Gallery MusicI would like to draw your readers’attention to the work of the WestGallery Music Association. Weformed in 1990 to keep alive thejoyous music composed andperformed from the west galleriesof rural parish churches and inchapels in Georgian times. Thereare choirs (some say quires) ofkeen amateur singers andinstrumentalists in most parts ofthe country. Our members delightin introducing to people whomight never have heard thembefore these enjoyable and often

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Letters

vibrant hymns, psalms andanthems. We organise work-shops nationally and locally,and always welcome non-members. Member choirs alsoput on concerts, mainly forcommunity and churchgroups, but some foracademic or heritage events.

There were many people inGeorgian times, both locallyand nationally, composingflorid, joyful, soulful andmelancholy music toaccompany the liturgy of theBook of Common Prayer(BCP). Their main strophictexts were the metrical Psalms,either Old Version or NewVersion, commonly boundwith the BCP. Anthems oftenset the words of the prosePsalms in the Prayer BookVersion. Some of ourmembers are actively engagedin music research whichmeans that we can often bringa very local flavour to events.Our choirs (some in perioddress) have delighted parishchoirs and congregations byintroducing them to the veryanthems last sung in theirchurches or chapels before theOxford Movement of the1850s.

Most choirs can runworkshops possibly leading toa service—such as Matins orEvensong—involving the

congregation, or a shortconcert. Music can be foundfor most services. It helps ifsingers can read music andhave sung in a choir before,but it is not essential. Mostinstruments are welcome too,particularly strings andwoodwind, and players neednot be up to orchestralstandard to take part. Apartfrom workshops and services,we also put on concerts tied tothe music of an area or to fit inwith the church’s calendar. Afew years ago I led a workshopin Mitford, Northumberlandat the request of the PrayerBook Society, much of themusic then being included ina following Evensong. Thismay have been reported inyour Journal.

You can find out a lot moreabout the WGMA fromwww.wgma.org.uk. Thisprovides contact details for allthe local choirs and theirleaders, who would bedelighted to help bring thistraditional form of sacredmusic back to the churchesand chapels for which it wascomposed.

Mike BaileyChairman, West Gallery Music

AssociationWinchester

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Forthcoming EventsBBLLAACCKKBBUURRNNSaturday, 8th May, 11.00 a.m.,Blackburn Cathedral: BranchAnnual Festival. Choral HolyCommunion: preacher the RevdDavid Tickner. Followed by lunch(pre-booked), then AGM withspeaker: Prudence Dailey, NationalChairman of the Prayer BookSociety. Concludes with Evensong.

Sunday, 13th June, 4.00 p.m., St.Paul’s church, Little Marsden,Nelson: Evensong.

Friday, 24th September, 7.00p.m., Whalley Abbey: Talk by DrWinnifrith of the Bronte Societyon ‘The Brontes and the PrayerBook’.

Sunday, 10th October, 4.00 p.m.,St. Saviour’s church, BamberBridge: Harvest Festival Evensong.

For details of events pleasecontact the Branch Secretary, NeilInkley (telephone 01772821676).

EELLYYTuesday, 11th May, 12.30 a.m. –6.00 p.m.: ‘Hallowed Expressions’day conference at St John’s College,Cambridge. Advance registrationrequired: cost £5 or £15 includinglunch. Please see advertisement onpage 25.

EEXXEETTEERRThursday, April 22nd, visit toExeter Cathedral: Assemble 2.45p.m. for talk and conducted tour3.00 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. (approx.),followed by tea in the CathedralRefectory. Evensong at 5.30 p.m.Please contact the Branch Secretary,Mrs Esme Heath(esme.heath@sky.com

or telephone 01548 580615) ifyou wish to attend.

Saturday, June 5th, 2.30 p.m.,Branch AGM at Powderham Castle

at 2.30 p.m. Speaker TBA. Follwedby tea then Evensong at StClement’s Church, Powderham at5.00 p.m.

Saturday, September 11th, 3.00p.m., Choral Evensong at St James’Church, Avonwick, South Brent,conducted by the Chairman, theRevd Preb Paul Hancock, followedby tea at Black Hall, Avonwick bykind invitation of Mrs MarigoldSeager-Berry.

Monday, October 18th, 7.00p.m., Evensong for the Feast Day ofSt Luke at St Andrew’s MinsterChurch, Plymouth, followed bylight refreshments. Evensong willbe conducted by the Chairman, theRevd Preb Paul Hancock. GuestPreacher: the Ven Robin Ellis.

GGUUIILLDDFFOORRDDSaturday, 13th March, 4.00 p.m.:Holy Communion in the Founder’sChapel, Charterhouse School,Godalming, Surrey.

Saturday 12th June, 2.30 p.m.:Branch AGM, Saunders Room,Charterhouse School, Godalming,Surrey, followed by Evening Prayerin the Founder’s Chapel.

Further details from the BranchSecretary, John Fox-Reynolds(telephone 01428 605156).

NNOORRTTHH WWAALLEESSSaturday, 12th June, 3.00 p.m.:Branch Annual Service. HolyCommunion at St Dogfan’sChurch, Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Powys, followed by tea.

OOXXFFOORRDDSunday, 21st March, 3.45 p.m.:Commemoration of the marty-rdom of Thomas Cranmer. Prayersat the site of the martyrdom inBroad Street, Oxford, followed bywreath laying at the Martyrs’Memorial, then tea at theRandolph hotel. 6.00 p.m. ChoralEvensong, St Michael at theNorthgate, Cornmarket Street.

All warmly welcome to join thisannual commemoration on theanniversary of Cranmer’s martyr-dom. Teas must be booked inadvance, cost £13: please contactGeoffrey Horne (telephone 01491873117).

RRIIPPOONN && LLEEEEDDSSServices (all BCP) at MarkenfieldHall Chapel:

Monday, 1st March, 6.00 p.m.,Evensong: Canon Paul Greenwell &Choir of St Columba’s, Topcliffe.Thanksgiving for the Chapel –2010 being the 700th anniversary

Treasures of Lambeth Palace Library: 400thAnniversary Exhibition 1610-2010

The Great Hall, Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth PalaceRoad, London SE1 7JU

Monday, 17th May to Friday, 23rd July 2010

Open Monday to Saturday 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m., last admission4.30pm. Closed on Sundays and on 22nd May, 12th and 26th June

Admission: Adult £8, concessions £7

For advance tickets, go to www.lambethpalacelibrary.org or telephone 0871 230 1107 (24 hour booking line)

of the building of Markenfield andits Chapel.

Thursday, 4th March, 6.00 p.m.,Holy Communion; Rt Revd JohnPacker, Bishop of Ripon & Leeds

Thursday, 8th April, 6.00 p.m.,Evensong: Canon MichaelGlanville-Smith.

Thursday, 13th May, 6.00 p.m.,Holy Communion: Revd JamesThom.

Thursday, 17th June, 6.00 p.m.,Evensong: Canon RonaldMcFadden.

RROOCCHHEESSTTEERRSaturday, 27th March, 6.00 p.m.:Rochester Branch Cranmer Awards

heat (as part of the BromleyFestival) at Farringtons School,Perry Street, Chislehurst, KentBR7 6LR.

SSAALLIISSBBUURRYYSaturday, 17th April, 2.15 p.m.:Branch AGM at Dinton Hall,Dinton, near Salisbury, followedby the Salisbury bumper tea.Evensong at 4.45 p.m. in St Mary’sChurch.

SSOOUUTTHHWWEELLLL && NNOOTTTTIINNGGHHAAMMSunday, 21st March, 4.30 p.m.:Book of Common PrayerConfirmation service at St John ofBeverley Church, Whatton in the

Vale (Cranmer’s ‘home parish).This will be one of the firstconfirmations at which the newlyinstalled Bishop of Southwell 7Nottingham, the Rt Revd PaulButler, will be officiating. All verywelcome to attend.

WWAAKKEEFFIIEELLDDSaturday, 9th October, 2.30 p.m.:Branch Autumn Festival at Churchof St Aidan, Radcliffe Street,Skelmanthorpe, HuddersfieldHD8 9AF. Sung Holy Communion(1662) in honour of the Feast ofSt Abraham & St Sarah, followedby light refreshments. There isplenty of parking in the churchgrounds. All very welcome: forfurther details please contactPhilip Reynolds (life.draw@virgin.net

or telephone 01484 863232).

For details of events not listed, pleasecontact your local Branch Secretary.

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Prayer Book Society UmbrellasPromote the Book of Common Prayer whilst protecting yourself from the current

inclement weather with a Prayer Book Society umbrella.

This smart telescopic umbrella with reinforced spokes, available in burgundy ordeep lilac, has the PBS logo on four panels along with the following quotation:

'Thou, O God, sentest a gracious rain upon thine inheritance : and refreshedst itwhen it was weary. Psalm 68 verse 9'.

Available from PBS Trading,price £9.95 plus £1.50 p&p.

PRAYER BOOK SOCIETYCONFERENCE 2010

The Annual Conference will once again be returning tothe attractive and popular Royal Agricultural College at

Cirecncester, from Friday, 17th to Sunday, 19thSeptember. The programme and booking form will be

enclosed with the next issue of the PBS Journal.