Lord Windsor, and Lord Dacres, remaining to the last dissentient. These would have had no change; they would have retained the hreviary and the missal: but neither were the Genevans any more successful on the other side. The first communion service was retained, with scarcely an alteration; and the mystery of the eucharist was left untouched;[1] the minister was still uniformly called 'a priest;' the communion-table uniformly an altar; and prayers for the dead were retained in the burial service, and in the prayer for the Church militant. The English people were tenacious of their old opinions. The ultra-Protestant changes in the Prayer-book of 1552 were followed by a recoil under Mary to the mass, and the ultimate compromise under Elizabeth indicated the stationary point at which the oscillations of the controversy tended at last to rest.
In the midst of these grave questions, the attention of the Government and of Parliament was called away to the wild doings of Lord Seymour. Misconceiving his position, his strength, and his popularity, the Admiral had scarcely cared any longer to throw a veil over his intentions. The fortunes and prospects of Elizabeth and Mary were left by Henry contingent on
- ↑ Among the directions at the end of the communion service in the Prayer-hook of 1549, the bread was ordered 'to be such as had been heretofore accustomed, each of the consecrated breads to be broken into two pieces or more, at discretion;' 'and men,' it was said, 'must not think less to be received in part than in the whole, but in each of them the whole body of Our Saviour Jesus Christ.' It was ruled also that 'the people should receive the sacrament in their mouths at the priest's hands.'
