Social Response and the Prayer Book Rebellion

Religious change reached into parish life

For ordinary people, the Reformation was not simply an argument between monarchs and church leaders. Parish churches were centres of community spiritual life. Changes to their services therefore affected familiar prayers, shared ceremonies and beliefs about what happened after death.

Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 1530s and became Supreme Head of the Church in England, but retained important Catholic beliefs. Under his son Edward VI, who became king in 1547, religious policy moved further towards Protestantism. Edward was only nine when he became king, so ministers governed on his behalf, with his uncle Edward Seymour becoming Lord Protector. People experienced successive changes rather than one single, settled reform.

This helps explain why reactions could be strong. To someone attached to traditional religion, changing worship could seem to threaten something spiritually necessary, not merely replace an old custom. For supporters of Protestant reform, however, change could mean establishing worship more closely based on the Bible.

People did not all respond in the same way

Opposition was important, but it was not universal. Research into the Suffolk parishes of Boxford, Cratfield, Long Melford and Mildenhall found that religious change was, for the most part, received enthusiastically there. Local cooperation helped make reform possible, even though change was costly, divisive and unpopular in many other parts of England.

Churchwardens connected government policy with parish life. They managed parish resources and helped turn instructions from above into local action. Their involvement shows that the Reformation depended on more than issuing royal orders: people within communities also had to implement those orders.

Historians can investigate these responses through churchwardens’ accounts, which record parish income and expenditure, and through wills, which can offer clues about individual religious beliefs. These provide different kinds of evidence. An account can reveal what a parish paid for, but does not by itself establish that every parishioner approved. A will can illuminate one person’s beliefs, but cannot speak for an entire community.

The contrast between cooperation in these Suffolk parishes and rebellion in the south-west is therefore essential. Religious change could attract support in one locality and fierce resistance in another.

Resistance before the Prayer Book Rebellion

Resistance to religious change did not begin in 1549. In Exeter during the 1530s, women protested against the removal of the rood loft at St Nicholas’s Priory. A rood loft was a raised structure associated with the large crucifix inside a church. During the protest, one woman struck John Blackaller, who was involved in its removal. This was a concrete example of people defending the familiar religious setting of their community under Henry VIII.

In Cornwall, restrictions on saints’ celebrations also provoked opposition. In 1537, people aboard a ship travelling to Brittany for a saint’s feast pushed a customs officer into the sea when he tried to stop them. Such resistance concerned shared religious customs as well as changes inside church buildings.

Under Edward VI, opposition could become deadly. In 1548, the government official William Body was stabbed to death in Helston after trying to remove holy images from the parish church. Ten Cornishmen were subsequently executed for their involvement. This confrontation shows that hostility to the removal of traditional religious objects was already intense before the new prayer book arrived.

Why the prayer book provoked resistance in 1549

In 1549, Edward VI’s government introduced the Book of Common Prayer, composed mainly by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. It provided an official form of worship in English and replaced the familiar Catholic Mass.

The Prayer Book Rebellion took place in Devon and Cornwall during the summer of 1549. In Cornwall, the language change created a particular grievance: some Cornish-speaking people understood no English. An English service therefore did not necessarily make worship more understandable to them. The rebels explicitly complained that some Cornish people could not understand the new language of worship and demanded their old Latin services instead.

Their objection was not simply about understanding every word. Latin worship was familiar and bound up with traditional Catholic beliefs and ceremonies. The rebels’ demands show that opposition went beyond dislike of a new book. They wanted a restoration of traditional religion:

• Latin for the Mass, rather than the new English services.
• Prayers for souls in purgatory, preserving the belief that the living could help the dead through prayer.
• Only bread to be given to the laity at communion, restoring the traditional practice for ordinary worshippers.
• Restoration of the Six Articles, returning to Henry VIII’s defence of important Catholic teachings.
• Rebuilding of abbeys, reversing a major part of the earlier religious changes.

These demands connected the immediate change in services with wider grievances about the Reformation. The prayer book was the focus of protest, but the rebels sought to recover a broader religious world that had been undermined.

Their demands also reveal their aims rather than their achievements. Calling for restored abbeys did not mean that abbeys were actually rebuilt.

From parish protest to armed rebellion

In June 1549, parishioners at Sampford Courtenay in Devon forced their vicar to return to the old service rather than use the new prayer book. A supporter of the new prayer book was killed outside the church. What began as a dispute over parish worship developed into an armed uprising as people from across west Devon gathered and marched towards Exeter.

Cornish opponents also mobilised, choosing Humphrey Arundell as their commander. They claimed loyalty to Edward VI but argued that religious changes should wait until he was old enough to make his own decisions. This distinction mattered to their justification of resistance: they presented themselves as defending religion against the policies of the king’s government, rather than rejecting the king himself.

By July 1549, Devonshire and Cornish rebels were besieging Exeter. A siege involved surrounding a defended place and trying to force it to surrender. The siege lasted approximately five to six weeks, showing that this was a sustained uprising rather than a brief disturbance.

Exeter’s leaders refused to join the rebels and organised the city’s defence. John Blackaller, now mayor, helped defend Exeter despite his possible sympathy with traditional religion. Religious conservatism did not automatically mean willingness to rebel: loyalty to royal authority and concern for the city could lead people to resist the uprising.

Royal forces led by Lord Russell fought the rebels. The battle at Fenny Bridges on 28 July was inconclusive, so it did not settle the conflict. Further fighting followed at Woodbury Common on 4 August, Clyst St Mary on 5 August and Clyst Heath on 6 August. At Clyst St Mary, government troops killed several hundred prisoners, demonstrating the brutality of the suppression.

After success at Clyst Heath, Russell advanced to relieve Exeter, ending the city’s siege. Surviving rebels regrouped at Sampford Courtenay, near Okehampton, under Humphrey Arundell. On 17 August 1549, larger royal forces routed them there, ending the rebellion. Arundell and other rebel leaders were executed at Tyburn on 27 January 1550.

What the rebellion tells us about the Reformation

The rebellion failed to secure its demands. Its defeat demonstrates the government’s willingness to enforce religious policy through military force when opposition became rebellion. Punishment continued after the fighting, including executions of clergy and other participants in Devon and Cornwall.

Yet military defeat does not prove that the rebels became convinced Protestants. It establishes that their armed resistance was overcome. Equally, the existence of rebellion in Devon and Cornwall does not prove that all ordinary people rejected reform.

The strongest assessment recognises these different experiences: the Reformation could be implemented through local cooperation, as in the four Suffolk parishes, but could also provoke determined resistance when people believed that familiar worship and essential religious beliefs were being taken away. Even attachment to traditional religion did not produce one uniform response, as Exeter’s refusal to support the rebels shows.