Surprisingly few antiphonals were to survive “the King's order for bringing in popish rituals”, the Statute of 3 and 4 Edward VI, c. 10., following an Order in Council, 25 December 1549.[1] This was put into effect with great assiduity by the Church, under the auspices of its bishops, each bishop having been made personally responsible for seeing that the law was obeyed in his diocese. The destruction of books was deplored by some of the Protestants themselves, for instance by Bishop John Bale, who was a fierce enemy of the papacy,[2] but they were not permitted to do anything about it. The text of the statute acquires an ominous inevitability as every kind of liturgical book in turn is condemned to annihilation. Since divers unquiet and evilly-disposed people wanted to have their Latin services back (begins the statute), their “conjured bread” and water and suchlike vain and superstitious ceremonies, the king had decided to put an end to such expectations by instructing each bishop immediately to command every clergyman in his diocese to deliver to him or to a deputy “all antiphoners, missales, grayles, processionalles, manuelles, legendes, pies, portasies, jornalles, and ordinalles after the use of Sarum, Lincoln, Yorke, or any other private use, and all other bokes of service …” Bishops were explicitly instructed to “take the same bokes … and then so deface and abolyshe that they never after may serve eyther to anie soche use, as they were provided for …”
A short history of surgery. By Sir D'Arcy Power, K.B.E., F.R.C.S., Hon. Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Crown 8vo. 1933. London : John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, Ltd. 3s. 6d. net