Chapter 7 - The Orphaned Ordinal

Summary

The second Edwardian Act of Uniformity required an ordinal (a booklet containing the services for ordaining priests and bishops) to be bound with each folio edition of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. No ordinal was mentioned in the 1559 Act, but the authorities evidently provided the printers with revisions for it, and each team of printers produced one. Only one copy of Grafton’s survives, and none of the extant copies of the ‘Jugge and Cawood’ ordinal is bound with their first edition of the prayer book. Moreover, unlike the 1552 contents lists, those of 1559 make no mention of an ordinal. The evidence suggests that it was withdrawn at the last minute, to be sold only as a separate item. Curiously, fewer than half the copies include the original sheet BB5:6. One simply lacks it; three have cancels printed in the 1580s by two different printers.