The Survival of the English Use

Originally uploaded by Aristibule.

A nice picture, from "A Server's Manual for the Holy Communion"

Details to notice: the East Window, the altar with dossal and riddel curtains. Two candles on the altar, an altar cross, a frontal on the altar - cushions for the Missal, the Corporals covered Chalice and Paten. The priest in appareled alb, appareled amice, full Gothic chasuble, thin stole, maniple. The server in Cassock and the slit opening variation of the English surplice (I've most often seen this worn by Choirs and Organ masters.) See also the Aumbrey (English version of the Tabernacle - the cruet there probably contains Holy Oil) the Credence table with the vials and instruments for Lavabo, and the Sedalia (those are the 'seats' that look like windows with cushions on the sill.) How Church was done openly for probably over 1000 years, til the Reformation (when it was done secretly for 200 more years), and as recovered in the 19th c. first by Emancipated English Catholics, then by Anglo-Catholics (and finally in the 20th c. by Western Rite Orthodox.)

For guideposts towards that history, I would suggest Stanley Morrison's "English Prayer Books" for a start. The Tichborn estate (a Recusant family) had a Sarum Manuale all the way through and was the basis of the 19th c. Sarum translations by the Wordsworths. Sarum books were still being printed in England up til 1557, the Sarum at the English exiles in France up til 1576 (Rome til 1569). The last Sarum book printed was in 1611 (Kellam-Douai 12mo.)

The Jesuits, beginning in 1623, carried special books printed just for their mission that were "pro Sacerdotibus in Anglia, Scotia, et Ibernia", which were full of Sarum customs (and, the full Sarum marriage service, for instance.)

Morrison sees the Tridentine only supplanting the Sarum in the colleges abroad - and that besides the Jesuit books, the Platin books of Antwerp were in use - as well as Sarum books (such as at Tichborn.)

It should be noted that the 1686 Ordo published in England by James II's printers was Sarum based (after the Jesuit usage "pro Anglia, Hibernia, et Scotia." And, though Morrison doesn't have that information, I have elsewhere reference to the use surviving in two parishes in Cornwall.

As for the revival of Sarum in full, it was accomplished with the Roman Catholics in England with Ambrose Phillips de Lisle at Grace Dieu (and, Pugin's wife was baptised according to Sarum Use by Dr. Daniel Rock at Lord Shrewsbury's private chapel in 1839 - the same year De Lisle asked for the Roman bishops to reinstate full Sarum.)

From all the histories I've checked over the past few months on the Recusants, there is agreement that the Irish invading England were definitely using different customs and traditions than the English old Catholics were used to (ie, Sarum/'pro Anglia, Hibernia, et Scotia') and it remained a major sticking point. As the Irish pushed the English use out of the RCC in England, the Anglo-Catholics picked it up (primarily through Williams, Seager and Bloxam - who first learned ritual and ceremony from De Lisle's Grace Dieu chapel.) The first Latin Breviary printed in England after the Emancipation was an 1830 Sarum Breviary by Husenbeth.

For that matter, though *some* Tridentine books were used in England during that period, it was more likely to be the Parisian books (which had their own local elements - this is during the 'Neo-Gallican' period), or the Antwerp books (again, with local elements after Utrecht).

The Jesuits aforementioned were using a local use based upon Sarum (not Tridentine), as acculturation was their method in those few centuries. The Irish themselves had lost their own usage (which was like the Sarum) though the Jesuits and Dominicans were using liturgy like the old Irish liturgy. It was the Franciscans who brought about the change in Irish Catholic life and worship, which was later to be imposed upon Britain and America through migration.

It should also be pointed out (from Denis Gwyn, J.C.H. Aveling, J. Bossy, and E. Norman) that the English old Catholics were being served not only by the Jesuits, but by larger numbers of secular clergy who were private chaplains, chosen by and trained for the Recusant families: the idea of some newly indoctrinated Tridentine-purist Continental Seminarians overturning a tradition in England overnight (or even in a generation) and importing loads of new books is simple hogwash... it fits with neither of the facts that the clergy for the most part were *untrained* (the private chaplains) or Jesuit trained (and thus, using not Tridentine books, but special books for Britain and Ireland based upon Sarum). That: and the stress over ceremonial and tradition after the Irish migration was due to the new Irish (Franciscan) clergy imposing a new practice (Tridentine ceremonial and books) unlike the Jesuit/Secular practices current with English Catholics.