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In London, where it might have been expected that the influence of the
court should have secured its ready acceptance, many of the churches
maintained the old service in spite of the frantic efforts of Cranmer
and his subordinates. Bishop Bonner was reproved sharply for
encouraging the disobedience of his clergy, and as he failed to give
satisfaction to the government he was committed to prison. In
Devonshire and Cornwall[58] the peasants and country gentlemen rose in
arms to protest against the new service which they had likened to a
Christmas game, and to demand the restoration of the Mass, Communion
under one kind, holy water, palms, ashes, images, and pictures. They
insisted that the Six Articles of Henry VIII. should be enforced once
more and that Cardinal Pole should be recalled from Rome, and honoured
with a seat at the council. In the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, where royal visitors and hired foreigners like Peter
Martyr, Bucer, and Ochino were doing their best to decatholicise these
seats of learning, violent commotions took place, that served to
arouse both students and people, and soon the country around Oxford
was in a blaze. The religious disturbances encouraged those who
preferred small farms and sturdy labourers to grazing inclosures and
sheep to raise the standard of revolt against the new economical
tendencies, and to accept the leadership of the Norfolk tanner,
William Kett.[59] By the strenuous exertions of the Protector and the
council, backed as they were by foreign mercenaries raised in Italy
and Germany to fight against Scotland, these rebellions were put down
by force, and the leaders, both lay and clerical, were punished with
merciless severity. The disturbed condition of the country, however,
the open dissatisfaction of the Catholic party, the compromises that
were offered to those who fought against inclosures, and the
unfortunate war with France into which the country had been plunged,
pointed to Somerset's unfitness for the office of Protector. A
combination was formed against him by the Earl of Warwick, assisted by
the leaders of the Catholic party. He was arrested, found guilty, and
deprived of all his offices (Dec. 1549), and the Earl of Warwick,
created later Duke of Northumberland, secured the principal share in
the new government.

Cranmer and his foreign assistants were filled with alarm for the
future of their cause. They feared that the new administration would
be controlled by Wriothesley, ex-Chancellor, the Arundels, Southwell
and other prominent Catholics, that Gardiner and Bonner might be
released from imprisonment, and that the demands of many of the
insurgents for the abolition of the Book of Common Prayer and the
restoration of the Mass might be conceded. The Catholic party were
filled with new hope; in Oxford and throughout the country the old
missals and vestments that had been hidden away were brought forth
again, and the offices and Mass were sung as they had been for
centuries.[60] But Warwick soon showed that the change of rulers meant
no change in the religious policy of the government. Gardiner and
Bonner were still kept in confinement; Wriothesley was dismissed from
the council; many of the other Catholic noblemen were imprisoned, and
Somerset who was supposed to have fallen a victim to the hatred of the
Catholics was released from his prison and re-admitted to the privy
council (1550). By the inglorious war with France and by the still
more inglorious peace of Boulogne the government felt itself free to
devote its energies to the religious situation at home. Warwick went
over completely to the camp of the reforming party and determined in
consultation with them to push forward the anti-Catholic campaign.

The Parliament that assembled in November 1549 was distinctly radical
in its tendencies. In the House of Lords the bishops complained that
their authority had been destroyed, and that their orders were set at
naught. In reply they were requested to formulate a proposal for
redress, but on such a proposal having been submitted, their demands
were regarded by the laymen as exorbitant. A commission was appointed
against the wishes of a strong minority of the bishops to draw up a
new Ordinal as a complement to the Book of Common Prayer. The
committee was appointed on the 2nd February 1550, and it appears to
have finished its work within a week. In the new /Ordinal/[61] (1550)
the ceremonies for the conferring of tonsure, minor orders, and sub-
deaconship were omitted entirely, while the ordination rites for
deacons, priests, and bishops were considerably modified. Just as the
sacrificial character of the Mass had been dropped out of the Book of
Common Prayer, so too the notion of a real priesthood disappeared from
the forms for ordination. In spite of the opposition of a large body
of the bishops, an Act was passed ordering the destruction of all