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from the plunder of the churches should go to private individuals.
Warwick insisted on the new bishops handing over large portions of
episcopal estates to be conferred on his favourites, and royal
commissions were issued to take inventories of ecclesiastical
property. During the years 1551 and 1552 the churches were stripped of
their valuables, and the church plate, chalices, copes, vestments, and
altar cloths, were disposed of to provide money for the impecunious
members of the council.

Violent measures such as these were not likely to win popularity for
the new religion, nor to bring about dogmatic unity. Risings took
place in Leicester, Northampton, Rutland, and Berkshire, and free
fights were witnessed even in the churches of London. Rumours of
conspiracy, especially in the north, where the Earls of Shrewsbury and
Derby still clung to the Catholic faith, were circulated, and fears of
a French invasion were not entirely without foundation. A new Act of
Uniformity[65] was decreed (1552) threatening spiritual and temporal
punishments against laymen who neglected to attend common prayer on
Sundays and holidays. Acts were passed for the relief of the poor who
had been rendered destitute by the suppression of the monasteries and
the wholesale inclosures, and to comfort the married clergy, whose
children were still regarded commonly as illegitimate, a second
measure was passed legalising such unions. Fighting in churches and
churchyards was to be put down with a heavy hand. If spiritual
punishments could not suffice for the maintenance of order offenders
were to be deprived of an ear or branded on the cheek with a red hot
iron.

Though according to some the Book of Common Prayer had been compiled
under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, soon it came to be regarded by
many as unsatisfactory. The men, who had rejected the authority of the
Pope because he was a foreigner to follow the teaching of apostate
friars from Switzerland, Italy, Poland, and Germany, clamoured for its
revision on the ground that it seemed to uphold the Real and Corporeal
Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Cranmer, who had accepted
Transubstantiation in the days of Henry VIII., and had defended a kind
of Real Presence in 1549, veered gradually towards Calvin's teaching
on the Eucharist. In order to remove the ambiguities and difficulties
of the old Prayer Book, it was determined to subject it to a complete
revision by which everything that implied a real objective presence of
Christ in the Eucharist should be omitted. The second Book of Common
Prayer was submitted and approved by Parliament (1552), and its use
was authorised by royal proclamation. It was to come into force in
November 1552, but late in September, when some copies of the Book
were already printed, the council issued a command that the work
should be stopped until further corrections had been made. It seems
that by a new rubric inserted by Cranmer communicants were enjoined to
receive the communion on bended knees, and John Knox, who had arrived
lately in England and was high in the favour of the council, objected
strongly to such an injunction as flavouring of papistry.
Notwithstanding the spirited remonstrances of Cranmer, the council
without authority from Parliament or Convocation obliged him to insert
on a fly leaf the famous "Black Rubric" which remains in the Book of
Common Prayer till the present day, except that in the time of Charles
II. a change was made, by which "corporeal presence" was inserted in
place of the "real and essential presence" repudiated in the first
form of the rubric.[66]

One other matter was considered by Cranmer as necessary for the
success of the new religious settlement, namely, the publication of an
authoritative creed for the English Church. The great diversity of
opinion in the country, the frantic appeals of men like Hooper who had
tried in vain to make an unwilling clergy accept their own dogmatic
standard, and the striking success of the Council of Trent in
vindicating Catholic doctrine, made it necessary to show the English
people what could be done by the supreme head of the Church at home
even though he was only a helpless boy. In 1549 Cranmer drew up a
series of Articles to be accepted by all preachers in his diocese.
These he submitted to the body of the bishops in 1551, and later at
the request of the privy council to a commission of six amongst whom
was John Knox. They were returned with annotations to Cranmer, who
having revised them besought the council to authorise their
publication. Finally in June 1553 Edward VI., four weeks before his
death, approved them, and commanded that they should be accepted by
all his subjects. The /Forty-two Articles/ represented the first
attempt to provide the English Church with a distinct dogmatic creed.