The Book Annexed of 1662, as printed by the Queen’s Printers from the manuscript authenticated by the signatures of the members of both Houses of either Convocation, and annexed to the Act of Uniformity of 1662, shews no consistency in printing the Lord’s Prayer, and almost every time it occurs it is spelt or punctuated in a different way. But the variants are small, and in this Book the phrasing of the Prayer for public recitation appears in the following form:—

It was naturally a matter of some concern to the pupils and friends of the late Dr Norman Sykes when it became known recently that the Lambeth Library had acquired a manuscript diary of William Wake for the years of his episcopate as bishop of Lincoln and for the first ten years of his tenure as archbishop of Canterbury. The diary was, of course, quite unknown to Dr Sykes, and it seems right that there should be some critical examination of it in relation to the magisterial two-volume biography of Wake, which was published in 1957.

The movement inaugurated in England by the Wesleys has received and is still receiving much attention from historians. There was a contemporary and related movement in Wales, but, due to barriers of language, geography, politics, and national outlook, it has received much less attention. The leader of the Welsh movement was Howell Harris: the discovery and piecemeal publication of his journals and of a great mass of his correspondence have provided fresh material for the study of his life and work, and, in particular, of his relationship to the Wesleys.

The problem of the balance between the Establishment and Dissent in the nineteenth century has not attracted much attention among historians, crucial as it was to much of church life and politics too. The mushroom growth of Dissent between 1790 and 1850 was plainly related to the social cataclysms of that period, though the precise nature of the relation is still far from clear; and by the time of the census of 1851 Dissent had attained a rough numerical parity with the Establishment. After 1850 the Church establishment was never (in spite of some gloomy prognostications) in real danger. Indeed, in two important respects the situation changed in her favour.