This is a companion volume to Private and domestic devotion in early modern Britain, also edited by Alec Ryrie and published by the same press. Both volumes are the fruits of a research network established in 2008 to study ‘lived religion and religious experience’ in the early modern period (p. 8). But whereas the first volume was heavily reliant on personal papers and biographical accounts that threw light on the beliefs and practices of individuals and families, the second faces the daunting task of finding materials that illuminate what the editors call the ‘fundamental arena’ in which worship was defined and enacted – ‘the ordinary parish church on a Sunday morning’ (p. 10). A few decades ago ‘worship’ was still the province of liturgical experts (preoccupied with provenance, continuity and uniformity) and musicologists (who focused on cathedrals and chapels); but the ten contributors to this volume possess a range of specialisms, and are to be congratulated for trying new approaches. Some concentrate on shifts in the theory of church worship as deduced from officially-sponsored liturgies, supplementary devotional works, and the polemical exchanges between the educated elites of the period, while others explore the relationship between theory and performance. However, while nearly all of the essays offer striking insights, the scrappy nature of the evidence for parish worship means that their conclusions are often provisional. Thus Hannah Cleugh explores the tensions bequeathed to the Elizabethan and Jacobean Church by the equation that Cranmer had implanted in various parts of his liturgy, but especially in the baptism and burial services, between faithful members of the visible Church and the elect. By the late sixteenth century this equation was being challenged or circumvented by a number of clergy and some of the educated laity, which begs the question of how far it might be possible to establish whether most of the clergy and people welcomed or opposed the inclusiveness of the liturgy. Next Natalie Mears provides a fascinating account of the special prayers and liturgies produced to supplement the Prayer Book services on nearly a hundred occasions between 1535 and 1641, and not only demonstrates that they were more varied than has been assumed, but also throws light on what the men who drew them up thought was their prime purpose and potential result. However, she admits that it is still unclear how far these prayers and liturgies were actually used, and what impact they had on the normal run of Prayer Book services. Alec Ryrie offers a masterly analysis of a neglected topic: the three kinds of fasting that were practised in post-Reformation England and Scotland; but he too does not push the case for performance too far until more evidence can be found. Judith Maltby provides a sensitive evaluation of the potential problems posed in the mid-1640s by the abrupt withdrawal of a set liturgy and the sudden need for all clergy to provide extensive conceived or extempore prayers in church worship. Even among those clergy who, like Ralph Josselin, had been critics of the Prayer Book or had practised some form of extempore prayer already, this could cause problems, and we clearly need to know how serious the problem was for those clergy who had not the experience or the gift to improvise, and how they resolved it. Jonathan Willis points out that, despite the old assumption that Puritans were wary of music and continued to fear its corrupting influence, many of the ‘godly’, like Calvin himself, were not hostile to all music, and were prepared to accept that, deployed properly, it could have edifying results. He also alerts us to the number of roles and functions that a wide variety of people felt that music could perform and which would repay further enquiry. One essay focuses on a single person, and another on a single location. Peter McCullough suggests that Lancelot Andrewes played a pivotal role in the survival of church music both as patron and as skilful deployer of musical themes in Christmas and commemoration sermons; and Trevor Cooper painstakingly reconstructs how the Ferrars rearranged the chapel at Little Gidding for public worship. But both contributors reach out to throw light on attitudes and practices on a much wider front. Finally, two authors who have decades of experience in church court records provide trailblazing accounts of how parishioners may have responded to official prescriptions. Chris Marsh offers a number of good reasons why recreational bell-ringing took off, and why it should be seen as complementary rather than antithetical to official worship; and John Craig starts the tricky task of piecing together what fragments of evidence there are for the physical position and gestures adopted during praying, and the vexed question for contemporaries of whether they should bare their heads during services. Both authors remind us, however, that court evidence often tells us more about those individuals who were trying to buck the trend rather than those prepared to comply.

Some patterns emerge. There was the exceptionalism of many aspects of English rituals compared to Reformed theory and practice abroad; and within England there were many issues on which there were shades of difference rather than unbridgeable gulfs, and also many occasions on which official and unofficial initiatives intersected, or different elements of worship – prayers, sermons, music and church fittings – interacted. All this suggests that, within the framework provided by the official liturgy and supplementary services, worship in Protestant England continued to evolve for many decades rather than being uniformly imposed from above. If further volumes are planned, then other avenues might usefully be explored. One is the laity's experience of praise, confession and petition in the most frequently performed services in an ‘ordinary parish church’ on a Sunday. Another is the further developments in the period 1660 to 1740, when a number of the issues that had caused tension before 1640 and during the revolutionary decades were resolved in ways that the editors seem to think were divisive (p. 10), but which it could also be argued adhered to most of the principles of Cranmer's original liturgy.