There is no 1549 Prayer Book in Cornish. That absence is the point of the rising.
The book imposed at Whitsun 1549 was Cranmer’s first Book of Common Prayer, in English only. The western articles asked for the old Latin services back. They did not ask for a Cornish book. After the defeat, unlike Wales, no Cornish translation was authorised. A Cornish liturgy appears only in the twentieth-century revival.
Links to the 1549 book (complete, public domain)
The fullest readable set:
- Main contents and all services: justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/BCP_1549.htm
- Same site, file list (HTML + PDFs that mimic the original blackletter): justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/
- Combined facsimile-style PDF: justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/BCP1549.pdf
- Original 1549 printing (scan): archive.org/details/bookeofcommonpra00chur_1
- Searchable EEBO text: quod.lib.umich.edu — A72693
That is the book the rising refused. It is a whole volume (preface, calendar, matins, evensong, communion, baptism, confirmation, marriage, visitation of the sick, burial, purification of women, ash Wednesday, and so on). A full paste here would be a book, not an answer. The passages that matter to 1549 Cornwall are the daily offices and the communion — the services named in Article 8.
What Article 8 actually named
The rebels’ eighth article (final Exeter-camp form):
We will not receive the new service because it is but like a Christmas game, but we will have our old service of Matins, Mass, Evensong and procession in Latin as it was before. And so we the Cornish men (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English.
“Christmas game” is their phrase for a vernacular service with spoken responses, less ritual density, and the people expected to take a part. The government’s reply was that Latin had not been understood either, and that English was an improvement. Cranmer asked why Cornwall would refuse English for not understanding it, yet demand Latin which almost none understood.
The services they rejected — 1549 English, then modern spelling
These are the opening frames of the three offices in the new book. Original spelling first, then a plain modernisation. This is not the whole book.
Matins (Morning Prayer)
1549
O God, make spede to save me.Answer. O Lorde, make haste to helpe me.Glory be to the father, and to the sonne: and to the holy ghost.As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shal be, worlde without ende. Amen.Prayse ye the Lorde.
Then psalms, an Old Testament lesson, Te Deum (or Benedicite in Lent), a New Testament lesson, Benedictus, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, suffrages, and three collects.
Modern spelling
O God, make speed to save me.Answer. O Lord, make haste to help me.Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.Praise ye the Lord.
Full 1549 Matins: Matins_1549.htm
Evensong (Evening Prayer)
1549
O God, make spede to save me.Answer. O Lorde, make haste to helpe me.…After that, Magnificat anima mea dominum in Englishe…
Modern spelling of the second collect at Evensong (the peace collect still widely used):
O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed: Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give, that both our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Full 1549 Evensong: Evensong_1549.htm
The Lord’s Supper / Holy Communion (the “Mass” of Article 3 and 8)
The 1549 communion is still structurally close to the old Mass (vestments, some Latin titles kept as headings, prayer of consecration with an epiclesis-like petition), but it is spoken in English and the people are given a part. That mix is what looked, to the camps, like a game instead of the Mass.
Opening of the Lord’s Prayer as used throughout the book (1549 form, modernised):
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. Amen.
Communion service: linked from the 1549 index; a modern-spelling communion text is flagged on the same site.
The Western articles (the text that belongs with the book)
Several lists survive. The fullest commonly printed set is “The Articles of us the Commoners of Devonshire and Cornwall in divers camps by east and west of Exeter.” Modern English below, from that tradition.
- We will have the general councils and holy decrees of our forefathers observed; whoever speaks against them we hold as heretics.
- We will have Henry VIII’s Six Articles in use again.
- We will have the Mass in Latin as before, celebrated by the priest without any man or woman communicating with him.
- We will have the Sacrament hang over the high altar and be worshipped as it used to be; those who will not consent we will have die as heretics.
- We will have the Sacrament of the altar delivered to lay people only at Easter, and then in one kind.
- We will have our old ceremonies, and images set up again in every church.
- We will have the reserved sacrament and the old ritual order of the church restored.
- We will not receive the new service, because it is but like a Christmas game. We will have our old service of Matins, Mass, Evensong and procession in Latin, not in English. And so we the Cornishmen (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly refuse this new English.
- Every preacher in his sermon, and every priest at his Mass, shall pray by name for the souls in purgatory, as our forefathers did.
- We will have the Bible and all books of Scripture in English called in again.
- We will have Cardinal Pole sent for, and other godly doctors to settle the faith.
- No gentleman shall have more serving-men than one, except he may spend a hundred marks a year; and for every hundred marks more, one man.
- Half the abbey and chantry lands shall be given back to two houses in every county, to pray for the king and the commonwealth.
- We will have the Six Articles enforced, and heretics punished.
- We will have the laws of the realm touching the church as they were in Henry VIII’s last years.
- Those who made the new laws against the church shall suffer as heretics and traitors.
Exact numbering and wording wobble between copies. Article 8 is stable.
Edward’s printed answer to the language point: if some Cornish understood no English, why were they not equally offended by Latin? The Crown claimed there were few towns in Cornwall without more English than Latin. National Archives transcript
Cornish: what exists, and what does not
What does exist in historical Cornish around that century:
- Middle Cornish sacred drama: the Ordinalia, Beunans Meriasek, Beunans Ke — mystery and saint plays, not the 1549 rite.
- The Tregear Homilies (c. 1555–58): Protestant homilies translated into Cornish by John Tregear after the rising. That is the nearest contemporary Cornish religious prose, and it is the new religion, not the old Mass.
- Later Lord’s Prayer texts in Late Cornish / revived forms. One standard modern Kernewek form:
Agan Tas ny, us yn nev,benygys re bo dha hanow.Re dheffo dha wlaskor.Dha vodh re bo gwrys yn nor kepar dell yw yn nev.Ro dhyn hedhyw agan bara pub dydh.Ha gav dhyn agan camwriansow,kepar dell aven nynion dhe’n re na wrug agan camwia.Ha na wra agan gorra yn temptasyon,mes deliver ny dhyworth drog.
- Index: justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Cornish/
- Morning & Evening Prayer: mp-ep.htm
- Compline: compline.htm
Opening of that 1980 morning office:
Arluth, ty ygor agan gweusow.Gorthyp: Ha ’gan ganow a wra dysquedhes dha wologhas.A Dhew, fystyn dh’agan sylwel.Gorthyp: A Arluth, dus uskys dh’agan gweres.
That is “O Lord, open thou our lips / And our mouth shall show forth thy praise” — the later Anglican opening, in revived Cornish, four centuries after the camps outside Exeter.
The prayer book itself is the English volume at the Anglican.org link.
Cranmer’s Answer to the Fifteen Articles of the Rebels of Devon and Cornwall.
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