Church of England · 1553 · 1563 · 1571

“The Thirty-nine Articles.” The Church of England’s confession began as the Forty-two Articles that Archbishop Cranmer composed in the reign of Edward VI. They were issued in June 1553, a few weeks before the king died, and dropped when Mary I came to the throne. Elizabeth’s bishops revised them in 1563 and settled them in 1571. This page puts the two ends of that process side by side.

The Forty-two Articles of 1553 beside the Thirty-nine Articles of 1571, with every change marked

Left: the 1553 text, in the modern spelling of Gerald Bray’s edition. Right: the 1571 text as printed in the Book of Common Prayer. Red words in 1553 were removed or reworded. Green words are new. Hover a coloured phrase to light up its counterpart; tap any word for dictionary links.

Show 1563 and 1571

1563 and 1571

Both settlements ended with a declaration of the bishops and clergy. These are quoted from Bray’s edition, where the Latin declaration of 1563 is given in Bray’s own English translation.

The declaration of 1563

Latin, translated by Gerald Bray

These Articles of the Christian faith, containing in all nineteen pages in the original, which is kept by the most reverend father in Christ, Matthew Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England and Metropolitan, the archbishops and bishops of each province of the realm of England, gathered lawfully in the holy provincial synod, receive with one voice and confess, and by the subscription of their own hands approve as true and orthodox, the twenty-ninth day of the month of January, in the Year of our Lord, according to the reckoning of the Church of England, one thousand five hundred and sixty-two (29 January 1562)…

The year is 1562 by the old reckoning, which began the year on 25 March. By the modern calendar the synod’s date falls in 1563.

The declaration of 1571

English

This book of Articles before rehearsed is again approved, and allowed to be holden and executed within the realm, by the assent and consent of our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, by the grace of God, of England, France and Ireland Queen, defender of the Faith etc. Which Articles were deliberately read and confirmed again by the subscription of the hands of the archbishop and bishops of the upper house, and by the subscription of the whole clergy of the nether house in their Convocation, in the year of our Lord God, 1571.

In 1571 the Articles were also printed in English, and clergy were required to subscribe to them.

1553: transcribed from Gerald Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, chapter 30, “The Forty-two Articles, 1553; the Thirty-eight Articles, 1563; the Thirty-nine Articles, 1571”, pp. 285–311. Bray’s edition prints the 1553 text with modernised spelling and marks the parts later deleted in bold and the parts later added in parentheses. I read the 1553 wording and the dropped and new articles off those marks.

1571: the Articles of Religion as printed in the Book of Common Prayer, from the Church of England’s website (Cambridge University Press text). Where this printing differs from Bray’s bracketed readings, the page follows the Prayer Book, so a few changes shown here are later than 1563. Bray’s apparatus does not separate 1563 from 1571, and neither does this page, except where a note says so.

The marked changes were computed by a program that compares the two texts word by word. Differences of spelling and punctuation only (such as publick and public, or St and Saint) are ignored. A paragraph that was moved shows as removed in one place and added in the other.

The note on Article XX follows Charles Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion (Cambridge, 1859 edition), chapter 6, “The Elizabethan Articles”, pp. 144–147. The notes on Articles III and XXVIII also draw on that chapter. Dictionaries: each word links to Wiktionary and to Webster’s 1828 dictionary.