In 1560 Thos Sampson writes complaining to Peter Martyr that 'three of our lately-appointed bishops are to officiate at the table of the Lord, one as priest, another as deacon, and a third as subdeacon, before the image of the crucifix, or at least not far from it, with candles, and habited in the golden vestments of the papacy.' This seems to indicate that at Court (where this was to take place) the old vestments were kept up. From a letter of Miles Coverdale's written in 1566, we learn that the square cap, bands, and tippet were enjoined to be worn out of doors ('Zurich Letters,' vol. i, p. 63, vol. ii, p. 121; Parker Society).
In all the subsequent Prayer-Books, the 'Ornaments Rubric,' as it is called, is the source of our information with respect to the vestments required to be worn in the English Church. This famous rubric runs thus (as given in the Prayer-Book of 1662):
'And here it is to be noted, that such ornaments of the church and of the ministers thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be retained and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth.'
The indefiniteness observed in the Edwardian rubrics, to which this injunction refers, invests the 'Ornaments Rubric' with a certain vagueness; and this is responsible for the long and violent strife that has waged around it, and for the chaotic condition of modern Anglican order, both in vestments and other observances.
Recent attempts have been made on the part of individual clergymen to introduce certain details of the ritual of the Western Church into the services of the Church of England. All such innovations are, however, regarded as illegal, and clergymen attempting to introduce them lay themselves open to prosecution. The rulings in the case known as the Folkestone ritual case (Elphinstone v. Purchas) is the standard of reference in such matters. Among many other details, the use of the following vestments was declared absolutely contrary to the Ecclesiastical Law of England: The biretta, chasuble, alb, and tunicle at the Holy Communion; the cope at Holy Communion except on high feast days in cathedrals and collegiate churches. On other occasions a decent and comely surplice is to be used by every minister saying the public prayers or administering the sacrament or other rites of the Church.[92]
This tendency to elaboration and to revival of mediaeval practices is not, however, altogether of modern growth. In Wells Cathedral is the effigy of Bishop Creighton, who died in 1672, clad in cassock, amice, alb, and cope, the latter with a jewelled border. On his head is a cap with side-flaps, over which is a mitra pretiosa. More singular still, considering that the person commemorated was an ardent reformer, is the brass of Bishop Goodrick at Ely Cathedral, who died in 1554. He is represented in full Eucharistic vestments of the pre-Reformation period. Both these apparent anomalies are probably to be accounted for by the Romanizing tendency of the reigning monarchs under whom both these persons lived.
The vestments of the clergy did not escape the lash of the satirists of Queen Elizabeth's reign. About 1565, for instance, a tract was published entitled 'A pleasant Dialogue between a Soldier of Berwick and an English chaplain: wherein are largely handled and laid open such reasons as are brought for maintenance of Popish Traditions in our English Church.' The soldier speaks thus to Bernard, the priest: 'But, Bernard, I pray thee, tell me of thine honesty what was the cause that thou hast been in so many changes of apparel this forenoon, now black, now white, now in silk and gold, and now at length in this swouping black gown, and this sarcenet flaunting tippet.' This describes Bernard as first in his ordinary cassock or clerical dress; then in his surplice for morning prayer; then in the cope for communion; and, lastly, in the preaching gown and tippet. The passage is interesting, as it brings the practice of wearing a black gown at the sermon, once universal in the English Church, but now fast dying out, back almost to the reformation.
One more English church vestment remains to be noticed—the scarf. This is a broad black band of silk, which is worn like a stole, passed round the back of the neck and allowed to depend on either side. It is worn by doctors of divinity and by the clerical authorities of collegiate and cathedral bodies. Its origin is possibly to be found in the stole, but it is more probably a modification of an article of University costume.
During the imposition of Episcopacy upon Scotland in the Stuart period the dress of the clergy was of a form designed by no less a person than his Sacred Majesty King James I himself. At that monarch's own request the Parliament of 1609 passed an Act authorizing him to do so, assigning in its preface the reasons for this step to be 'that it had been found by daily experience that the greatness of his Majesty's empire, the magnificence of his Court, the fame of his wisdom, the civility of his subjects, were alluring princes and strangers from every part of the world, and that it was fitting that bishops and ministers, judges and magistrates, should appear before those in becoming apparel; it was therefore referred to his Majesty's serene wisdom to devise appropriate garments and robes of office for these different functionaries.'
The result of this was an order 'that ministers should wear black clothes and in the pulpit black gowns; that bishops and doctors of divinity should wear "black cassikins syde to their knee" [equivalent to the "bishop's apron" of the modern English prelate and the short Presbyterian cassock], black gowns above, and a black craip [scarf] about their necks. The bishops were ordained to have their gowns with lumbard sleeves, according to the form of England, with tippets and craips about their craigs [necks].'