Up and down the country, the Church of England still holds services using the Book of Common Prayer – sometimes referred to as ‘1662 service’. In some quarters its words are regarded as central to the liturgy. But it was an Act of Parliament which ordained its use, effective from St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 1662.
Samuel Pepys, a Londoner, wrote in his diary:
“August 17th. (Lord’s Day). Up very early, this being the last Sunday that the Presbyterians are to preach, unless they read the Common Prayer and renounce the Covenant, and so I had mind to hear Dr Bates’s farewell sermon, and walked to St Dunstan’s, where, it not being seven o’clock yet, the doors were not open; and so I went and walked an hour in the Temple-garden … . At eight o’clock I went, and crowded in at the back door among others, the church being half-full almost before any doors were open publicly; which is the first time that I have done so these many years since I used to go with my father and mother; and so got into the gallery, beside the pulpit, and heard very well.”
This must have been the last Sunday when John Willis preached in Ingatestone. Following ejection “he did not move any great distance, but established a conventicle at Brentwood, in conjunction with Thomas Gibson, who had been ejected from Little Baddow. There they had a licence for a ‘Presbyterian meeting house’ in 1672, and Rector Willis probably remained there until his death in 1679” (EE Wilde, Ingatestone & The Essex Great Road (1913) p176). This was the formation of what became the Congregational Church (more recently Brentwood United Reformed Church).
D W Coller, wrote about the events of 1662 in his book ‘The People’s History of Essex’ (1861)
“Then came the Act of Uniformity, which banished all strange doctrine from the pulpit and restored the liturgy in its completeness; and 2,000 of the clergy, many of them in Essex, with a sincerity which astonished the kingdom, abandoned their snug vicarages and comfortable rectory-houses, and went forth, voluntarily embracing a life of hardship and poverty rather than accept the articles of subscription which were tendered to them as the condition of retaining their cures. The following is a list of some of the ejected clergy in this county: it shows at once the extent of the suffering, and the parishes which had been under pastors whose teaching had been most hostile to the system of the Church:
Laver (Magdalen): Mr Harvey
Laver (High): Mr Samuel Borfet, King’s Col. Camb
Laver (Little): Edward Whiston, M.A., Trin. Col. Camb
Moreton: Edmund Calamay, M.A., Sydney Col. Camb
Ongar (Chipping): Mr John Lorkin
Shelley: Mr Zackery Finch
Stanford Rivers: Mr Matthew Ellistone
Stapleford (Abbots): Mr Lewis Calandrine
Stapleford (Tawney): Mr Ward
Thoyden Mount: Mr Francis Chandler
“It appears to have been feared that these nonconformist exiles would in many instances carry their congregations from the parish altars, and leave the churches desolate. An act was therefore passed prohibiting separate congregations, and forbidding any dissenting teacher to come within five miles of any place at which he had preached. Dissent prevailed in the county, nevertheless, and to a great extent, - so hard is it to coerce the conscience by human law; and though these restrictions, with occasional modifications, were continued for a century afterwards, conventicles, as they were called, were set up in secure and secret places, precautions being taken to elude the watchful constable and the lurking informer. An illustration of this existed up to about a year ago in the old chapel in Baddow-lane, Chelmsford. A sliding panel was to be seen in the wall at the back of the pulpit. The tradition is, that the original building was a solitary barn, and through this loop-hole, the minister and the people who dared to worship God in what the law called an illegal manner, had a ready means to escape to the wood, which then skirted the rear of the building, and extended to Galleywood Common to the river, while the soldiers employed to hunt the fugitives were thundering the bolted door.”