Ornaments Rubric, The

The common name for a rubric inserted in the 1559 BCP just before Morning Prayer: “And here is to be noted that the minister at the time of the communion, and at all other times in his ministration, shall use such ornaments in the church as were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward the Sixth according to the Act of Parliament set in the beginning of this book.” The only explicit directions about ornaments (furnishings, vessels, vestments, etc.) from the early reign of Edward are in the 1549 Prayer Book, but that book was enacted in the third rather than the second year of his reign, though the Act of Uniformity establishing the 1552 BCP spoke of the 1549 BCP as being from the second year of Edward's reign. There has therefore been great controversy as to whether the rubric was an attempt to restore the ornaments of the 1549 book or the ornaments of an earlier time. This rubric is still retained in the 1662 English book but has not been included in any American Prayer Book.