As regards the services, changes were gradual. The High Mass continued, but the Gospel and Epistle were read in English, and a chapter from the New Testament was read after lessons at Matins and after Magnificat at Evensong. The English Litany was sung after High Mass. The Pater Noster, Creed, and Ten Commandments were sometimes publicly rehearsed in English, and Communion was refused to those who did not know them.
In the year 1548 the “Order of Communion” was put forth; in 1549 the Prayer Book appeared. Mr. Micklethwaite has drawn up an account of the parish church of 1548 before the Reformed Prayer Book, and with the alterations made in the service up to that date. The principal entrance was by the south door; in the porch was a basin of holy water; the font stood sometimes in the middle of the nave, sometimes against the west side of one of the pillars; it had a cover which could be locked down. Near it was a locker in which were kept the oils, salt, etc., required for the old rite of baptism.
“At the beginning of the sixteenth century all but very poor parish churches seem to have been furnished with pews, but the whole area was not filled with them, as at a later date. Old pews west of the doors are very rare, but they are found sometimes, as at Brington, Northants. Generally all this space was left clear, and there was a clear area of at least one bay, and often much more at the west end. A church with aisles had nearly always four blocks of pews, and the passages were broad alleys, that in the middle being often more than a third of the width of the nave, and the side passages were not much less. The appropriation of special places to individuals seems to have been usual, and even that bugbear of modern ecclesiastical reformers, the lock-up pew or closet, was not unknown. These in parish churches were generally chantry chapels, arranged for private services at their own altars and for use as pews during the public services.”
The pulpit had no fixed position: it was made movable; one of that period still remains at Westminster. It was ordered in 1547 that the priests and choir should kneel in the midst of the church and sing or say the Litany; the Litany desk came into use afterwards. The confessional had been continued in certain London churches: at St. Margaret Patens there was the “shrivyng pew”; at St. Christopher le Stock the “Shriving House.” The usual custom was for the penitent to kneel or stand before the priest, who sat in a chair. The Bible and the Paraphrases of Erasmus were chained to a desk somewhere in the nave.