Forty-two Articles

Background

After earlier doctrinal declarations (Ten Articles of 1536 and Bishops' Book of 1537), Archbishop Thomas Cranmer authored Thirteen Articles in 1538 in hopes of attaining theological unity with Lutherans as King Henry VIII sought an alliance with the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League. This was not implemented, and Henry VIII instead imposed the Six Articles of 1539, mandating clerical subscription to them and requiring married clergymen to separate from their wives.

After Henry VIII's death and King Edward VI's 1547 accession, the English Reformation again picked up steam. The Six Articles were repealed, and an opening appeared for doctrinal standards which reflected the reformation's progress. However, it would take six years before the Forty-two Articles were issued. This delay occurred because, while there was sufficient support for repealing the Six Articles, it was not clear that a majority of bishops or the House of Lords would be willing to make a more definitively Reformation-aligned statement. Furthermore, Cranmer may have held out hopes of a general ecumenical council bringing new unity among Christians under Reformation lines, or at the very least a common confession between continental Protestants and the Church of England. By 1551, it became clear that these were unlikely to occur in the short term, removing this objection.

Cranmer had begun to require new ministers and theological instructors to subscribe to specific doctrinal articles by 1549. In 1551, he presented a draft collection of doctrinal articles to bishops for consideration. The articles which, that year, Bishop John Hooper required clergy under him to subscribe to may have drawn from Cranmer's draft. But the Forty-two Articles were more ambitious in that they were intended as a definitive statement of doctrine for the Church of England, akin to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession.

In 1551, the privy council instructed Cranmer to write Articles of Religion. The following year, his draft was sent to some bishops for comment, then to the king's six chaplains, and finally the privy council. At each point, its progress towards ratification was slowed by those less convinced of Reformation doctrines, but its text appears to have remained largely as Cranmer wrote it with the help of two laymen revisers, William Cecil and John Cheke. Although it was issued under the title “Articles agreed on by the bishops and other learned men in the synod at London, in the year of our Lord God 1552”, and some bishops did gather to discuss it, it does not appear that a synod actually was convened. Nevertheless, the privy council received it from Cranmer on 24 November 1552 and issued a mandate in the king's name on 19 June 1553 that all clergy subscribe to it. There was some resistance to subscription, led by Hugh Weston, Rector of Lincoln College.