Sir Walter Scott described Durham Cathedral as ‘Half church of God and half castle ‘gainst the Scot’.Footnote ¹ As exaggerated as this might be it does, in some measure, capture the historical, ambivalent relationship that Durham Cathedral has played in relation to Scotland. King Malcolm III of Scotland was present at the laying of the foundation stone of this Norman cathedral in 1093, and the vita of his consort, St Margaret of Scotland, was written by Turgot of Durham. Some of St Margaret's hair and a tooth were deposited in the tomb of St Cuthbert.Footnote ² Yet, the bishops of Durham were prince bishops, with the power and duty to raise armies to keep out Scottish invaders when the boundaries of the Palatine of Durham were still hotly disputed. The cost of eight truces between 1311 and 1327 amounted to over £5,000 in Scotgeld.Footnote ³

The battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, only a stone's throw from the cathedral, resulted in a Scottish defeat and the Black Rood of St Margaret was captured and housed in the cathedral until the Reformation. Later, after the battle of Dunbar, the cathedral served as a prison for the Scottish soldiers, who suffered considerable, cruel hardship. Some of this ambivalent connection is woven together today in Durham Cathedral, where an altar is now dedicated to SS Margaret and Aiden, and a plaque commemorates the sufferings of the Dunbar prisoners.

A very positive liturgical contribution to Scotland came from William Whittingham, dean of Durham 1563–79. Whittingham was the main author (assisted by John Knox) of The Form of Prayers, a reviser of the metrical psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins, and he was editor of the Geneva Bible, all of which were adopted for use in the Church of Scotland. This article centres on a more disastrous liturgical influence: the ceremonial and liturgical revival of those who made up the Durham House group, or Durham College. This group of early seventeenth-century English divines was so named because they frequently met in the London house of Richard Neile, the bishop of Durham. It was Neile who gathered them together, and who also promoted them in the English church. Their ceremonial ideals were given expression in Durham Cathedral. This article explores the interconnectedness of the Durham House group with the English Chapels Royal, and the liturgical policies in Scotland of James VI and Charles I with regard to the Church of Scotland.

At morning prayer on Sunday, 7 July 1628 (though some editions give it as 27 July),Footnote ⁴ Peter Smart, the second most senior prebendary of Durham Cathedral, mounted the pulpit of the cathedral and launched a vitriolic attack on his fellow prebend, John Cosin. His text was Psalm 31:7, ‘I have hated them that hold of superstitious vanities’. Smart's affiliation with the cathedral dated from 1597 when he was headmaster of the grammar school. He was appointed holder of the sixth prebend's stall in 1609, and then holder of the fourth stall from 1614. He had thus served under the deanship first of William James, who was later appointed bishop of Durham, and then under Adam Newton, and from 1620, under Dean Richard Hunt. Smart no doubt had been aware of some changes in worship during his long tenure, but his outburst was prompted by what he regarded as drastic popish innovations which had been introduced by John Cosin, who had been appointed to the tenth stall in 1624. Smart asserted:

Earlier in this sermon Smart had complained about the prebends putting on and off the cope during the service, reading the Epistle, Gospel and Ten Commandments at the altar, and singing the Nicene Creed at the altar, and, he claimed:

Smart added that this change was done out of spite, ‘they beare to Geneva, which all papists hate’.Footnote ⁷ Referring to John Cosin as ‘our young Apollo’, Smart accused him of setting out the choir with ‘strange Babylonish ornaments’, and ‘the hallowed Priests dance about the Altar, making pretty sport, and fine pastime, with tripings, and turnings, and crossings and crouchings’.Footnote ⁸ He accused Cosin of wearing ‘Babylonish robes’, and standing where he might ‘heare a delicate noise of singers, with Shakebutts, and Cornets, and Organs, and if it were possible, all kinde of Musicke, used at the dedication of Nabuchodonosors golden Image’.Footnote ⁹

The sermon landed Smart first in court, and then in prison. Some of what he complained of he had, in fact, as a member of the cathedral chapter, agreed to, or at least, not dissented from. From the Elizabethan Settlement onwards, copes were supposed to be worn for communion in cathedrals, and had been at Durham, leading Dean William Whittingham (1563–79) to cease celebrating communion in the cathedral. Smart's complaint seems to have been about their more frequent use, and the use of ornamented copes, rather than the use of copes per se. Furthermore, it was prior to Cosin's arrival that a stone altar had been installed by Dean Hunt, c.1620, who had also purchased new communion plate and a new organ.Footnote ¹⁰ However, Smart was certainly correct that there had been changes in the ceremonial in Durham Cathedral. Richard Hutchinson, a singing-man and organist of Durham, corroborated much of this in a statement made on 16 March 1629. Amongst his seventeen listed changes (there are actually only sixteen due to the mis-numbering of them in the text), he recorded:

Thus amongst other changes, the congregational metrical psalms introduced by Dean Whittingham, and some of which were authored by him, disappeared.

John Cosin had been secretary to Bishop John Overall and, at the latter's death, he became chaplain to Bishop Richard Neile, who had been translated to Durham in 1617. Neile surrounded himself with younger protégés including such figures as John Cosin, Francis White, William Laud, Gabriel Clarke, Francis Burgoyne, Robert Newell, Augustine Lindsell, Eleazar Duncon, Richard Montague and Marmaduke Blakiston. Victoria Raymer has remarked that:

Amongst their concerns, which subsequently have come to be termed ‘Laudianism’, were a high regard for royal authority, for episcopacy, for sacraments and the beauty of holiness in worship, and the sacredness of church buildings. They questioned the prevailing double predestination, preferring the wriggle-room of Arminius, and gave greater weight to the fathers than to the foundational sixteenth-century Reformers. Of this Durham House group, Robert Newell, Augustine Lindsell, Gabriel Clarke, Francis Burgoyne, Marmaduke Blakiston, John Cosin and Eleazer Duncon were all appointed to prebend stalls at Durham, and the cathedral became the showcase of Durham House or ‘Laudian’ piety and worship.

Through these younger clerics, Neile brought to fruition his earlier theological and ecclesial interests which he shared with his close friends and contemporaries, John Buckeridge, John Overall and Lancelot Andrewes. These divines represented and developed what, in recent historiography, has been described as avant-garde Conformist Anglicanism, or Patristic Reformed Churchmanship.Footnote ¹³ They regarded the Church of England as being significantly different from other Reformed churches, they shared a concern for older liturgical traditions and ceremonial, and apparently looked longingly at the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. They also had a sense of the aesthetic in worship, with a communion table set altar-wise, and decently furnished with a carpet or throw-over frontal, and with candlesticks. Both Overall and Neile wrote little, and are thus somewhat shadowy figures.Footnote ¹⁴ With Andrewes, though, we have a clearer picture.

Andrewes was educated at Cambridge, first at Pembroke Hall, and in 1576 was elected a fellow at Pembroke College, and was catechist. In 1589 he was given the St Pancras prebend's stall at St Paul's Cathedral. Prior to the Reformation this stall had been attached to the role of penitentiary. Andrewes took this tradition seriously, and during Lent made himself available in the cathedral for those seeking spiritual counsel. In 1597 he was appointed a prebend of Westminster Abbey, and its Dean in 1601. He preached at court before Elizabeth, and then became a favourite preacher of King James. He was one of the translators/revisers of the King James Bible. In 1600 he had preached a sermon on absolution which caused a stir at court, some perhaps smelling a whiff of popery. His collected sermons show that he regarded sacraments as conduit-pipes which convey grace. He distanced himself from the Lambeth Articles of 1595 concerning predestination. More importantly, as bishop of Ely he furnished his London chapel in a manner after the royal chapel, with the table in altar-wise potion, with candles; he supplemented or enriched the Book of Common Prayer service of communion in his own chapel and had special vessels crafted for communion. He also burnt incense in a small bowl in his chapel.Footnote ¹⁵ Whereas a churchman such as William Whittingham did his best to interpret the Elizabeth church in the light of his more Reformed experiments in Geneva, Andrewes interpreted the Settlement as best he could in the light of the earlier English church of 1549 and the more conservative injunctions of Queen Elizabeth.

An important catalyst for the liturgical component of this avant-garde conformity is acknowledged but not pursued by Peter Smart in his 1628 sermon. Smart declared:

Though Smart might have been right about calling the table an altar, he brushed over the fact that Queen Elizabeth I had insisted that in her chapel the table would be set altar-wise, and would be furnished like an altar with cross and candles.Footnote ¹⁷ Court etiquette and royal grandeur meant that the ceremonial and music of the English Chapels Royal and other royal ecclesiastical establishments differed from that found in most English parish churches. The old cheque-book of the Chapel Royal contains an account of communion on Easter Day 1593:

This was not normal parish church style worship! The Elizabethan Settlement was full of ambiguities, and given that the instructions given to the Chapel Royal composers in 1559 seem to have presupposed the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, there seems considerable merit in the belief that Elizabeth would have preferred that text and its ceremonial to the one finally authorised.Footnote ¹⁹ Bishop John Jewel, in a letter of 16 November 1559 to Peter Martyr Vermigli, had commented:

Jewel's fears were to prove prophetic. Elizabeth's wish seems to have been that the Chapels Royal would set an example for cathedrals and parish churches, though they became the exception. Andrewes and Neile were successive deans of Westminster Abbey, and Laud was a canon of the abbey. The abbey was a Royal Peculiar. J. F. Merritt has pointed out that Gabriel Goodman was dean of the abbey from 1561 until his death in 1601, during which ‘under his lengthy and sober tenure, Westminster Abbey, experienced a remarkable period of stability, which enshrined the most conservative aspects of the Elizabethan period’.Footnote ²¹ An inventory of the abbey in the seventeenth century lists a number of old copes and canopies which appear to be pre-Reformation survivals, and which included the depictions of Christ dead in the arms of God the Father and the death of the Virgin Mary. This conservatism was built upon by Andrewes and Neile in their attention to the choir, the fabric and ornamentation, and it was Neile who installed a new organ, a programme of music copying and additional funding for the choir. Andrewes, and later Laud, were deans of the Chapel Royal. Overall had been a royal chaplain, as had Buckeridge, who had also been a canon of Windsor. Dean Richard Hunt was also a royal chaplain. The furnishings and ceremonial of the English Chapels Royal, as well as of episcopal private chapels such as Andrewes’, became for these churchmen the standard to which cathedrals, collegiate churches and, ultimately in their minds, also parish churches should aspire. The style was ‘Queen Bess’ in origin, and one suspects that her Majesty would have felt very comfortable in Cosin's Durham Cathedral.

The ideals of Andrewes, Neile, Buckeridge and Overall as practised in the English Chapels Royal, some of which seem to have been shared by King James’ sense of royal pomp and ceremony, had an influence and parallel in Scotland.Footnote ²² In 1606, when James summoned a number of Scottish Presbyterians to London to be lectured on royal authority, Andrewes and Buckeridge were amongst the four episcopal preachers. Bishops in Scotland had been restored as civil servants to safeguard the royal interests in appointments and property. In 1610 James summoned the archbishop of Glasgow and the bishops of Brechin and Galloway to London, where they were consecrated by the bishops of London, Bath and Wells, and Ely – that is, James Montague (dean of the Chapel Royal 1603–19), George Abbot and Lancelot Andrewes. The Scottish bishops returned north to consecrate their fellow bishops according to the English rite. It is perhaps no accident that during King James’ one and only revisit to Scotland in 1617 he was accompanied by Bishops Lancelot Andrewes (Lord High Almoner), Richard Neile and James Montague (dean of the Chapel Royal) as well as one of James’ royal chaplains, Dr William Laud. Concerning the King's Progress we are told:

And in Edinburgh it was recorded:

Of this visit in 1617, we are told that King James desired some greater conformity between the English and Scottish churches, and towards this end ‘his Majesty hath set up his Chapel here (i.e. Holyrood House) in like manner of service as it is in England, which is yet frequented well by the people of the country’.Footnote ²⁵ Indeed, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carlton dated 7 December 1616, it was reported that a pair of organs had been sent, as well as all manner of furniture for a chapel, which Inigo Jones had charge of, together with pictures of the apostles, and of Faith, Hope and Charity, and such other religious representations ‘which how welcome they will be thither God knows’.Footnote ²⁶ Charles Rogers, in his History of the Chapel Royal in Scotland, observed:

According to the Treasurer's accounts, the work was finished by March 1617. Payments were also made to a Mr Dalam, an organ maker, as well as to some musicians for furnishing everyone ‘a suit of apperrell’.Footnote ²⁸ Choral services were established, but the dean of the Chapel Royal, Bishop William Cowper, did manage to persuade James against the installation of ‘images’.Footnote ²⁹

Refurbishing the Chapel Royal and the establishing of singers and choral services was a clear statement of the royal wish for some uniformity between the two churches. The Scottish bishops were encouraged to repair and refurbish their cathedral churches. A eulogy to Bishop Patrick Forbes of Aberdeen noted:

Additional uniformity with England was attempted through the Five Articles of Perth, and the revision of the liturgy. The former included kneeling for communion, the observance of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Whitsunday, episcopal confirmation, and private baptism and communion. All of these proved troublesome. Pressure from James led to the Articles being passed by a General Assembly at Perth in 1618 and a Parliament held in 1621, but they were ignored by many and were impossible to enforce.

Revision of the liturgy had been signalled by James in 1615, and a draft Morning Service exists which was mainly the work of Peter Howat. Two further drafts, which Donaldson dated 1616–17 and 1618–19, were the work of the dean of the Scottish Chapel Royal, Bishop William Cowper. Cowper seems to have been a moderate bishop, though for those of Andrew Melville's persuasion there could be no such thing. Cowper himself had once compared bishops to stinking candle snuff, but his submission to royal will allowed him to see episcopacy as not incompatible with presbytery.

He studied at St Andrews and then spent some years in England studying divinity. At age 19 he returned to Edinburgh and continued his studies and was ordained.Footnote ³¹ In his response to the Five Articles, Cowper found kneeling for communion the hardest, and he himself had declined to receive kneeling at Holyrood House in 1617.Footnote ³² As dean of the Chapel Royal, he preached at the King's arrival at Holyrood House, and at Dumfries at his departure for England. Both sermons extolled the office of King. His sermon, at the translation of Archbishop Spottiswoode in 1615, was not excessively in praise of episcopacy but concentrated on the duties of pastors.

The second draft liturgy – and the first by Cowper – represented an interesting rewriting and updating of The Form of Prayers and its sacramental theology was thoroughly Reformed in tone.Footnote ³³ The baptismal rite spoke of the sacrament as ‘the seale of the covenant of grace’, which showed the influence of the terminology developed by the German Reformed theologians, Ursinus and Olevianus, and mediated to England by Dudley Fenner. The prayer after the baptism was a clear expression of the Bullinger line which Brian Gerrish has described as symbolic parallelism,Footnote ³⁴ where a distinction is made between the ecclesial rite in water, and baptism with the Holy Spirit:

In his Works Cowper had picked up the two crucial terms used by Bucer and Calvin (but rejected by Bullinger), that sacraments are ‘instruments’ which ‘exhibit’.Footnote ³⁶ A favourite term in Cowper's Works is ‘exhibiting instrument’. In Cowper's communion rite, after the taking of the bread and cup, the prayer asked:

Though rather inelegant, it was certainly thoroughly Reformed, and not a hint here of Church of England terminology. The third draft of 1618–19, Cowper's second draft, used more phraseology from the English Book of Common Prayer. The service of the Lord's Supper reused more material from The Form of Prayers, but also drew more heavily on the 1604 Prayer Book. However, although emended, it retained the distinctive Cowperian rendering of Calvin's terminology:

The Articles of Perth caused such an uproar that all thoughts of introducing a new liturgy evaporated. The redecoration of the Chapel Royal, the Articles and this concern for updating and enriching the liturgy seem to be a Scottish symptom of that movement in England stemming from the English Chapels Royal, and led by Patristic Reformed Churchmen, such as Andrewes, who served them. The ‘upgrading’ of the Scottish Chapels Royal and the repair of the cathedrals were, however, dependent upon royal patronage.

Peter Smart's sermon in Durham Cathedral in 1628 shows how the ideals of Andrewes, Buckeridge, Overall and Neile were being implemented by Neile's protégés who made up the Durham House group. Those ideals included the importance of ceremonial, the sacraments, and the aesthetic taste in church furnishing. If Durham Cathedral was one showcase for this piety, some of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges also served as laboratories. Elizabeth I had provided for a Latin version of the Prayer Book for use in college chapels. How widespread this was is unknown, but in the period coinciding with the avant-garde churchmen and the Durham House group there was a revival. In the college chapels exactly how widely the Latin forms were used, and for how long they continued in use, is far from clear. Christ Church, Oxford, had editions printed in 1615. Clay notes that this edition titled Liber Precum Publicarum in usum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Christ, Oxon contained only Morning Prayer, the Athanasian Creed, Evening Prayer, the Litany, Collects and Psalter, with some prayers and graces.Footnote ³⁹ The English Short Title Catalogue also lists a 1639 edition for Christ Church. In a letter to the Vice-Chancellor dated 26 November 1636, Laud, who was the Chancellor, insisted that the University Church and the college chapels should begin each term with the service and communion in Latin, as well as the sermon. He further instructed:

At Cambridge we know that, when William Beale was master of Jesus College, nine Latin service books were purchased in 1632/3.Footnote ⁴¹ Peterhouse also acquired Latin prayer books for its new chapel, which was built by Matthew Wren. Wren was succeeded as master by John Cosin who furnished the building. Though perhaps exaggerated, William Prynne gave a description of the liturgical ceremonial and furnishings of Peterhouse in his 1646 Canterbury's Doom:

A bill given to Cosin for plate and other chapel requirements in 1638 lists candlesticks, a flagon and for a ‘Sencor’ and making a new case for the ‘Sencor’, which seems to confirm the ceremonial use of incense. Prynne later accused Cosin of introducing the hours of his Private Devotions into the Chapel, and that the container for the incense was that once belonging to Lancelot Andrewes.Footnote ⁴³

What of textual liturgical reform? It has already been noted that Andrewes added some material to the Prayer Book rite when he celebrated it in his own chapel. It was also known that John Overall read the so-called Prayer of Oblation, one of the two prayers which might be selected as a post-communion thanksgiving, in its 1549 position, immediately after the words of institution in the prayer later to be called the Prayer of Consecration. Indeed, these divines appear to have made a point of knowing the text of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, and it may well be that for many of them it was a preferred text to that of the 1559/1604 Prayer Book. By the time of Smart's sermon, James was dead, and Charles I was King, and he lacked the astute compromises which his father was able to make. He promoted Dr Laud first to be bishop of London and then, in 1633, to be archbishop of Canterbury. Laud and most bishops encouraged and enforced the railing in of communion tables to make sure they remained in altar position in use as well as when not in use. In 1711 William Nichols published a supplement to his commentary on the Book of Common Prayer and claimed that Lambeth Palace MS 731, an interleaved Prayer Book of 1638, was the work of William Laud. Though the Laudian authorship is disputed, it is clear that the annotations were by someone in full sympathy with the Durham House piety, and the rubrics of the 1549 Prayer Book are reproduced in the annotations. Had events turned out otherwise, a revision of the 1604 English Book of Common Prayer might have been placed on the Durham House agenda.

It was the Durham House liturgical ideal, derived from the English Chapels Royal, which was taken up by the Scottish bishops, and resulted in the ill-fated 1637 Book of Common Prayer for Scotland.Footnote ⁴⁴ Though often referred to as ‘Laud's liturgy’, it was mainly the work of Bishops James Wedderburn and John Maxwell, but it was certainly a Durham House or ‘Laudian’ liturgical expression. Wedderburn had studied at St Andrews and then at Cambridge. He was ordained in England, but was appointed to St Andrews and, at the command of James VI, used the English Book of Common Prayer in the college chapel. He returned to England, held English benefices and was a canon of Ely. He was appointed dean of the Scottish Chapel Royal in 1635 and bishop of Dunblane in 1636. Wedderburn was indeed a friend of Laud, but no doubt shared both James VI and Charles I's ideas of greater uniformity between the English and Scottish churches. Robert Baillie was to write of Wedderburn:

Baillie saw the Scottish bishops as part of a huge plot by Laud to take over the Kirk. In fact it was with the full backing of Charles I, who was completing the wish of James VI to bring uniformity of worship and polity in the kingdoms. The preface to the 1637 Prayer Book noted that, though it is impossible for the whole church of Christ to have uniformity in worship, ‘at least in the churches that are under the protection of one sovereign prince the same ought to be endeavoured’. Charles, through Walter Balcanquhal, explained:

But of course the liturgical experience of both James and Charles was mainly that of the Chapels Royal.

Charles I furthered his father's work in establishing daily sung services in the Scottish Chapels Royal, as well as furnishings in the English style. In 1630 Edward Kelly was appointed director of music of the Scottish Chapel Royal, and travelled to London to see how services were conducted. At Charles’ Scottish coronation in 1633, he brought with him musicians and singers from the English Chapel Royal. The service took place in the Abbey Church at Holyrood, and the archbishop of St Andrews, and the bishops of Murray, Dunkeld, Ross, Dunblane and Brechin wore rochets and copes of blue silk. John Spalding remarked of the service:

On the following Sunday in St Giles, Edinburgh, Spalding wrote:

And on 25 June:

In a letter sent to Bishop Bellenden in October 1633, Charles ordered that prayers twice a day in the Chapel Royal be according to the English Book of Common Prayer; that on Sundays and holy days the Bishop must wear his ‘whites’; that communion be received kneeling; and that copes were to be worn when the sacrament was celebrated.Footnote ⁵⁰ The Chapel Royal at Stirling Castle had been repainted by Valentine Jenkin in 1628 in anticipation of the coronation. Charles also had a new ceiling decorated in the chapel at Falkland Palace, and he encouraged and enabled the refurbishing of Scottish cathedrals.Footnote ⁵¹ In establishing the See of Edinburgh in 1633, Charles commanded that St Giles’

In 1636 the dean of Edinburgh, James Hanney, was sent to visit Durham Cathedral to gain some idea of how St Giles’ should be used after the extensive reordering that Charles had prescribed. In May 1636 new Canons and Constitutions Ecclesiastical were published, which ordered that every church should have a baptismal font, a communion table at the upper end of the chancel, the sacrament should be received kneeling and that all should stand to recite the creed.Footnote ⁵³ As Joong-Lak Kim observed, this was part of the King's wish to bring the three churches of his kingdoms into uniformity by introducing rites and ceremonies which he believed to be essential to decent, beautiful and orderly worship.Footnote ⁵⁴

By 1629 Bishop Maxwell had already suggested that it would be best if a liturgy was drawn up by the Scottish clergy rather than have the English book forced on them, whereas Charles and Laud were of the opinion that the English book should be adopted. Renewed efforts at a liturgy were undertaken between 1634 and 1637, and the probable drafts, which include the Haddington Book, Egerton Ms. 2417 and the Christ Church Book, have been carefully discussed by Gordon Donaldson. The resulting 1637 book represents a recycling of material from the 1549 Book, though with obvious concessions to a Scottish audience – the use of presbyter rather than priest, and Yule and Pascha instead of the English Christmas and Easter. The protests which followed were carefully stage-managed, and characterised in folklore in the story of Jenny Geddes hurling a stool in protest in St Giles’, Edinburgh, and shouting, ‘Villain! Dost thou say mass at my lug?’ Behind the folklore was the agenda of a presbyterian party strongly opposed to episcopacy of any form, and the emergence of a radical party represented by such ministers as David Dickson and Samuel Rutherford, which was opposed to all set forms of public prayer. George Gillespie, who was one of the earliest to attack the new liturgy, sounded an apocalyptic alarm when he assessed the danger of the new Scottish liturgy:

Events escalated with the 1638 National Covenant and the invasion of England and that, in turn, set off a series of events leading to the English Civil War. If Scotland rejected in no uncertain terms the English Durham House and Chapels Royal legacy, it seems to have accepted without much question the Westminster Assembly's work. The Westminster Confession and Catechisms were not the work of Scottish divines, but of some of the best theological minds of the Church of England who had been appointed to the Assembly. As for a liturgy, the emergence of the Independents meant that all attempts to adopt the Genevan Form of Prayers (which saw several reprints during these tumultuous years) for the three kingdoms failed. The work of compiling a liturgy was given to a subcommittee under the chairmanship of Stephen Marshall, incumbent of Finchingfield, Essex. Members included Thomas Young, Herbert Palmer, Charles Herle, and one of the Independents, Thomas Goodwin. They were joined by four Scottish commissioners – Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, Robert Baillie and Alexander Henderson. Goodwin, on his own authority, coopted a fellow Independent, Philip Nye. Of the Scottish Commissioners, Rutherford and Gillespie were against set forms of prayer, and since Herle usually sided with the independents, half of the commission was opposed to set forms of public prayer. When reminded of something in The Form of Prayers, Rutherford replied, ‘We will not owne this liturgy, Nor are we tyed unto it’.Footnote ⁵⁶ A Directory for Public Worship, rather than a set liturgy, was predictable. The long-term legacy was that the Church of Scotland not only rejected the Durham House piety and liturgical agenda expressed through the Chapels Royal, but it also abandoned its own Genevan legacy and the liturgical work of John Knox and a former dean of Durham, William Whittingham. It became one of the few Reformed churches which did not have a set form of public liturgy. As for the 1637 Book of Common Prayer, Wedderburn, via the Durham House group, brought to fruition a liturgical trajectory which originated in the English Chapels Royal. The abortive liturgy was perhaps something akin to what Queen Elizabeth I might have liked for the whole realm of England back in 1559.