ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the history and authority of the Forty-Two Articles of 1553, their object and contents, and their sources. According to Strype, in the year 1553 the King and his Privy Council ordered the archbishop to frame a book of Articles of religion for the preserving and maintaining peace and unity of doctrine in the Church, that being finished they might be set forth by public authority. But earlier date find indications that a series of Articles had been framed by the archbishop and used by him as a test of orthodoxy. This was in all probability “an early draft of the great formulary afterwards issued as the Forty-Two Articles”. When the Forty-Two Articles of 1553 were first issued, the intention of the authorities was that they should be offered for signature to all the clergy of the Church of England, and a royal mandate to this effect was accordingly issued in June 1553.
