ABSTRACT
On 25 November 1558 the parishioners of Much Wenlock, Shropshire, were gathered in their parish church of Holy Trinity for Mass, it being St Catherine’s day. As the vicar, Sir Thomas Butler, made his way to the altar he was intercepted by the sheriff, Master Richard Newport, newly arrived from London with the news that Queen Mary had died a week before. At Newport’s command, the vicar came down into the body of the church at the offertory where, as he later noted down in the parish register, he declared in a loud voice, ‘Friends ye shall pray for the prosperous estate of our most noble Queen Elizabeth, by the Grace of God Queen of England, France and Ireland, defender of the faith, and for this I desire you every man and woman to say the Pater Noster with the Ave Maria’, and then ‘we in the choir sange the canticle Te deum Laudamus, pater noster, ave maria, cum collecta pro statu Regni prout stat in processionale in adventu Regis vel Regine mutatio aliquibus verbis ad Reginam. And then went I to the altar and said out the Mass of St Catherine’. On the following Sunday the vicar put on the parish’s best cope, called St Milburge’s cope, which had somehow survived the depredations of Edward’s reign, and accompanied by the leading men of the town processed once more into the nave to proclaim the new queen: once more the congregation recited the Our Father and the Hail Mary for the queen’s prosperity, the choir sang the Latin litanies and collects for a Catholic ruler, Mass began with the festive processional Salve festa dies, and after Mass there was a bonfire at the church gate with a dole of bread, cheese and beer for the poor folks.1
