<P> The accession of Charles I (1625--1649) brought about a complete change in the religious scene in that the new king used his supremacy over the established church "to promote his own idiosyncratic style of sacramental Kingship" which was "a very weird aberration from the first hundred years of the early reformed Church of England". He questioned "the populist and parliamentary basis of the Reformation Church" and unsettled to a great extent "the consensual accommodation of Anglicanism" (Davies 1992, p. 2, 3) and this led to the Civil War and republican Commonwealth . </P> <P> With the defeat of Charles I (1625--1649) in the Civil War, the Puritan pressure, exercised through a much - changed Parliament, had increased . Puritan - inspired petitions for the removal of the prayer book and episcopacy "root and branch" resulted in local disquiet in many places and, eventually, the production of locally organized counter petitions . The parliamentary government had its way but it became clear that the division was not between Catholics and Protestants, but between Puritans and those who valued the Elizabethan settlement . (Maltby 1998, p. 24). The 1604 book was finally outlawed by Parliament in 1645 to be replaced by the Directory of Public Worship, which was more a set of instructions than a prayer book . How widely the Directory was used is not certain; there is some evidence of its having been purchased, in churchwardens' accounts, but not widely . The Prayer Book certainly was used clandestinely in some places, not least because the Directory made no provision at all for burial services . Following the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Lord Protector Cromwell, it would not be reinstated until shortly after the restoration of the monarchy to England . </P> <P> John Evelyn records, in Diary, receiving communion according to the 1604 Prayer Book rite: </P> <Dl> <Dd> Christmas Day 1657 . I went to London with my wife to celebrate Christmas Day...Sermon ended, as (the minister) was giving us the holy sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away...These wretched miscreants held their muskets against us as we came up to receive the sacred elements, as if they would have shot us at the altar . </Dd> </Dl>

What is in the book of common prayer