She was equally adamant against agitation for a presbyterian form of church government that would dispense with the royal supremacy, the episcopacy, and the liturgy.
The two editions of The Book of Common Prayer authorized in 1549 and 1552 under Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) were chiefly the work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury (1533–1556), whom Queen Mary had burned as a heretic. Both books were Protestant in doctrine, but many ceremonies and ornaments from the Latin rites that were retained in 1549 were eliminated in 1552. Elizabeth preferred the 1549 prayer book. Parliament would accept only that of 1552, but the queen succeeded in making a few substantial changes in it. Pejorative references to the bishop of Rome were omitted. The 1,549 words of administration at Communion were added. Those additions clearly identified the consecrated bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ. Elizabeth eliminated a rubric stating that kneeling to receive Communion did not imply adoration of "any real and essential presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood," but she was unable to enforce a new rubric restoring the ornaments of the church as they had been specified in the second year of Edward VI's reign.
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