Conclusion: Memories of Confession in Seventeenth-century England

Abstract

Throughout this book, I have traced how several Elizabethan writers explored auricular confession’s relationship with private and public memory. On the surface, treatments of the value of the rite’s consolatory benefits for addressing memories of sin did not alter over the course of the seventeenth century. Much of this continuity is due to a retention of the rite in the Book of Common Prayer and, more fundamentally, its scriptural authorization in the Epistle of James. Unlike other pre-Reformation practices that had been associated with the doctrine of Purgatory, such as prayers for the dead, the approved rite for the administration and reception of private confession remained essentially unchanged.1 The great exception to this pattern occurred after the suppression of the Prayer Book in 1645 for its intended replacement, A Directory for Publique Worship of God (1645), which eliminated the rites of private confession and absolution.2 In the 1662 Prayer Book, however, these rites were restored, though in a slightly modified form, to their former position in “The Order for the Visitation of the Sick.” Much as they were in the 1549 Edwardian Prayer Book, ministers are directed to do the following: “Here shall the sicke person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession, the Priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort” (Cummings, ed. 445).3