their authority had been destroyed, and that their orders were set at
naught. In reply they were requested to formulate a proposal for
redress, but on such a proposal having been submitted, their demands
were regarded by the laymen as exorbitant. A commission was appointed
against the wishes of a strong minority of the bishops to draw up a
new Ordinal as a complement to the Book of Common Prayer. The
committee was appointed on the 2nd February 1550, and it appears to
have finished its work within a week. In the new /Ordinal/[61] (1550)
the ceremonies for the conferring of tonsure, minor orders, and sub-
deaconship were omitted entirely, while the ordination rites for
deacons, priests, and bishops were considerably modified. Just as the
sacrificial character of the Mass had been dropped out of the Book of
Common Prayer, so too the notion of a real priesthood disappeared from
the forms for ordination. In spite of the opposition of a large body
of the bishops, an Act was passed ordering the destruction of all
missals, antiphonals, processionals, manuals, ordinals, etc., used
formerly in the service of the Church and not approved of by the
king's majesty, as well as for the removal of all images "except any
image or picture set or graven upon any tomb in any church, chapel or
churchyard only for a monument of any king, prince, nobleman or other
dead person who had not been commonly reputed and taken for a
saint."[62] As a result of this measure a wholesale destruction of
valuable books and manuscripts took place in the king's own library at
Westminster and throughout the country. The royal visitors, entrusted
with the difficult work of Protestantising Oxford, acting under the
guidance of Dr. Cox, chancellor of the University or "cancellor" as he
was called, ransacked the college libraries, tore up and burned
priceless manuscripts or sold them as waste paper, and even went so
far as to demand the destruction of the chapel windows, lest these
beautiful specimens of art might encourage loyalty to the old religion