The Tragic Ejection
Anglicans look to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as its standard for theology and worship, along with the Thirty-nine Articles (1571) and the two books of Homilies. These are known as the traditional Anglican “formularies.” The 1662 edition of the Prayer Book is a crowning achievement of English Reformation and the Edwardian and Elizabethan Settlement in the Church of England.
But 1662 was not a happy year for everyone. With the publication of the Prayer Book came the terms of subscription that required every Church of England minister to give “unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained and prescribed.” The problem for the Puritans wasn’t the Prayer Book, the problem was the requirement for absolute and unconditional subscription. Many couldn’t agree to every single word of the new book as if it was inerrant and unchangeable, a devotion they kept only for Holy Scripture.
The "Great Ejection" refers to 1,800 evangelical/puritan Church of England ministers who were expelled from their pulpits by law following the Act of Uniformity of 1662 - 20% of all ordained clergymen in the Church of England! Before this, the Puritans were not forced to accept the creeping anti-Calvinism (Laudianism) that sought to introduce preReformation ideals and ceremonies. When Charles II became king in 1660 things changed, however, and the bishops seized control and demanded absolute conformity. The Great Ejection marked an important turning point in the English church where lowest-common-denominator unity was achieved by force of law over gospel truth and kingdom proclamation (not unlike the way some Episcopalians have been forced from their pulpits in our own day who were unwilling to consent to the gadarene rush over the cliff of baptized worldliness).
On Sunday August 17, 1662, St. Bartholomew’s Day, the expelled preached their farewell sermons. The ejected were not rebels or troublemakers, but they were simply loyal to the historic Anglican formularies that affirm the Bible as the only God-inspired authority that contains all things necessary to salvation. J.C. Ryle (Bishop of Liverpool) later referred to the Ejection as an "injury to the cause of true religion in England which will probably never be repaired." A Service of Reconciliation was held at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Rowan Williams in 2012 to mark the 350th anniversary of the tragedy of the Great Ejection.