Which prayer book once contained the 5 November thanksgiving prayer?

The 5 November thanksgiving prayer was included in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. After Guy Fawkes was arrested beneath the House of Lords in 1605, Parliament established an annual day of thanksgiving for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.

The Observance of 5th November Act 1605 required ministers to give thanks in church each year. A special service was added to the Church of England’s prayer-book tradition, linking the commemoration to public worship as well as bonfires and later fireworks. The prayer expressed gratitude for the king’s deliverance and condemned the attempted Catholic regicide.

This was not a prayer contained in the King James Bible, which is a translation of scripture rather than an Anglican service book. Nor was it part of the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Westminster Confession, which are doctrinal statements. The Book of Common Prayer is the liturgical volume that supplied the relevant service.

The thanksgiving prayer remained associated with 5 November for centuries, but the formal observance declined. The special prayer was abolished in the nineteenth century, and the 1859 Anniversary Days Observance Act repealed the 1605 observance law.