Note 219 — PART II TO THE CLOSE OF THE TROUBLES IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES I.
Reading edition
The reading, "Their new-born Church," printed in all editions of the poems from 1822 till 1842, had been objected to by several correspondents; and out of deference to their suggestions it was altered to "Their Church reformed": but Wordsworth wrote to his nephew and biographer, November 12, 1846, "I don't like the term reformed; if taken in its literal sense as a transformation, it is very objectionable" (see Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 113), and in the "postscript" to Yarrow Revisited, etc., he says, "The great Religious Reformation of the sixteenth century did not profess to be a new construction, but a restoration of something fallen into decay, or put out of sight."—Ed.