The Medieval Church in the Isles, Part 15: Western Christian liturgical families

In the Late Ancient and Early Middle Ages, the West had several liturgical families.  There was the Roman Rite, of course, the African Rite, the Gallican Rite, the Visigothic or Mozarabic Rite (Spain), the Milanese or Ambrosian Rite (northwest Italy), the Aquilean Rite (northeast Italy), and the Celtic Rite (in the British Isles, Brittany, & Britonia).  Out of all these, only the Roman Rite remains, except for limited local use of the Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites, the later Braga Rite, and the Lyonese Rite, a heavily Romanized survival of the Gallican Rite.

In 1085, St. Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury (Sarum), promulgated a system of practicing the Roman Rite-based on the Use of Rouen in Normandy that came to be known as the Use of Sarum.  Within a fairly short time, the Use of Sarum came to be adopted not only across the majority of England but across the British Isles, including nearly all of Scotland and Ireland, though regional variations did develop.  The Use of Sarum also reportedly influenced the Use of Nidaros in Norway (though many have reported it to have more in common with the Use of York) and the Use of Braga in Portugal, as well as its own parent, the Use of Rouen in Normandy.

As for England, several other variations of the Roman Rite developed, the Use of Lincoln in the diocese of Lincoln, the Use of York in the ecclesiastical province of York, the Use of Lichfield in the diocese of Lichfield, the Use of Bangor in North Wales*, and the Use of Hereford in Herefordshire and South Wales, but none approached the influence of the Use of Sarum.

(*North Wales was dominated by Gwenydd and South Wales by Dyfed.  In the early centuries of the Anglo-Saxon entrada, the term North Wales meant what we now call the country of Wales, plus territories to the east, while Dumnonia to the south (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset) was West Wales.)

There was also the Use of Durham or Durham Rite in the Diocese of Durham which developed into a unique form out of a fusion of the Gallican Rite and the Roman Rite.

The Diocese of Exeter in Devon and Cornwall if often said to have preferred the Use of Rome, but there is enough divergence to call it the Use of Exeter. 

All of these were suppressed by Henry VIII in favor of the Use of Sarum in the 1530s, which itself bit the dust later in the more Protestant phase of the English Reformation.

In the Diocese of Sodor (Isle of Mann and the Hebrides) and the Diocese of Orkney (Orkney and Shetland), the churches followed the Use of Nidaros (Norway), at least until they were separated from that archdiocese.

The Channel Islands in the Deaneries of Jersey and of Guernsey of the Archdeaconry of Bauptois in the Archdiocese of Rouen followed the Use of Rouen.

The point of this is to point out that with a few variations nearly all parts of the British Isles practiced a slight variation of the Use of Sarum, and that statements about liturgical practices at the time is not taking English practice and extrapolating it inaccurately to the rest of the Isles, unlike the Tractarians of the Oxford Movement (also known as the Catholic Revival of the Church of England), which produced heavily-Romanized versions of the Use of Sarum and the Use of York.