A few notes and deliberations concerning the Communion of the Sick service in the Book of Common Prayer based on John Dowden, Further Studies in the Prayer Book (London: Methuen, 1908). Dowden was Bishop of Edinburgh at the time.
Medieval service books made no provision for a celebration of the Eucharist in the home of a sick person. "The sick were communicated with the reserved Sacrament in one kind." (248)
The rubrics in the 1549 Prayer Book instruct the priest to reserve "so much of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood as shall serve the sick person and so many as shall communicate with him, if there be any" on days on which Communion was celebrated in church. The change to bringing Communion in both kinds to the sick is also found in the Brandenburg Church Order of 1540 and the Pfalz-Neuburg Order of 1543, "the most conservative of the liturgical movements in the German states" which is to say those staying most closely to received Roman forms. The Pfalz-Neuburg Order was apparently known to the English Reformers.
"In no case was the Sacrament to be kept beyond the day upon which it was consecrated." (249) On other days, therefore, a celebration was to be held in the home of the sick person.
"The great majority of the German Church Orders, however, did not sanction the carrying of the Sacrament to the sick man's house; and, as we know, in 1552 the conveyance of the Sacrament to the sick man's house disappeared with us." (251)
Different from our Prayer Book, "in the German Church Orders the communicating of the people in the sacrament of the Body of Christ before the consecration of the cup is a frequent feature." (252)
Similar to our Prayer Book, there are instructions for assembling people for such a Communion service not only from the same household as the sick but from neighbours as well so that there are always "a good number to receive the Communion with the sick person" (1552 Prayer Book).
