Today people [even those “experts” who produce modern language services for the churches] assume that “you” was not used in 16th century English to refer to an individual person. In those far off times, it is believed, people always said to one person, “Thou art” and to more than one “You are.”
There is of course truth in this but it is not the whole truth. “You” is used as the second person singular and thus as equivalent grammatically to “Thou” from well before the reign of Henry VIII (See “You” the Oxford Dictionary for examples).
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The Revd Dr Peter Toon
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