Act against the Bringing In and Putting in Execution of Bulls from the See of Rome

The preamble gives Parliament’s reason. People described as seditious have obtained from the bishop of Rome bulls and writings that absolve and reconcile those who will forsake their obedience to the queen, and by these, it says, simple people have been brought to withdraw from divine service and to think themselves discharged of all obedience to her, “whereby most wicked and unnatural rebellion hath ensued”.

The act then makes it high treason, after 1 July 1571, to use any such bull or instrument, to absolve or reconcile anyone by colour of it, to receive such absolution, or to obtain or publish any bull from Rome. Those who aid the offenders fall under the penalties of praemunire. The same Parliament made it treason to say or write that the queen was a heretic, schismatic or usurper (13 Elizabeth I, c. 1, pp. 57–59 of the same volume). The text is the government’s own statement of why it treated reconciliation with Rome as a political crime.