Act of Supremacy (1559)
The statute of Elizabeth I’s first Parliament that abolished the pope’s jurisdiction in England, annexed authority over the church to the crown and imposed an oath naming the queen ‘the only supreme governor’ of the realm in spiritual as in temporal things.
Read the text at archive.org ↗The act as it stands in force today (legislation.gov.uk, where it is dated 1558 by the year in which the session began) ↗
The act’s full title is “An Act restoring to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State ecclesiastical and spiritual, and abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same”. It repeals Mary I’s Mary’s Second Act of Repeal and her Act for the Reviving of Three Statutes for the Punishment of Heresies, revives a number of Henry VIII’s statutes against Rome, and declares that no foreign prince or prelate shall exercise any spiritual jurisdiction in the realm.
Clergy, judges, officers of the crown and those taking degrees or holy orders are to swear that the queen is “the only supreme governor of this realm ... as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal”. Those who refuse lose their offices. Anyone who defends the authority of a foreign prelate in speech or writing forfeits his goods for a first offence, falls under the penalties of praemunire for a second, and is guilty of high treason for a third. A proviso limits what the queen’s commissioners may judge to be heresy to what Scripture, the first four general councils, or Parliament with the assent of the clergy in Convocation have so determined.
The act is paired with the Act of Uniformity (1559), passed in the same session.
Cited in
- 1555 to 1558, firm date
- 1559, firm date