Mary’s Second Act of Repeal
The statute by which Mary I’s Parliament repealed the laws made against the authority of the pope since 1529. Its preamble recites Parliament’s petition to be received back into the Roman church and the absolution given by Cardinal Pole.
The act is the legal record of England’s reconciliation with Rome under Mary I. Its preamble says that the realm had “swerved from the obedience of the See Apostolic”, that the pope had sent Cardinal Reginald Pole as legate, and that the Lords and Commons had declared themselves repentant of the schism and had been absolved. The body of the act then repeals, one by one, the statutes passed against the papal supremacy since the twentieth year of Henry VIII.
It is a document of the side that carried out the restoration and uses that side’s language throughout. A large part of it deals with property: it confirms the lay owners of former monastic lands in what they held. Elizabeth I’s Act of Supremacy (1559) repealed it.
Cited in
- 1555 to 1558, firm date