Acts of Supremacy
16th-century English and Irish laws
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Through Sovereignty and Martin Luther
Royal supremacy is the legal sovereignty of the king as civil law over Church of England canon law.
First Act of Supremacy 1534
The first Act of Supremacy, the Act of Supremacy 1534 (26 Hen. 8. c. 1), was passed on 3 November 1534 by the Parliament of England was one of the first major events in the English Reformation. It granted King Henry VIII of England and subsequent monarchs royal supremacy and stated that the reigning monarch was the supreme head of the Church of England.
The act declared that the king was "the only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England" and that the Crown shall enjoy "all honours, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity." The wording of the act made clear that Parliament was not granting the king the title (thereby suggesting that they had the right to withdraw it later); rather, it was acknowledging an established fact. In the Act of Supremacy, Henry VIII withdrew support for the authority of the Pope and the Catholic Church and asserted the independence of the Ecclesia Anglicana. He appointed himself and his successors as the supreme rulers of the English church. Earlier, Henry VIII had been declared "Defender of the Faith" (Fidei defensor) in 1521 by Pope Leo X for his pamphlet accusing Martin Luther of heresy. Parliament later conferred this title upon the king in 1544.
Henry VIII was motivated to issue the act for multiple reasons. He desperately wanted a male heir to continue his line, and after wars and succession crises, aimed to ensure that his dynastic lineage would continue without challenge. When Catherine of Aragon did not bear a son, the king tried for years to annul his marriage to her, having convinced himself that God was punishing him for marrying his brother's widow.
Despite the King's close alignment with the Catholic Church and other papal annulments, Pope Clement VII refused to grant him an annulment. Catholic doctrine viewed a marriage contract as indissoluble until death, and the papacy argued that a marriage could not simply be annulled because of a canonical impediment previously dispensed. Additionally, the emperor of the Habsburg empire at this time, Charles V, was the nephew of Catherine of Aragon, and for the Pope to declare that marriage invalid would be to separate the Church from the good favour of the emperor.
Henry VIII subsequently passed the Treasons Act 1534 (26 Hen. 8. c. 13), which stated that to disavow the Act of Supremacy and to deprive the king of his "dignity, title, or name" was to be considered treason. Thus, the king's control over the English religion was absolute and those who held to Catholic beliefs were swiftly punished. The most famous public figure to resist the Treasons Act was Thomas More, who was convicted of treason and executed by beheading.
Irish Act of Supremacy 1537
In 1537, the Act of Supremacy (Ireland) 1537 (28 Hen. 8. c. 5 (I), An Act authorising the King, His Heirs and Successors, to be supreme Head of the Church of Ireland) was passed by the Parliament of Ireland, establishing Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church of Ireland, as had earlier been done in England.
The whole act, so far as unrepealed, was repealed for Northern Ireland by section 1(1) of, and the first schedule to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1950 (14 Geo. 6. c. 6), which came into force on 23 May 1950.
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Second Act of Supremacy 1558
Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy was repealed in 1554 during the reign of his staunchly Catholic daughter, Queen Mary I. Upon her death in November 1558, her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne. The first Elizabethan Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1) that declared Elizabeth the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and instituted an Oath of Supremacy requiring anyone taking public or church office to swear allegiance to the monarch as head of the Church and state. Anyone refusing to take the oath could be charged with treason.
The use of the term Supreme Governor as opposed to Supreme Head pacified some Catholics and those Protestants concerned about a female leader of the Church of England. Elizabeth, who was a politique, did not prosecute nonconformist laymen, or those who did not follow the established rules of the Church of England unless their actions directly undermined the authority of the English monarch, as was the case in the vestments controversy. Thus, it was through the Second Act of Supremacy that Elizabeth I officially established the now reformed Church of England. This was a part of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement.
Historian G. R. Elton has argued that, "in law and political theory the Elizabethan supremacy was essentially parliamentary, while Henry VIII's had been essentially personal." The royal supremacy was extinguished during the British Interregnum from 1649, but was restored in 1660. The Stuart kings used it as a justification for controlling the appointment of bishops.
The conflation in the Crown of supreme lay authority over church and state made every secular subject of the Crown a spiritual subject of the Church as well; the Church was co-extensive with the State. Contemporary English theologian Richard Hooker described the situation thus:
There is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is a member of the Commonwealth, nor a member of the Commonwealth which is not also a member of the Church of England.
Irish Act of Supremacy 1560
In 1560, the Parliament of Ireland passed the Act of Supremacy (Ireland) 1560 (2 Eliz. 1. c. 1 (I)), "An Act restoring to the Crown, the auncient Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiasticall and Spirituall, and abolishing all forreine Power repugnant to the same."
Sections 7–11 of the act were repealed by section 1 of, and part II of schedule three to, the Promissory Oaths Act 1871 (34 & 35 Vict. c. 48), which came into force on 13 July 1871.