Oath of Supremacy

The Oath of Supremacy required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Failure to do so was to be treated as treasonable. The Oath of Supremacy was originally imposed by King Henry VIII of England through the Act of Supremacy 1534, but repealed by his elder daughter, Queen Mary I of England, and reinstated under Henry's other daughter and Mary's half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I of England, under the Act of Supremacy 1559. The Oath was later extended to include Members of Parliament and people studying at universities. Catholics were first allowed to become members of parliament in 1829, and the requirement to take the oath for Oxford University students was lifted by the Oxford University Act 1854.

Lithograph of Daniel O'Connell refusing to take the oath of supremacy.
Caption: "One part of this Oath I know to be false; and another I believe to be untrue. House of Commons, May 20, 1829."

Text of the Oath as published in 1535

I (state your name) do utterly testifie and declare in my Conscience, that the Kings Highnesse is the onely Supreame Governour of this Realme, and all other his Highnesse Dominions and Countries, as well in all Spirituall or Ecclesiasticall things or causes, as Temporall: And that no forraine Prince, Person, Prelate, State or Potentate, hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiorities, Preeminence or Authority Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme. And therefore, I do utterly renounce and forsake all Jurisdictions, Powers, Superiorities, or Authorities; and do promise that from henchforth I shall beare faith and true Allegiance to the Kings Highnesse, his Heires and lawfull Successors: and to my power shall assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Privileges, Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the Kings Highnesse, his Heires and Successors or united and annexed to the Imperial Crowne of the Realme: so helpe me God: and by the Contents of this Booke.[1]

Text of the Oath as published in 1559

I, A. B., do utterly testify and declare in my conscience that the Queen's Highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and of all other her Highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities and authorities, and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith and true allegiance to the Queen's Highness, her heirs and lawful successors, and to my power shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privileges and authorities granted or belonging to the Queen's Highness, her heirs or successors, or united or annexed to the imperial crown of this realm. So help me God, and by the contents of this Book.[2]

Punishment

Roman Catholics who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy were indicted for treason on charges of praemunire. For example, Sir Thomas More opposed the King's separation from the Roman Catholic Church in the English Reformation and refused to accept him as Supreme Head of the Church of England, a title which had been given by parliament through the Act of Supremacy of 1534. He was imprisoned in 1534 for his refusal to take the oath, because the act discredited Papal Authority, and his refusal to accept the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1535, he was tried for treason, convicted on perjured testimony, and beheaded.[3][4]

Exceptions

Under the reigns of Charles II and James II, the Oath of Supremacy was not so widely employed by the Crown. This was largely due to the Catholic sympathies and practices of these monarchs, and the resulting high number of Roman Catholics serving in official positions. Examples of officials who never had to take the Oath include the Catholic Privy Counsellors, Sir Stephen Rice and Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel. The centrality of the Oath was re-established under the reign of William III and Mary II.

gollark: So my search thing seems to be handling the tens of megabytes of slowly downloading esolangs.org data somewhat well, in that queries which don't have any results in it run fine. On the other hand, I didn't add any pagination and it would be quite hard to given how the search algorithm works, so looking for stuff like "the" is slow. And the search algorithm is terrible at looking up specific phrases.
gollark: Just text, formatting and a little metadata (in some insane XML format) - no images, talk pages, user pages, that sort of thing.
gollark: This is without images and whatnot.
gollark: Wikipedia is "only" 15GB compressed, but the inverted index data structure this uses for search is biiiiig.
gollark: My search engine thing (https://search.osmarks.tk/) is now indexing the entire esolangs.org wiki for some reason!

See also

References
  1. Cromwell, Thomas (2012-02-25). "Oath of Supremacy 1535 (Actual Text/ Sir Thomas Audley)". queenanneboleyn.com. Retrieved 2013-06-18.
  2. "Life in Elizabethan England 21: More Religion". Elizabethan.org. 2008-03-25. Retrieved 2013-06-18.
  3. (Saint), Sir Thomas More (2004). A Thomas More Source Book. ISBN 9780813213767.
  4. Wilde, Lawrence (2016-08-12). Thomas More's Utopia: Arguing for Social Justice. ISBN 9781317281375.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.