English post-Reformation oaths

The English Protestant Reformation was imposed by the English Crown, and submission to its essential points was exacted by the State with post-Reformation oaths. With some solemnity, by oath, test, or formal declaration, English churchmen and others were required to assent to the religious changes, starting in the sixteenth century and continuing for more than 250 years.

This oath was imposed in March 1534 (26 Henry VIII, c. 1). The title "Supreme Head" had first been introduced by Henry VIII into a decree of Convocation, 11 February 1531; and had been resisted by the clergy. Though it did not as yet have any religious significance, and might be a matter of compliment only, it might, they feared, receive another interpretation later. But acting under the advice of John Fisher, Warham, and others, they submitted after adding the conditional phrase, quantum per legem Dei licet. Two years later a change had taken place, which had previously seemed inconceivable. The king had actually broken with the pope, and Parliament had enacted that the king should be "taken, accepted and reputed the only supreme head on Earth of the church of England" by every one of his subjects. But no formula for the oath was laid down in the Act, and great differences seem to have prevailed in practice. Many long "acknowledgments of supremacy" are extant but it would seem that most people were only asked to swear to the Succession, that is to the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn, which the pope condemned, and which therefore involved the supremacy, though the form of the Oath of Succession preserved in The Lords' Journals, refers to the supremacy only lightly. We do not know what was its form, when Fisher and Thomas More refused to sign it. They were ready to accept the succession of Anne Boleyn's children, but refused the supremacy.

The Act of Supremacy was repealed in 1554 by Queen Mary (1 Ph. and M. c. 8) and revived by Elizabeth in 1559 (1 Eliz. c. 1). The formula then adopted ran:

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