Supplication Against the Ordinaries

The Supplication against the Ordinaries was a petition passed by the House of Commons in 1532. It was the result of grievances against Church of England prelates and the clergy. Ordinaries in this Act means a cleric, such as the diocesan bishop of an episcopal see, with ordinary jurisdiction over a specified territory.

The contemporary chronicler Edward Hall records that criticism of the English prelates was popular in the House of Commons and he recorded that MPs 'sore complained of the cruelty of the ordinaries' in ex officio proceedings for heresy. Hall goes on to say:

For the ordinaries would send for men and lay accusations to them of heresy, and say they were accused, and lay articles to them, but no accuser should be brought forth, which to the Commons was very dreadful and grievous: for the party so cited must either abjure or be burned, for purgation he might make none.

Hall claims that the Commons agreed that all their grievances "should be put in writing and delivered to the King" and this was done. The Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton has written that the Supplication was put into final form by the government behind the scenes even before the issue of clerical abuses was discussed in Parliament (similar complaints had been drawn up after debate in 1529 but they were not enacted, however Thomas Cromwell had kept them). Due to the lack of firm evidence the historian Stanford Lehmberg has suggested other possibilities such as Cromwell taking it upon himself to draft the Supplication or the issue had spontaneously been raised by MPs independently. What is known is that the Supplication contained a preamble and nine charges.

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