May 15, 1532 – The Act of Submission of the Clergy
Commonplace Book – Pages 111-112
May 15, 1532 – The Act of Submission of the Clergy
“We your most humble subjects, daily orators and bedesmen of your clergy of England, having our special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, your princely goodness and fervent zeal to the promotion of God’s honour and Christian religion, and also in your learning, far exceeding, in our judgment, the learning of all other kings and princes that we have read of, and doubting nothing but that the same shall still continue and daily increase in your majesty:
First, do offer and promise, in verbo sacerdottii, here unto your highness, submitting ourselves most humbly to the same, that we will never from henceforth enact, put in ure, promulge, or execute, any new canons or constitutions provincial, or any other new ordinance, provincial or synodal, in our Convocation or synod in time coming, which Convocation is, always has been, and must be, assembled only by your highness’ commandment of writ, unless your highness by your royal assent shall license us to assemble our same and thereto give your royal assent and authority.
Secondly, that whereas divers of the constitutions, ordinances, and canons, provincial or synodal, which have been heretofore enacted, be thought to be not only much prejudicial royal, but also overmuch onerous to your highness’ subjects, your clergy aforesaid is contented, if it may stand so with your highness’ pleasure, that it be committed to the examination and judgment of your grace, and of thirty-two persons, whereof sixteen to be of the upper and neither house of the temporarily, and other sixteen of the clergy, all to be chosen and appointed by your most noble grace. So that, finally, whichsoever of the said constitutions, ordinances, or canons provincial or synodal, shall be thought and determined by your grace and by the most part of the said thirty-two persons not to stand with God’s laws and the laws of your realm, the same to be abrogated and taken away by your grace and the clergy; and such of them as shall be seen by your grace, and by the most part of the said thirty-two persons, to stand with God’s laws and the laws of your realm, to stand in full strength and power, your grace’s most royal assent and authority once impetate and fully given to the same.
