Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532

• 1. Introduction

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  The Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1533 carries three other names in the historical record. It is also known as the Statute in Restraint of Appeals, the Act of Appeals, and the Act in Restraint of Appeals. Parliament passed it in the first week of April 1533, under the formal citation 24 Hen. 8. c. 12. Many historians consider this act the central legal basis of the English Reformation. Thomas Cromwell drafted the bill on behalf of King Henry VIII. What did this single act actually forbid? And how did a law framed around legal appeals end up deciding the fate of a queen, a church, and a man named Thomas More?

• 2. An Imperial Crown

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  The act forbade all appeals to the Pope in Rome on religious or other matters. King Henry VIII became the final legal authority over such matters across England, Wales, and every other territory under English rule.

  To reach that outcome, the act rested on a specific claim: that England itself was an Empire, and the English crown was an Imperial Crown. Henry's own historians pushed the claim backward through time, tracing the crown's lineage to Brutus and the fall of Troy. This sweeping restriction made it illegal to accept papal authority, or to follow papal rulings, in matters of church, faith, or anything else. A year later, the Act of Supremacy 1534, cited as 26 Hen. 8. c. 1, would carry this claim of authority even further.

• 3. Loyalty or Treason

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  The Act of Supremacy 1534 declared Henry to be "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia." It also gave that headship, in the act's own words, "annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm." Everyone living within Henry's realms had to accept this new arrangement. Acts of Parliament changed the constitutional order automatically, without requiring anyone's individual consent.

  Thomas More paid the price when he refused to accept the new order: trial, then execution, on a charge of high treason.

  Thomas Cranmer used this same legal footing to finally grant Henry the divorce he had wanted for a long time. Ending the marriage to queen Catherine of Aragon cleared the way for Henry to marry Anne Boleyn. That marriage would stand, but the legal foundation underneath it kept changing for centuries afterward, all the way into the 20th century.

• 4. Undone in Pieces

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  The first piece to go concerned Northern Ireland. In 1950, the Statute Law Revision Act repealed the whole act so far as it applied there. That repeal came under section 1(1) and the first schedule of the measure, formally cited as 14 Geo. 6. c. 6.

  Section 2 of the act came next. The Criminal Law Act 1967 repealed it, under section 13(2) and part I of schedule 4.

  Section 4 came apart in two stages. First, the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 struck out the words from the beginning of that section to "any other courte or courtes." That change came under section 87 and schedule 5 of the measure. Whatever remained of section 4 was then repealed too, again under the Criminal Law Act 1967, section 13(2) and part I of schedule 4.

  Section 3 lost its own words too, everything from "in manner and forme as hereafter ensueth" to the end of the section. That change came under the same 1963 measure, section 87 and its fifth schedule.

  By the time the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1969 arrived, only fragments were left. Section 1 and part II of its schedule removed whatever of the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1533 still remained. After 1969, its former clauses survived only in the historical record, spread across four separate repealing statutes.