Lay Supremacy: Reform of the canon law of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I (1529-1571)

Abstract

In 1529, Parliament passed the first in a series of statutes denouncing papal authority as a usurpation of the traditional jurisdiction of the English ecclesiastical courts, and reasserting the doctrine of the late-fourteenth century Statutes of Praemunire. In response, the clergy in Convocation initiated a pre-emptive attempt at a systematic overhaul of the canon law. The urgency to reform ecclesiastical law was further sharpened by Henry VIII's assumption of headship of the Church of England. Several abortive attempts were made during his reign to establish a committee to set about the task of legal reform. It was not until 1551, however, that Edward VI finally appointed a Royal Commission of 32 under the leadership of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer charged with drawing up a formal proposal for systematic reform of canon law and ecclesiastical discipline. Introduced into Parliament in April 1553, the revised canons were summarily rejected, largely at the instigation of the John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. The Commission's draft was edited by John Foxe, published under the title Reformatio legum ecclesiasticarum, and presented to Parliament a second time in 1571. Although published with Archbishop Matthew Parker's approval, the Reformatio legum was fated to receive neither royal, nor parliamentary, nor synodical authorization. At the time certain members of Parliament contested the royal prerogative to determine matters of faith and discipline. Of what significance was this repeated failure to achieve systematic reform of the canon law and ecclesiastical discipline in defining religious identity in England in the period of the Reformation, as well as in later ecclesiastical historiography?