Supremacy, ROYAL.

Supremacy, ROYAL. The term supremacy is, in politics, chiefly used with regard to authority in matters ecclesiastical. From the time of Pope Gelasius (494 A.D.) to the Reformation the pope exercised a very extensive authority, judicial, legislative, and executive, over all the churches of western Europe, somewhat undefined in its limits, varying in different countries and at different periods; and this continues to be more or less recognised in all countries whose inhabitants are in communion with the Church of Rome. The Statutes of Provisors (q.v.) and Præmunire (q.v.) asserted in some measure the authority of the sovereign; but at the English Reformation the papal supremacy was abolished, and 26 Henry VIII. chap. 1 declared the king and his successors to be the 'only supreme head on earth of the Church of England.' A document was at the same time drawn up by the government, in which it was explained that the recognition of this headship of the church implies only that the king should have such power as of right appertaineth to a king by the law of God, and that he should not take any spiritual power from spiritual ministers, or pretend to 'take any power from the successors of the apostles that was given them by God.' In 1535, the year in which this act was passed, Bishop Fisher of Rochester, Sir Thomas More, and others were beheaded for denying the king's supremacy. On Elizabeth's accession it was thought prudent, while again claiming the supremacy in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil, to keep that designation in the background. By successive statutes the oath of supremacy was appointed to be taken by the holders of public offices along with the oath of allegiance and of abjuration; these three oaths were consolidated into one in 1858; and now the oath of supremacy is not explicitly imposed on members of parliament. See OATH, ENGLAND (CHURCH OF), HENRY VIII.