Acts of Supremacy
16th century laws in England concerning King Henry VIII and the church
The Acts of Supremacy are two acts passed by the Parliament of England in the 16th century that established the English monarchs as the head of the Church of England; two similar laws were passed by the Parliament of Ireland establishing the English monarchs as the head of the Church of Ireland. The 1534 act declared King Henry VIII and his successors as the Supreme Head of the Church, replacing the Pope. This first act was repealed during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I. The 1558 act declared Queen Elizabeth I and her successors the Supreme Governor of the Church, a title that the British monarch still holds.
Royal supremacy is the legal sovereignty of the king as civil law over Church of England canon law.
First Act of Supremacy 1534
The first Act of Supremacy, the Act of Supremacy 1534 (26 Hen. 8. c. 1), was passed on 3 November 1534 by the Parliament of England was one of the first major events in the English Reformation. It granted King Henry VIII of England and subsequent monarchs royal supremacy and stated that the reigning monarch was the supreme head of the Church of England.
The act declared that the king was "the only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England" and that the Crown shall enjoy "all honours, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity." The wording of the act made clear that Parliament was not granting the king the title (thereby suggesting that they had the right to withdraw it later); rather, it was acknowledging an established fact.
“Acts of Supremacy” enters the record as 16th century laws in England concerning King Henry VIII and the church. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Acts, Supremacy and 16th can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q392226. The Library of Congress control number is sh85115593. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1534 and 1558.
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This entry incorporates text from “Acts of Supremacy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.