Act of Uniformity 1558

Act Of Uniformity 1558

The Act of Uniformity 1558 (1 Eliz 1 c 2) was an Act of the Parliament of England. It was actually passed in 1559. It set the order of prayer to be used in the English Book of Common Prayer. Every man had to go to church once a week or be fined 12 pence (equivalent to just over £11 in 2007 ), a considerable sum for the poor. By this Act Elizabeth I made it a legal obligation to go to church every Sunday. The Act of Uniformity reinforced the Book of Common Prayer.

After passage, fourteen bishops were dismissed from their sees, leaving all but one see, Llandaff, vacant. A new Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, was appointed, and the question arose of how he could be consecrated while preserving the Apostolic Succession. The bishop of Llandaff, Anthony Kitchin, refused to officiate at Parker's consecration; thus instead bishops deposed and exiled by Mary assisted: William Barlow, former Bishop of Bath and Wells, John Scory, former Bishop of Chichester, Miles Coverdale, former Bishop of Exeter, and John Hodgkins, former Bishop of Bedford. The solution would give rise many years later to the Nag's Head Fable.

The Act was part of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement in England instituted by Elizabeth I, who wanted to unify the Anglican Church. Other Acts concerned with this settlement were the Act of Supremacy 1559 and the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563). Elizabeth was trying to achieve a settlement after thirty years of turmoil during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I, during which England had swung from Catholicism to Protestantism and back to Catholicism. The outcome of the Elizabethan Settlement was a sometimes tense and often fragile union of High church and Low church elements within the Church of England and Anglicanism worldwide. The event was featured, albeit only briefly, in the movie Elizabeth.

So much of this Act as related to a person's resorting to his parish church or chapel accustomed, or, upon reasonable let thereof, to some usual place where common prayer and such service of God as in this Act was mentioned was used in such time of let, upon Sundays and other days ordained and used to be kept as holy days, and to his then and there abiding orderly and soberly during the time of the common prayer, preaching or other service of God there used and ministered was repealed by section 1 of the Religious Disabilities Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict c 59).

Section 6 of the Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 provided that nothing contained thereinbefore in that Act was to be taken to repeal or alter the Act of Uniformity 1558.

The whole Act, so far as it extended to Northern Ireland, was repealed by section 1(1) of, and Schedule 1 to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1950.

The whole Act, so far as unrepealed, except section 13, was repealed by section 1 of, and Part II of the Schedule to, the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1969.

The whole Act, so far as unrepealed, was repealed by section 6(3) of, and Schedule 2 to, the Church of England (Worship and Doctrine) Measure 1974 (No 3).