Penal law (British)

In English history, the penal laws were a series of laws that sought to uphold the establishment of the Church of England against Catholicism and Protestant nonconformists by imposing various forfeitures, civil penalties, and civil disabilities upon these recusants. The penal laws in general were repealed in the early 19th century during the process of Catholic Emancipation. Penal actions are civil in nature and were not English common law. Marian persecutions In 1553, following the death of her half-brother, Edward VI, and deposing his choice of successor, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I of England seized the throne, and soon after repealed the religious legislation of her brother and father, Henry VIII, through the First Statute of Repeal (1 Mar. Sess. 2. c. 2). Restoring England, Wales and Ireland to the Roman Catholic communion. An English inquisition was established to identify exile, convert, or punish non-conforming Catholics, with over 300 Protestant dissenters branded heretics, and killed, and many more exiled in her five-year reign. A list of Protestant martyrs of the English Reformation published soon after her death. November 1554 - Mary reintroduced a Heresy Act (1 & 2 Ph. & M. c. 6), outlawing all dissenting literature and believers, it would be repealed a year after her death. The Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1), confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and imposed an Oath of Supremacy which required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. It also made it a crime to assert the authority of any foreign prince, prelate, or other authority, and was aimed at abolishing the authority of the Pope in England. All who maintained the spiritual or ecclesiastical authority of any foreign prelate were to forfeit all goods and chattels, both real and personal, and all benefices for the first offence, or in case the value of these was below 20 pounds, to be imprisoned for one year; they were liable to the forfeitures of praemunire for the second offence.