Buggery Act 1533
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The Buggery Act was a sodomy law adopted in England in 1533 during the reign of Henry VIII, and was the first legislation against homosexuals in the country. The law defined buggery as an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and man. In practice, this has almost always been applied to sex between men, especially anal sex.
The Buggery Act was piloted through Parliament by Thomas Cromwell. The Act made buggery (with man or beast) punishable by hanging, a penalty not finally lifted until 1861. Some have suggested that bestiality was specifically included because of the fear of hybrid births.
It is sometimes suggested that the Act was introduced as a measure against the clergy, since the Act was introduced following the separation of the Church of England from Rome, though there seems to be no firm evidence for this. The Act itself only states that there was no "sufficient and condigne punyshment" (sic) for such acts.
Contravention of the Act, along with treason, led Lord Hungerford of Heyetsbury, to become the first person executed under the statute in July 1540, though it was probably the treason that cost him his life. Nicholas Udall, a cleric, playwright, and Headmaster of Eton College, was the first to be charged for violation of the Act alone - and probably in a politically motivated case - in 1541. In his case the sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and he was released in less than a year.
It was repealed in 1553 with Mary's succession. However it was re-enacted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1563 and became the charter for all subsequent criminalisation in the English-speaking world. In England only a few executions are known during the two centuries that follow. Buggery remained a capital offence in England until 1861, and the last execution for the crime took place in 1836.
England repealed buggery laws in 1967, but legal statutes in many former colonies have retained them, such as the Anglophone Caribbean (see LGBT rights in Jamaica).
The word \"buggery\"
The English term buggery is very close in meaning to the term sodomy, and is often used interchangeably in law and popular speech. The word "bugger" is still commonly used in modern English but with a different emphasis of meaning. Originally, it was derived from the word "Bulgarian", meaning the medieval Bulgarian sect of the Bogomils, which spread into Western Europe and was branded by the established church as particularly devoted to the practice of sodomy.
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