Oath of Succession
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The Act Respecting the Oath to the Succession was the oath required to be taken by all subjects, if commanded, according to the Act of Succession 1534, although the wording of the oath was not provided in this act but enacted in a new Act of 1534. It required all those asked to take the oath to recognise Anne Boleyn as King Henry VIII's lawful wife and their children leigitimate heirs to the throne. Anyone refusing to take the oath was guilty of treason.
The Oath of Succession itself went further than the Act in several ways. It demanded that persons swearing the oath renounce the power of any 'foreign authority or potentate' and repudiate any oath previously made to such an authority. This discrepancy did not go unnoticed by Sir Thomas More who claimed he had been sent to the Tower 'for refusing of this oath not agreeable with the statute'. He thought that Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Audley 'did of their own heads add more words unto it' and therefore they were unable 'by their own law...to justify my imprisonment'.
The oath was passed by Parliament in November 1534 and provided the wording and claimed to be the oath mentioned in the Act of Succession. Refusal to take the oath lead to the arrests of Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher for treason in 1534. They refused to take the oath because it claimed the marriage between King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon was annulled and it went against their Roman Catholic beliefs. More and Fisher were beheaded in 1535.
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