Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532

7 April 1533, at the close of the session

Henry VIII gave royal assent to 24 Hen. VIII c.12, commonly called the Statute in Restraint of Appeals, at the close of the parliamentary session on 7 April 1533.

The act declared that testamentary, matrimonial, divorce, tithe, oblation and obvention cases were to be finally adjudged within the king's jurisdiction rather than appealed to Rome or any other foreign court.

It is sometimes styled the Ecclesiastical Appeals Act 1532, a product of the regnal-year and session convention, although the assent came on 7 April 1533.

What it actually restricted

For ordinary litigants the act kept an English ecclesiastical appeal ladder — archdeacon, then diocesan bishop, then provincial archbishop — with fifteen days allowed after judgment. It did not make Henry the personal judge of every case.

Cases touching the king went instead to the spiritual peers in Convocation, whose decision was final.

Attempting to obtain or enforce a foreign appeal in the specified cases incurred the penalties of praemunire, not automatically high treason.

Why the timing was urgent

Henry and Thomas Cromwell needed an English judgment on the king's marriage that Catherine of Aragon could not appeal to Rome. Henry had already married the pregnant Anne Boleyn, which made a fast domestic resolution pressing.

With appeals in the enumerated cases barred from leaving the realm, Thomas Cranmer could convene his Dunstable court in May and issue an English judgment without a legally recognized Roman appeal.