Oath of Supremacy Oath of Supremacy The Oath of Supremacy required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Failure to do so was to be treated as treasonable. The Oath of Supremacy was originally imposed by King Henry VIII of England through the Act of Supremacy 1534, but repealed by his daughter, Queen Mary I of England and reinstated under Mary's half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I of England under the Act of Supremacy 1559. The Oath was later extended to include Members of Parliament and people studying at
Governor-General of Australia by Royal authority, but by statutory authority". This view was also held by Senior Judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania Andrew Inglis Clark, who, with W. Harrison Moore (a contributor to the first draft of the constitution put before the 1897 Adelaide Convention and professor of law at the University of Melbourne), postulated that the letters patent and the royal instructions issued by Queen Victoria were unnecessary "or even of doubtful legality". The monarch chose not to intervene during the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, in which Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, on the