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 The Oath of Supremacy was originally imposed by King Henry VIII of England through the Act of Supremacy 1534, but repealed by his daughter, Queen Mary I of England and reinstated under Mary's half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I of England under the Act of Supremacy 1559.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
History of the Church of England used in the same." The development of the Thirty-Nine Articles of religion and the passage of the Acts of Uniformity culminated in the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. By the end of the 17th century, the English church described itself as both Catholic and Reformed, with the English monarch as its Supreme Governor. MacCulloch commenting on this situation says that it "has never subsequently dared to define its identity decisively as Protestant or Catholic, and has decided in the end that this is a virtue rather than a handicap." The English Reformation was initially driven by the dynastic goals of Henry VIII,