In English history, the penal laws were a series of laws that sought to enforce the State-decreed religious monopoly of the Church of England and, following the 1688 revolution, of Presbyterianism in Scotland, against the continued existence of illegal and underground communities of Catholics, nonjuring Anglicans, and Protestant nonconformists. The Penal laws also imposed various forfeitures, civil penalties, and civil disabilities upon recusants from mandatory attendance at weekly Sunday services of the Established Church. The penal laws in general were repealed in the early 19th-century due to the successful activism of Daniel O'Connell for Catholic Emancipation. Penal actions are civil in nature and were not English common law.
Marian persecutions
In 1553, following the death of her half-brother, Edward VI, and deposing his choice of successor, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I of England seized the throne and soon after repealed both the religious legislation of her half-brother and that of her father Henry VIII through the First Statute of Repeal (1 Mar. Sess. 2. c. 2), re-establishing the Roman Catholic Church as official in England, Wales, and Ireland. Mary I established an English inquisition to identify and to coerce into conversion, force into exile, or prosecute persons not conforming to Roman Catholicism. During Mary I's five year reign, over 300 Protestant dissenters were labeled heretics and killed and many more were exiled, leading English Protestants to nickname the queen "Bloody Mary." A list of Protestant martyrs of the English Reformation was published soon after her death.
November 1554 - Mary revived the Heresy Acts (1 & 2 Ph. & M. c. 6), outlawing all Protestant literature and believers, it would be repealed a year after her death.
Elizabethan The Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1), confirmed Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and imposed an Oath of Supremacy which required any person taking public or church office in England to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. It also made it a crime to assert the authority of any foreign prince, prelate, or other authority, and was aimed at abolishing the authority of the Pope in England. All who maintained the spiritual or ecclesiastical authority of any foreign prelate were to forfeit all goods and chattels, both real and personal, and all benefices for the first offence, or in case the value of these was below 20 pounds, to be imprisoned for one year; they were liable to the forfeitures of praemunire for the second offence. The penalties of praemunire were: exclusion from the sovereign's protection, forfeiture of all lands and goods, arrest to answer to the Sovereign and Council. The Act of Uniformity 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 2) set the order of prayer to be used in the English Book of Common Prayer and required all persons to go to church once a week or be fined. It punished all clerics who used any other service by deprivation and imprisonment. The Supremacy of the Crown Act 1562 (5 Eliz. 1. c. 1) made a second offence of refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy treason.
Response to Regnans in Excelsis In 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, citing as his reasons heresy, Caesaropapism, and the religious persecution by the State of the illegal and underground Catholic Church in England and Wales, and in Ireland, by releasing the Papal bull Regnans in Excelsis. In response:
13 Eliz. 1. c. 1 made it high treason to affirm that the queen ought not to enjoy the Crown, or to declare her to be a heretic or schismatic; 13 Eliz. 1. c. 2, which made it high treason to put into effect any papal Bull of absolution, to absolve or reconcile any person to the Catholic Church, or to be so absolved or reconciled, or to procure or publish any papal Bull or writing whatsoever. The penalties of praemunire were enacted against all who brought into England or who gave to others "Agnus Dei" or articles blessed by the pope or by any one through faculties from him. 13 Eliz. 1. c. 3, was designed to stop Catholics from taking refuge abroad, and declared that any subject departing the realm without the queen's license, and not returning within six months, should forfeit the profits of his lands during life and all his goods and chattels. The Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their obedience (23 Eliz. 1. c. 1), passed in 1581. This made it high treason to reconcile anyone or to be reconciled to "the Romish religion", prohibited Mass under penalty of a fine of two hundred marks and imprisonment for one year for the celebrant, and a fine of one hundred marks and the same imprisonment for those who heard the Mass. This act also increased the penalty for not attending the Anglican service to the sum of twenty pounds a month, or imprisonment till the fine be paid, or till the offender went to the Anglican Church. A further penalty of ten pounds a month was inflicted on anyone keeping a schoolmaster who did not attend the Anglican service. The schoolmaster himself was to be imprisoned for one year. The Jesuits, etc. Act 1584 commanded all Roman Catholic priests to leave the country in 40 days or they be punished for high treason, unless within the 40 days they swore an oath to obey the Queen. Those who harboured them, and all those who knew of their presence and failed to inform the authorities would be fined and imprisoned, or where the authorities wished to make an example of them, they might be executed. This statute, under which most of the English martyrs suffered, made it high treason for any Jesuit or any seminary priest to be in England at all, and felony for any one to harbour or relieve them. The penalties of praemunire were imposed on all who sent assistance to the seminaries abroad, and a fine of 100 pounds for each offence on those who sent their children overseas without the royal licence.
Clarendon Code While some of the Penal Laws were much older, they took their most drastic shape during the reign of Charles II, especially the laws known as the Clarendon Code and the Test Act. The four penal laws collectively known as Clarendon Code are named after Charles II's chief minister Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, though Clarendon was neither their author nor fully in favour of them. These included:
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