Political Science Of The State

464 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
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from civil as well as ecclesiastical offices by requiring an oath
that the queen was " the only supreme governor of the realm
and all other her highness's dominions and countries, as well
in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes, as in tem-
poral, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, etc., hath
or ought to have any jurisdiction .... ecclesiastical or spir-
itual, within this realm." The act of uniformity prohibited,
under penalty of a fine for the first offence, of imprisonment
for a year for the second, and of imprisonment during life for
the third, the use by any minister of any but the established
liturgy, and laid a fine of a shilling on all who should absent
themselves from church on Sundays and holidays.* The
Star Chamber, an illegal and arbitrary court, as Hallam calls
it, judged in religious cases without being bound by statute
law, until it fell in 1641. The corporation act of 1661 enjoined
that all magistrates and other officers in trie corporate towns
who should thereafter be elected, should be incapable of enter-
ing on their duties unless they had received the sacrament
within a year before their election, according to the rites of
the English church. The test act of 1673 required the recep-
tion of the sacrament according to the same rites, and the
rejection of transubstantiation, before any temporal office of
trust could be enjoyed. The acts against conventicles in 1664
and 1665 were particularly severe on dissenters. The first
forbade presence at any religious meeting where at least five
persons besides the members of the family should be assem-
bled, on penalty, to all persons above the age of sixteen, of
three months' imprisonment for the first offence, of six for the
second, and of seven years' transportation for the third, after
conviction before a single justice of the peace. The other re-
quired persons in holy orders who had not subscribed the act of
uniformity (z,<?., those who gave up their places in the church
after the passage of that act in 1660), to swear that taking up
arms against the king on any pretence whatever was unlaw-
ful, and shut out any one who should refuse such an oath from
* Hallam, Const. Hist, i., chap. 3, p. 153. Compare the same
work for the other acts referred to, ii., ch. n, pp. 472-476.