The Court of High Commission was the supreme

ecclesiastical court An ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain courts having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. In the Middle Ages, these courts had much wider powers in many areas of Europe than be ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Some of its powers was to take action against conspiracies, plays, tales, contempts, false rumors, books. It was instituted by the Crown in 1559 to enforce the Act of Uniformity and the

Act of Supremacy The Acts of Supremacy are two acts passed by the Parliament of England in the 16th century that established the English monarchs as the head of the Church of England; two similar laws were passed by the Parliament of Ireland establishing the En ...

. John Whitgift, the

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

, obtained increased powers for the court by the 1580s. He proposed and had passed the Seditious Sectaries Act 1593, making

Puritanism The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. P ...

an offence. The court reached the height of its powers during the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

. It was dissolved by the

Long Parliament The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In Septem ...

in 1641. The court was convened at will by the sovereign, and had near unlimited power over civil as well as church matters. There were also Scottish Courts of High Commission which vied with the

General Assembly A general assembly or general meeting is a meeting of all the members of an organization or shareholders of a company. Specific examples of general assembly include: Churches * General Assembly (presbyterian church), the highest court of presby ...

and lower church courts for authority.

Dissolution by the Triennial Act

The Court of High Commission was dissolved by the

Triennial Act The Triennial Act 1641 (16 Cha. I c. 1), also known as the Dissolution Act, was an Act passed on 15 February 1641,Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

in 1641. The Triennial Act required that the Crown summon Parliament every three years. It also impeached Archbishop

William Laud William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 1640 ...

, who had been supported by

Charles I Charles I may refer to: Kings and emperors * Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings * Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily * Charles I of ...

. Laud's new ideas and prayers had upset the Scots, and when Charles was refused an army from Parliament, which did not trust him, he created his own. This led in part to the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

References

Sources

*'High Commission, Court of

retrieved 4 August 2005 *The Glorious Revolution of 168

retrieved 4 August 2005 *' A History of the Woodforde Family from 1300

retrieved 4 August 2005 * Dutton, Richard (1991). ''Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama'', London: Palgrave Macmillan 16th century in England 17th century in England Former courts and tribunals in England and Wales Ecclesiastical courts History of the Church of England 1559 establishments in England Courts and tribunals established in 1559 1641 disestablishments in England Courts and tribunals disestablished in 1644 {{England-hist-stub