An excerpt from

    And for the better observation and maintenance of this Act, may it please your Highness that it may be further enacted ... that all and every archbishop, bishop, and all and every other ecclesiastical person, ... of what estate, dignity, pre-eminence or degree soever he or they be or shall be, and all and every temporal judge, justice, mayor and other lay or temporal officer and minister, and every other person having your Highness's fee or wages, within this realm or any your Highness's dominions, shall make, take and receive a corporal oath upon the evangelist,⁵⁵  before such person or persons as shall please your Highness, your heirs or successors under the great seal of England to assign and name to accept and to take the same, according to the tenor and effect hereafter following, that is to say:  
    "I, A. B.,⁵⁶  do utterly testify and declare in my conscience that the Queen's Highness is the only supreme governor of this realm, and of all other her Highness's dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm; and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities and authorities, and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith and true allegiance to the Queen's Highness, her heirs and lawful successors, and to my power shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privileges and authorities granted or belonging to the Queen's Highness, her heirs or successors, or united or annexed to the imperial crown of this realm.  So help me God, and by the contents of this Book." ...



⁵⁵  One of the four Gospels.
⁵⁶  Here the individual stated his name.

	to the Oath of Supremacy
	to Queen Elizabeth I
	to 16th-century Renaissance English Literature
	to Luminarium Encyclopedia