Select statutes and other constitutional documents illustrative of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I

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Most humbly beseech your most excellent Majesty your faithful and obedient subjects, the Lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons in this your present Parliament assembled, That where in time of the reign of your most dear father of worthy memory, King Henry the Eight, divers good laws and statutes were made and established, as well for the utter extinguishment and putting away of all usurped and foreign powers and authorities out of this your realm and other your Highness' dominions and countries, as also for the restoring and uniting to the imperial crown of this realm the ancient jurisdictions, authorities, superiorities and pre-eminences to the same of right belonging and appertaining; by reason whereof we your most humble and obedient subjects, from the twenty-fifth year of the reign of your said dear father, were continually kept in good order, and were disburdened of divers great and intolerable charges and exactions before that time unlawfully taken and exacted by such foreign power and authority as before that was usurped, until such time as all the said good laws and statutes by one Act of Parliament made in the first and second years of the reigns of the late King Philip and Queen Mary, your Highness' sister, intituled an Act repealing all statutes, articles and provisions made against the See Apostolic of Rome since the twentieth year of King Henry the Eight, and also for the establishment of all spiritual and ecclesiastical possessions and hereditaments conveyed to the laity, were all clearly repealed and made void, as by the same Act of Repeal more at large doth and may appear; by reason of which Act of Repeal your said humble subjects were eftsoons brought under an usurped foreign power and authority, and yet do remain in that bondage, to the intolerable charges of your loving subjects, if some redress by the authority of this your High Court of Parliament, with the assent of your Highness, be not had and provided: May it