Note 541 — Chapter IV

Canon Dixon (History of the Church of England, v. 67) declares that the phrase “Supreme Head” was not in the Bill. He has overlooked the fact that Heath in his speech against it quotes the actual words used in the proposed Act: “I promised to move your honours to consider what this supremacy is which we go about by virtue of this Act to give to the Queen’s Highness, and wherein it doth consist, as whether in spiritual government or in temporal. If in spiritual, like as the words of the Act do import, scilicet: Supreme Head of the Church of England immediate and next under God, then it would be considered whether this House hathe authority to grant them, and Her Highness to receive the same” (Strype, Annals, I. i. 405).