ix.
[1559, May 8. Extract from An Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church and Administration of the Sacraments (1 Eliz. c. 2), printed in Statutes, iv. 1, 355. Later clauses give concurrent power to deal with offences under the Act to justices of assize or mayors and other head officers of cities and boroughs, and to archbishops and bishops and other ordinaries by ecclesiastical process.]
It is ordained and enacted by the authority abovesaid, that if any person or persons whatsoever, after the said feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist next coming [24 June 1559], shall in any interludes, plays, songs, rhymes, or by other open words, declare or speak anything in the derogation, depraving, or despising of the same book [of Common Prayer], or of anything therein contained, or any part thereof, ... then every such person, being thereof lawfully convicted in form aforesaid, shall forfeit to the queen our sovereign lady, her heirs and successors, for the first offence a hundred marks.