Legal Usage
Throughout the Commonwealth Realms, The Crown is an abstract concept which represents the legal authority for the existence of any government. It evolved naturally as a separation of the literal crown and property of the nation-state from the person and personal property of the monarch.
Because Pope Clement VII would not grant Henry VIII of England an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the English Parliament passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533) in which it was explicitly stated that
- Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same.
The next year the Act of Supremacy (1534) explicitly tied the headship of the church to the imperial crown:
- The only supreme head in earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia, and shall have and enjoy annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm.
During the reign of Mary I the First Act of Supremacy was annulled, but during the reign of Elizabeth I the Second Act of Supremacy, with similar wording to the First Act, was passed in 1559. During the English Interregnum the laws were annulled, but the acts which caused the laws to be in abeyance were themselves, deemed to be null and void by the Parliaments of the English Restoration, so by act of Parliament The Crown of England and (later the British and UK crowns) are imperial crowns.
Read more about this topic: Imperial Crown
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