Everything about Buggery Act 1533 totally explained
The
Buggery Act of 1533 (25 Hen. VIII c. 6) was a
sodomy law adopted in
England in
1534 during the reign of
Henry VIII, and was the first civil legislation applicable against
homosexuals in the country, such offences having previously been dealt with by
ecclesiastical courts. The law defined
buggery as an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and man. This was later defined by the courts to include only anal sex and bestiality.
Description
The Buggery Act was piloted through
Parliament by
Thomas Cromwell. The Act established punishment of buggery by
hanging, a penalty not finally lifted until 1861. Some have suggested that
bestiality was specifically included because of the fear of
hybrid births, and also because of a demons'ability to turn into animals/beasts.
Although it's sometimes suggested that the Act was introduced as a measure against the clergy during the separation of the
Church of England from Rome, there's no firm evidence for this, and indeed the Act preceded the separation.
In July 1540, contravention of the Act, along with
treason, led
Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury to become the first person executed under the statute, although it was probably the treason that cost him his life.
Nicholas Udall, a cleric,
playwright, and Headmaster of
Eton College, was the first to be charged with violation of the Act alone – and in case that was probably a politically motivated – in 1541. In his case, the sentence was commuted to
imprisonment and he was released in less than a year.
The Act was repealed in 1553 on the accession of
Queen Mary. However, it was re-enacted by Queen
Elizabeth I in 1563 and became the charter for all subsequent criminalization in the
English-speaking world. In England, only a few executions are known during the two centuries that followed. The Act itself was finally repealed by the
Offences Against the Person Act 1828 and the
Criminal Law (India) Act 1828, though the crime remained on the statute books under other legislation. Buggery remained a
capital offence in England until 1861; and the last execution for the crime took place in 1836.
The United Kingdom repealed its buggery laws in 1967, ten years after the
Wolfenden report, but legal statutes in many former colonies have retained them, such as in the
Anglophone Caribbean (see
LGBT rights in Jamaica).
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