[1584/5/10]¹

²An act discharging all jurisdictions and judgements not approved by parliament, and all assemblies and conventions without our sovereign lord's special licence and commandment

Forasmuch as in the troubling times during these 24 years past, sundry forms of judgements and jurisdictions, both in spiritual as temporal causes, are entered, in the practice and custom whereby the king's majesty's subjects are often convened and assembled together and pains, both civil and pecuniary as ecclesiastical, enjoined to them, process led and deduced, sentences and decreets given and the same put into execution, no such order as yet being allowed of and approved by his majesty and his three estates in parliament, contrary to the custom observed in any other Christian kingdom or well governed commonwealth and to the diminishing of the force and power of his highness's own laws, by the which his majesty's subjects ought to be ruled, and specially his highness and his estates considering that in the said assemblies certain of his subjects have taken upon them to justify and authorise the fact perpetrated against his highness's person and estate at Ruthven and prosecuted thereafter, until his majesty at God's pleasure recovered his liberty, having in their pretended manner made acts thereupon, kept the same in register and as yet seem to allow the said attempt, although now publicly condemned by his highness and estates as treasonable, none of the authors thereof having craved his highness's pardon thereof; for remedy whereof in time coming, so that according to the lovable act of his dearest grandfather, King James IV of worthy memory, all his highness's lieges (being under his obedience) must be ruled by his own laws and the common laws of this realm and by no other laws, our sovereign lord and his three estates assembled in this present parliament discharge all judgements and jurisdictions, spiritual or temporal, accustomed to be used and executed upon any of his highness's subjects which are not approved by his highness and his said three estates convened in parliament, and decree the same to cease in time coming, until the order thereof be first seen and considered by his³ estates in parliament, and be allowed and ratified by them, certifying those that shall proceed in using and exercising of the said judgements and jurisdictions or obey the same, not being allowed nor ratified as is said, they shall be reputed, held, called, pursued and punished as usurpers and condemners of his highness's authority, in example of others. And also it is statute and ordained by our said sovereign lord and his three estates that none of his highness's subjects, of whatsoever quality, estate or function they be of, spiritual or temporal, presume or take upon hand to convocate, convene or assemble themselves together for holding of councils, conventions or assemblies, to create, consult and determine in any matter of estate, civil or ecclesiastical (except in the ordinary judgements), without his majesty's special commandment, express licence had and obtained to that effect, under the pains ordained by the laws and acts of parliament against such as unlawfully convenes the king's lieges.