[1584/5/11]¹

²An act establishing the form of judgement concerning the deposition and deprivation of ministers and other beneficed persons from their benefices for worthy causes

Our sovereign lord and his three estates assembled in this present parliament, willing that the word of God shall be preached and sacraments administered in purity and sincerity, and that the rents whereupon the ministers ought to be sustained shall not be possessed by unworthy persons neglecting to do their duties for which they accept their benefices, being otherwise polluted by the frail and enormous crimes and vices after-specified, it is therefore statute and ordained by his highness, with advice of the said three estates, that all parsons, ministers or readers, or others provided to benefices since his highness's coronation (not having vote in his highness's parliament) suspected to be culpable of heresy, papistry, false and erroneous doctrine, common blasphemy, fornication, common drunkenness, non-residence, plurality of benefices having cure, whereunto they are provided since the said coronation, simony and dilapidation of the rents of benefices, contrary to the late act of parliament, being lawfully and orderly called, tried and judged culpable in the vices and causes above-written, or one of them, by the ordinary bishop of the diocese or others, the king's majesty's commissioners to be constituted in ecclesiastical causes, shall be deprived both from their function in the ministry and from their benefices, which shall be thereby declared to be vacant, to be presented and conferred anew, as if the persons, possessors thereof, had been naturally dead; and that it shall be esteemed and judged non-residence where the person being in the function of the ministry, provided to a benefice since the king's majesty's coronation, makes non-residence at his manse, if he has any, and, failing thereof, at some other dwelling place within the parish, but remains absent from there and from his kirk and using of his office by the space of four Sundays in the whole year, without lawful cause and impediment allowed by his ordinary; and where any person is admitted to more benefices having cure since our sovereign lord's coronation, the acceptance of the last shall be sufficient cause of deprivation from the remainder, so that he be provided to two or more benefices having cure since the time of the said coronation; and nevertheless this present act shall not extend to any person provided to his benefice before the said coronation, neither shall the possession of the said office to which he was provided of before induce plurality of benefices in this case, but he shall only lose his right of the benefice to which he was provided since the said coronation only; and union of kirks to one benefice are not to be judged plurality, until further order be established and provided in that behalf; likewise also the persons being in the function of the ministry that shall happen to be lawfully and orderly convicted before our sovereign lord's justice general or others, their judges competent of criminal causes, such as treason, slaughter, mutilation, adultery, incest, theft,³ perjury or falsehoods, they being likewise lawfully and orderly deprived from their function in the ministry by their ordinary or the king's commissioners in ecclesiastical causes, the benefices possessed by the said persons to be vacant by reason of the said conviction and deprivation and this to have effect and execution only for crimes, vices, faults and offences that shall happen to be committed after the date hereof.