Sedition Act 1661
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Citation | 1661 c. 1 |
| Year | 1661 |
(13 Cha. 2 St. 1) C A P. I.
THE Lordsand Commons assembled in Parliament, deeply weighing and considering the Miseries and Calamities of well nigh twenty years, before your Majesties happy Return, and withal reflecting upon the causes and occasions of so great and deplorable Confusions, do in all humility and thankfulness acknowledge your Majesties incomparable Grace and Goodness to your people, in your Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion, by which your Majesty hath been pleased to deliver your Subjects, not only from the punishment, but also from the reproach of their former miscarriages, which unexampled Piety and Clemency of your Majesty hath enflamed the hearts of us your Subjects with an ardent desire to express all possible Zeal and Duty in the Care and Preservation of your Majesties Person (in whose Honor and Happiness consists the good and welfare of your people) and in preventing (as much as may be) all Treasonable and Seditious Practices and Attempts for the time to come: And because the growth and encrease of the late Troubles and Disorders, did in a very great measure proceed from a multitude of SeditiousSermons, Pamphlets and Speeches, daily preached, printed and published, with a transcendent Boldness defaming the Person and Government of your Majesty and your Royal Father, wherein Men were too much encouraged, and (above all) from a wilfill mistake of the Supreme and Lawful Authority, whilst Men were forward to cry up and maintain those Orders and Ordinances, Oaths and Covenants, to be Acts Legal and Warrantable, which in themselves had not the least Colour of Law or Justice to support them; from which kind of distempers, as the present Age is not yet wholly freed, so Posterity may be apt to relapse into them, if a timely remedy be not provided: We therefore, the Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, having duly considered the Premisses,and remembring that in the thirteenth Year of the Reign of QueenElizabeth of ever blessed Memory, a right good and profitable Law was made for the preservation of her Majesties Person,do most humbly beseech your most excellent Majesty, that it may be enacted, And be it enacted by the Kings most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by authority of the same, That if any person or persons whatsoever, after the Four and twentieth day ofJune , in the Year of our Lord, One thousand six hundred sixty and one, during the natural Life of our most gracious Sovereign Lord the King, (whom Almighty God preserve and bless with a long and prosperous Reign) shall within the Realm, or without, compass, imagine, invent, devise, or intend death or destruction, or any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim or wounding, imprisonment or restraint of the person of the same our Sovereign Lord the King, or to deprive or depose him from the Stile, Honor, or Kingly Name of the Imperial Crown of this Realm, or of any other his Majesties Dominions or Countries, or to levy War against his Majesty within this Realm, or without, or to move or stir any Foreigner or Strangers with force to invade this Realm, or any other his Majesties Dominions or...
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