I have a related question. The Lutherans used to burn Anabaptists and other heretics at the stake. Is there any reason they should not be allowed to do so now. Elizabeth I had Catholic priests and those who aided and sheltered them hanged, drawn and quartered (that is butchered while still alive), and beheaded. Is there anything that would prevent Elizabeth II from treating dissenters from the Cof E in the same way today?
1. Lutherans have not (AFAIK) expressed any desire to do so - one might as well ask one of the Jewish posters whether they favour stoning delinquent teenagers, as the Torah provides.
2. Catholics were hanged, disembowelled, castrated & decapitated because that was the penalty for treason faced by males of legal age who were not of noble rank. It was introduced by a Catholic monarch in 1283, & appears to be a combination of beheading (introduced for the punishment of treason after the Norman Conquest) with the two traditions about the death of Judas Iscariot. Catholics were punished as traitors because that was the charge on which they were convicted, some justly, most not - by
modern standards.
It was last inflicted in 1753 - in a treason case in 1820, the criminals were hanged until dead, not cut down & eviscerated while conscious - & abolished about 1860 or so (IIRC). The death penalty for the few crimes still punished with death was supended in 1965, and is now beyond the jurisdiction of the British Parliaments - the EU is most unlikely to return sovereignty to us in in this matter. The 1351 Statute of Treasons which provided the legal basis for the definition of the crime of treason & the prosecution & execution of traitors has been repealed in recent years. So there is now no statutory basis for the execution of anyone at all.
As for Anglicans - rejecting Anglicanism did not count as a treason even when it was the only religion in England that enjoyed legal protection, before 1688 (1689/90 in Scotland). Even in the 19th century, which was much moree inclined to get worked up about the Churches & religion than the twentieth, there were prosecutions for blasphemous libel - the last was in 1976 - but not for rejecting Anglicanism. Heresy trials were sought, especially after the 1840s, & sometimes carried through - but they did not imply any capital offence.had been committed. The involvement of the Crown was limited to providing for “the Protestant Reformed religion by law established”, which was what the Coronation Oath taken by the monarch required - it amounted to providing the means for the Church to govern itself. The same holds for the Church of Scotland - rejection of Presbyterianism by Presbyterian has never been a treason.
St. John Ogilvie was martyred in 1615 by authority derived from James VI & I, for declining the authority of the Crown in what (to a modern) would be a purely religious matter. The charges were also purely religious, by our standards: by the law of of Scotland then, they were treasons. There is no analogy in this with anything in UK Protestantism of any kind today.
The authority of the monarch over the two established Churches has never been that of a pastor, but that of the “godly prince”; a layman whose authority is the necessary foundation for the legal exercise of all authority in the established Churches, but, that foundation once in place, does not function within those Churches as a cleric. It is not a claim to headship - the only Head either Church acknowledges is Christ. The monarch acts as His vicar; in practice, this “royal vicariate” (so to call it) is exercised almost entirely through Parliament. So the Church of England deals with heresy for itself, by its canons: the Crown does not; likewise the Church of Scotland.
