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The Buggery Act 1533 (25 Hen. VIII c. 6) was a sodomy law adopted in England in 1533 during the reign of Henry VIII, and was the first legislation against homosexuals in the country. The law defined buggery as an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and man. In practice, this has almost always been applied to sex between men, especially anal sex.
Description The Buggery Act was piloted through Parliament by Thomas Cromwell. The Act made buggery (with man or beast) punishable by hanging, a penalty not finally lifted until 1861. Some have suggested that bestiality was specifically included because of the fear of hybrid births. Whilst it is sometimes suggested that the Act was introduced as a measure against the clergy during the separation of the Church of England from Rome, there is no firm evidence for this, and indeed the Act preceded the separation. In July 1540, contravention of the Act, along with treason, led Lord Hungerford of Heyetsbury 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 for violation of the Act alone - and probably in a politically motivated case - in 1541. In his case, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment and he was released in less than a year, despite the Act's assertion that there was no "sufficient and condigne punyshment" for such acts. It was repealed in 1553, with Mary's succession. 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 The Act itself was finally repealed by the Offences Against the Person (England) Act 1828 and the Criminal Law (India) Act 1828, though the crime remained on the statute books under other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 The United Kingdom repealed buggery laws in 1967, but legal statutes in many former colonies have retained them, such as in the Anglophone Caribbean (see LGBT rights in Jamaica). The word "buggery" The English term buggery is very close in meaning to the term sodomy, and is often used interchangeably in law and popular speech. The word bugger is still commonly used in modern English but with a different emphasis of meaning. Originally, it was derived from the word "Bulgarian", meaning the medieval Bulgarian sect of the Bogomils, which spread into Western Europe and was branded by the established church as particularly devoted to the practice of sodomy.• | ||||||||
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