THE DEATH of Henry VIII, in the early hours of 28 January 1547, brought the downfall also of legislation prohibiting Bible-reading to all but his most privileged subjects. When the first parliament under Edward VI met in November 1547, it was to reverse the late king's concessions to traditional religion by repealing all ‘Act[es] of p[ar]lament’ passed in Henry's reign ‘concerninge doctryne and matters of Religion’. Alongside the conservative Six Articles Act, the 1547 Repeals Act singled out for particular mention the Act for Advancement of true Religion. Its proscriptions against the ‘reading preaching teaching or expownding of Scripture’, the Repeals Act asserted, ‘shall fromhensfurthe be repealed and utterlie voyde and of none effecte’.

According to the Act for Advancement of true Religion, disputes over the meaning of scripture were to blame for the great ‘diversitie of opinions’ which had of late sprung up in England. Insofar as it condemns exegeses that contradict ‘the veraye sincere and godly emeaning’ of scripture, the act appears to uphold the idea, first espoused by Tyndale, that the meaning of scripture was self-evident, its prose accessible to all. This apparent faith in the straightforwardness of scripture is nevertheless undermined by the fact that, within the act, Henry had deemed it prudent firstly to ban the reading of the English Bible before proceeding with his plan to establish a ‘pure and sincere teaching, agreable with Godd[es] woorde’.