In order to exercise this authority, the queen, by a clause of the act, was empowered to name commissioners, either laymen or clergymen, as she should think proper; and on this clause was afterwards founded the court of ecclesiastical commission; which assumed large discretionary, not to say arbitrary powers, totally incompatible with any exact boundaries in the constitution.

Their proceedings, indeed, were only consistent with absolute monarchy; but were entirely suitable to the genius of the act on which they were established; an act that at once gave the crown alone all the power which had formerly been claimed by the popes, but which even these usurping prelates had never been able fully to exercise without some concurrence of the national clergy.
Whoever refused to take an oath acknowledging the queen's supremacy, was incapacitated from holding any office; whoever denied the supremacy, or attempted to deprive the queen of that prerogative, forfeited, for the first offence, all his goods and chattels; for the second, was subjected to the penalty of a praemunire; but the third offence was declared treason.

These punishments, however severe, were less rigorous than those which were formerly, during the reigns of her father and brother, inflicted in like cases.
A law was passed confirming all the statutes enacted in King Edward's time with regard to religion:[*] the nomination of bishops was given to the crown, without any election of the chapters: the queen was empowered, on the vacancy of any see, to seize all the temporalities, and to bestow on the bishop elect an equivalent in the impropriations belonging to the crown.

This pretended equivalent was commonly much inferior in value; and thus the queen, amidst all her concern for religion, followed the example of the preceding reformers in committing depredations on the ecclesiastical revenues.
The bishops and all incumbents were prohibited from alienating their revenues, and from letting leases longer than twenty-one years or three lives.

This law seemed to be meant for securing the property of the church; but as an exception was left in favor of the crown, great abuses still prevailed.