“Whereas, by report of sundry of the Bishops of this Realm, and others having care of souls, the Queen’s Majesty is informed, that in sundry places of her said Realm, in their several Dioceses there are certain persons which do secretly, in corners, make privy assemblies of divers simple unlearned people, and after they have craftily and hypocritically allured them to esteem them to be more holy and perfect men than other are, they do then teach them damnable heresies, directly contrary to divers of the principal Articles of our Belief and Christian Faith and in some parts so absurd and fanatical, as by feigning to themselves a monstrous new kind of speech, never found in the Scriptures, nor in ancient Father or writer of Christ’s Church, by which they do move ignorant and simple people at the first rather to marvel at them, than to understand them but yet to colour their sect withal, they name themselves to be of the Family of Love, and then as many as shall be allowed by them to be of that family to be elect and saved, and all others, of what Church soever they be, to be rejected and damned.  And for that upon conventing of some of them before the Bishops and Ordinaries, it is found that the ground of their sect, is maintained by certain lewd, heretical, and seditious books first made in the Dutch tongue, and lately translated into English, and printed beyond the seas, and secretly brought over into the Realm, the author whereof they name H.N., without yielding to him, upon their examination, any other name, in whose name they have certain books set forth, called Evangelium Regni, or, A Joyful Message of the Kingdom; Documental Sentences, The Prophecie of the Spirit of Love; a Publishing of the Peace upon the Earth, and such like.

“And considering also it is found, that these Sectaries hold opinion, that they may before any magistrate, ecclesiastical or temporal, or any other person not being professed to be of their sect (which they term the Family of Love), by oath or otherwise deny any thing for their advantage, so as though many of them are well known to be teachers and spreaders abroad of these dangerous and damnable sects, yet by their own confession they cannot be condemned, whereby they are more dangerous in any Christian Realm:  Therefore, her Majesty being very sorry to see so great an evil by the malice of the Devil, first begun and practised in other countries, to be now brought into this her Realm, and that by her Bishops and Ordinaries she understandeth it very requisite, not only to have these dangerous Heretics and Sectaries to be severely punished, but that also all other means be used by her Majesty’s Royal authority, which is given her of God to defend Christ’s Church, to root them out from further infecting her Realm, she hath thought meet and convenient, and so by this her Proclamation she willeth and commandeth, that all her Officers and Ministers temporal shall, in all their several vocations, assist the Archbishops