The Riot Act, sometimes called the Riot Act 1714 or the Riot Act 1715, was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which authorised local authorities to declare any group of 12 or more people to be unlawfully assembled and order them to disperse or face punitive action. The act's full title was "An Act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters", and it came into force on 1 August 1715. It was repealed in England and Wales by section 10(2) and Part III of Schedule 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967. Acts similar to the Riot Act passed into the laws of British colonies in Australia and North America, some of which remain in force today.
The Act of Uniformity 1662 is an Act of the Parliament of England. It prescribed the form of public prayers, administration of sacraments, and other rites of the Established Church of England, according to the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Adherence to this was required in order to hold any office in government or the church, although the new version of the Book of Common Prayer prescribed by the Act was so new that most people had never even seen a copy. The Act also required that the Book of Common Prayer 'be truly and exactly Translated into the British or Welsh Tongue'. It also explicitly required episcopal ordination for all ministers, i.e. deacons, priests and bishops, which had to be reintroduced since the Puritans had abolished many features of the Church during the Civil War. The act did not explicitly encompass the Isle of Man.
Following the Peterloo Massacre on 16 August 1819, the government of the United Kingdom acted to prevent any future disturbances by the introduction of new legislation, the so-called Six Acts aimed at suppressing any meetings for the purpose of radical reform. Élie Halévy considered them a panic-stricken extension of "the counter-revolutionary terror ... under the direct patronage of Lord Sidmouth and his colleagues"; some later historians have treated them as relatively mild gestures towards law and order, only tentatively enforced.
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition.
An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery was an Act of the Parliament of Ireland that was passed in 1704 designed to suppress Roman Catholicism in Ireland ("Popery"). William Edward Hartpole Lecky called it the most notorious of the Irish Penal Laws.
In certain jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and other Westminster-influenced jurisdictions, as well as the United States and the Philippines, primary legislation has both a short title and a long title.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, also known as the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, removed the sacramental tests that barred Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom from Parliament and from higher offices of the judiciary and state. It was the culmination of a fifty-year process Catholic emancipation which had offered Catholics successive measures of "relief" from the civil and political disabilities imposed by Penal Laws in both Great Britain and in Ireland in the seventeenth, and early eighteenth, centuries.
The Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which received the royal assent on 18 July 1973. The act abolished the suspended Parliament of Northern Ireland and the post of Governor and made provision for a devolved administration consisting of an Executive chosen by the new Northern Ireland Assembly devised under the Sunningdale Agreement; the assembly had already been created by the Northern Ireland Assembly Act 1973, passed two months earlier.
In Ireland, the penal laws were a series of legal disabilities imposed in the seventeenth, and early eighteenth, centuries on the kingdom's Roman Catholic majority and, to a lesser degree, on Protestant "Dissenters". Enacted by the Irish Parliament, they secured the Protestant Ascendancy by further concentrating property and public office in the hands of those who, as communicants of the established Church of Ireland, subscribed to the Oath of Supremacy. The Oath acknowledged the British monarch as the "supreme governor" of matters both spiritual and temporal, and abjured "all foreign jurisdictions [and] powers"—by implication both the Pope in Rome and the Stuart "Pretender" in the court of the King of France.
The Profane Oaths Act 1745 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1746, in effect from 1 June 1746, and formally repealed in 1967. It established a system of fines payable for "profane cursing and swearing".
An Impressum is a legally mandated statement of the ownership and authorship of a document, which must be included in books, newspapers, magazines, websites, and business correspondence published or otherwise made available to consumers in Germany and certain other German-speaking countries, such as Austria and Switzerland. The Telemediengesetz mandates the use of an Impressum.
The Seditious Meetings Act 1819 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which made it illegal to hold a meeting of more than 50 people.
The Vagrancy Act 1824 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that makes it an offence to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales. The legislation was passed in Georgian England to combat the increasing number of people forced to live on the streets due to the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and the social effects of the Industrial Revolution. Critics of the law included politician and abolitionist, William Wilberforce, who condemned the Act for making it a catch-all offence for vagrancy with no consideration of the circumstances as to why an individual might be homeless.
In British law and in some related legal systems, an enactment is spent if it is "exhausted in operation by the accomplishment of the purposes for which it was enacted".
The Interpretation Act 1889 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Unlawful Oaths Act is a stock short title used for legislation in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland relating to unlawful oaths.
The Perjury Act 1911 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It creates the offence of perjury and a number of similar offences.
The Unlawful Games Act 1541, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of Unlawful Games Act 1541, was an Act of the Parliament of England, designed to prohibit "Several new devised Games" that caused "the Decay of Archery". All Men under the Age of sixty Years "shall have Bows and Arrows for shooting". Men-Children between Seven "Years and Seventeen shall have a Bow and 2 Shafts". Men about Seventeen "Years of Age shall keep a Bow and 4 Arrows". The penalty for nonobservance was set at 6s.8d.
R v Lovelass and Others (1834) 172 ER 1380 is a formative case in the history of UK labour law. It saw the Tolpuddle Martyrs, farm workers who wished to form a union to prevent wage cuts, convicted and deported to Australia. It triggered protests, which led to the workers' eventual release and return to Britain.
The Seditious Meetings Act 1817 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which made it illegal to hold a meeting of more than 50 people.
