The Act was piloted through Parliament by Henry VIII 's minister Thomas Cromwell and punished " the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast " . " Buggery " was not further defined in the law . According to the Act : the offenders being hereof convicted by verdict confession or outlawry shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their good chattels debts lands tenements and hereditaments as felons do according to the Common Laws of this Realm . And that no person offending in any such offence shall be admitted to his Clergy ... This meant that a convicted sodomite ’s possessions could be confiscated by the government , rather than going to their next of kin , and that even priests and monks could be executed for the offence — even though they could not be executed for murder . In moving what had previously been an offence tried by ecclesiastical courts into the secular ones , Henry may have intended it as a simple expression of political power along with other contemporary acts such as Submission of the Clergy Act 1533 and one year before the Act of Supremacy 1534 . However Henry later used the law to execute monks and nuns ( thanks to information his spies had gathered ) and take their monastery lands — the same tactics had been used 200 years before by Philip IV of France against the Knights Templar . So it is also possible that he or his advisers may have had this use in mind when the bill was drafted . In July 1540 Walter Hungerford , 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury was charged with treason for harbouring a known member of the Pilgrimage of Grace movement . He was also accused of buggery . Hungerford was beheaded at Tower Hill , on 28 July 1540 , the same day as Thomas Cromwell . Nicholas Udall , a cleric , playwright , and Headmaster of Eton College , was the first to be charged with violation of the Act alone in 1541 , for sexually abusing his pupils . In his case , the sentence was commuted to imprisonment and he was released in less than a year . He went on to become headmaster of Westminster School
Pilgrimage of Grace
Pilgrimage of Grace
Buggery Act 1533