Act for the Reviving of Three Statutes for the Punishment of Heresies
The statute of Mary I’s third Parliament that brought back three medieval laws against heresy, among them the act of 1401 under which convicted heretics were burned. It is the legal ground of the burnings of 1555–1558.
The act is one sentence long. It says that heresies have lately increased because the bishops lacked authority to proceed against them, and it revives, from 20 January following, the statute of 5 Richard II on the arrest of heretical preachers, the statute of 2 Henry IV on the punishment of heretics and the statute of 2 Henry V against heresy and Lollardy. It does not itself name a penalty: the penalty of burning stands in the act of Henry IV, which is recorded here as Statute on the Burning of Heretics (De heretico comburendo).
The same Parliament passed the Mary’s Second Act of Repeal, which restored the authority of the pope in England. Elizabeth I’s Act of Supremacy (1559) repealed this act and the three statutes it had revived.
Cited in
- 1555 to 1558, firm date