Statute on the Burning of Heretics (De heretico comburendo)

The statute was made under Henry IV. Its preamble says that the clergy and the Commons had asked the king for a remedy against “a certain new sect” whose members preached without authority, held schools and wrote books; the editors of the collection linked here describe it as Parliament’s first step against the Lollards. It forbids preaching without a bishop’s licence, orders heretical books to be handed in within forty days, and lets a bishop arrest and imprison those suspected.

Its last clause is the one that mattered afterwards. A person convicted before the bishop who refuses to abjure, or who has abjured and is pronounced relapsed, is to be left to the secular court; the sheriff or mayor is to receive him and have him burned before the people in a high place, so that the punishment may strike fear into others. According to the same editors the statute was repealed under Henry VIII and Edward VI. It was revived under Mary I by the Act for the Reviving of Three Statutes for the Punishment of Heresies and repealed again by Elizabeth I’s Act of Supremacy (1559).