Suppression Of Heresy Act 1414

The Suppression of Heresy Act 1414 ( 2 Hen. 5. Stat. 1. c. 7) was an act of the Parliament of England. The act made heresy an offence against the common law and temporal officers were to swear to help the spiritual officers in the suppression of heresy. Justices of the peace were given the power of inquiry; to issue an order to arrest; and to hand over the suspected heretic to the ecclesiastical court for trial.

After arrest and allocation to a diocese, the initial vetting as to whether the person has ''heresies, errours, or Lolardies'' was up to the local bishops (the "ordinaries"): the secular authorities were not to make spiritual judgements: if the bishop found no serious or persistent heresy, the accused was in theory then protected from the secular authorities. The discovery of Lollard literature by sheriffs was not to be taken as direct evidence of heresy etc., but just as information: the indited person is innocent until proven guilty and the bishops must establish the truth themselved and not rely on the claims of the indictment presented to them:

If found to be heretics, they should be handed back to the secular authority and have a jury trial of men of independent means.

Controversy: Spurious quotation

A typical modern English rendition of a notorious section of the act has it

However, those words do not seem to appear in the act; they summarize and interpret the act, with some embellishment, but at some time have been mistaken as the actual words of the act. The phrase ''Wycliffe's learning'' in modern English is ''Wycliffe's teachings'' which are not fairly summarized as only "reading the Scriptures in English," but involve his teaching of the illegitimacy of rule by those in mortal sin, etc.

John Foxe in '' Acts and Monuments'' provided an English translation of the Latin act. 1576 edition has his introductory text:

Foxe then gives the 1415 act in English translation. The equivalent passages seem to be first that judicial officials:

Indeed, on John Foxe's reading he cannot find that this act explicitly allowed burning of Lollard heretics: "by what lawe or statute of the realme were these men brent?" Furthermore, Foxe denied having written in a previous edition that "there was no other cause of devising this sharpe law & punishmēt against these men, but onely for havyng the Scripture bookes," which he said was a misreading of a margin note.

Legacy

The act was extended to Ireland by Poynings' Law 1495 ( 10 Hen. 7. c. 22 (I)).

The act was annulled and made void by section 2 of the Statute of the Six Articles (25 Hen. 8. c. 14).

The whole act was repealed for England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy 1558 ( 1 Eliz. 1. c. 1) and Ireland by the Statute Law (Ireland) Revision Act 1872 ( 35 & 36 Vict. c. 98).

Notes

References

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Acts of the Parliament of England 1414
Acts of the Parliament of England concerning religion
Repealed English legislation
Christianity and law in the 15th century