This law was one of the strictest religious censorship statutes ever enacted in England,[1] affecting preaching and possession of Lollard literature.

The statute declared there were "divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect…preach and teach…divers new doctrines, and wicked heretical and erroneous opinions contrary…of the Holy Church, and…they make unlawful conventicles and confederacies, they hold and exercise schools, they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and as such they may excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people, and…do perpetrate and commit subversion of the said catholic faith…".

[2] De heretico comburendo urged "that this wicked sect, preachings, doctrines, and opinions, should from henceforth cease and be utterly destroyed", and declared "that all and singular having such books or any writings of such wicked doctrine and opinions, shall really with effect deliver or cause to be delivered all such books and writings to the diocesan of the same place within forty days from the time of the proclamation of this ordinance and statute".

[2] Radical English theologian John Wycliffe of the University of Oxford wrote several books that inspired what would become the Lollard movement, which was considered seditious by the state and heretical by the Church.

[Note 1] he was consulted about whether "this writ De heretico comburendo lieth" upon a conviction for heresy before an "Ordinary" court.

According to some scholars, English Church authorities condemned editions of the Wycliffite translations not only because they deemed the commentary sometimes included with the work to be heretical, but because they feared a vernacular translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate, absent appropriate catechesis, would lead the ignorant laity to reject Church authority and fall into heresy.