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.

[1] 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 inditement presented to them: ...þe sayd indightmentes be not taken in evidence but onely for information before the Judges spirituall, agaynst such persons indighted: but that the Ordinaries begin their proces agaynst such persons indited, in the same maner, as though no such iudgement were, hauyng no regarde to such inditementes.If found to be heretics, they should be handed back to the secular authority and have a jury trial of men of independent means.

The equivalent passages seem to be first that judicial officials: have full power to inquire of all such, which hold any errours or heresies, as Lolardes and who be their maintainours, recevours, factours, and sustainers, common writers of such bookes, as well of their Sermons as scholes, conventicles, congregations, and confederacies, …all persons convicte of heresie of what soever estate, condition or degree they be, by the sayd ordinaries[a] or their commissaries left unto the secular power accordyng to the lawes of holy Church, shall leese and forfaite all their landes and tenementes, whiche they have in fee simple in maner and forme as foloweth: That is to say that the kyng shal have all the landes & tenementes, which the sayd convictes have in fee simple & which be immediatly holden of hym, as forfaitedIndeed, 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?

"[7] 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.