than of religion; that prayers for the dead are “a false foundation of alms" and are likely to be displeasing to God; that prayers offered to images are akin to idolatry; that auricular confession is a practice dangerous to virtue; that priests have no power to absolve from sin."

12

This petition is a proof that the followers of Wyclif were not only faithful to his teaching, but inherited his courage; it also appears to indicate their belief that there were members of the House of Commons who were not friendly to the Church.13

The alarm of the clergy at the spread of the doctrines of Wyclif is shown by the Act which was passed in 1400 for destroying heresy by fire.14 The preamble states that whereas the Catholic faith and holy Church had been hitherto maintained in England without being " perturbed by any perverse doctrine, or wicked, heretical, or erroneous opinions

"Yet nevertheless divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect, of the faith, of the sacraments of the Church, and the authority of the same, damnably thinking, and against the law of God and the Church usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the said realm, under the colour of dissembled holiness, preach and teach these days, openly and privily, divers new doctrines, and wicked, heretical, and erroneous opinions. And of such sect and wicked doctrine, they make unlawful conventicles and confederacies; they hold and

12 The Book of Conclusions or Reformations, exhibited to the Parliament, etc. See Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1631), i. 662-664.

13 That the House was not disposed to encourage or even to protect heresy is evident from the passing of the Act De Heretico Comburendo, described in the next paragraph. But a very few years later it appeared that both the King (Henry IV.) and the Commons had profited from Wyclif's teaching about Church temporalities. In 1404 Henry wanted money for his war in Wales, and, to avoid levying an "aid," he proposed, among other schemes, that he should appropriate certain portions of the property of the Church. The House of Commons received this proposal with the heartiest satisfaction. It was defeated by the fierce resistance of the clergy. In 1409 the King was again in want of money, and the Commons, on their own motion, prayed him to take away the estates of the bishops, the abbots, and the priors, which were spent by them in useless pomp and luxury. But the action of the clergy five years before had taught the King that this policy of disendowment was dangerous, and he met the prayers of the Commons with a sharp reproof. Echard, 178-179; and Riley, Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Record Publications), ii. 258-259, 282-283. Walsingham attributes the proposal of 1404, not to the King, but to the soldiersmilites et scutiferi.

14 2 Henry IV. cap. 15.

exercise schools; they make and write books; they do wickedly instruct and inform people; and, as much as they may, incite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people; and other enormities horrible to be heard, do perpetrate and commit."

The statute, therefore, provides that henceforth no one shall preach, either in public or private, without the licence of the diocesan of the place; that no one shall either speak or write against the Catholic faith, as determined by the Church; that no one shall favour or maintain such teachers of heresy; that any person in possession of heretical books or writings shall deliver all such books and writings to his diocesan within forty days from the proclamation of the statute. The diocesan is authorised to arrest and imprison, not only open offenders but persons evidently suspected, and may hold them in custody till they clear themselves, or abjure their heresy. Those who refuse to abjure, or who relapse, upon conviction in the diocesan courts are to be made over to the sheriff of the county, or the mayor and bailiffs of the nearest town, and are to be burnt

"before the people in a high place. . . . that such punishment may strike in fear to the minds of others, whereby no such wicked doctrine, and heretical and erroneous opinions, nor their authors and abettors in the said realm and dominions, against the Catholic faith, Christian law, and the determination of the Holy Church— which God prohibit-may be sustained, or in any wise suffered."

16

A week before the Act was passed, William Sawtre, a priest, was burned in Smithfield.15 "This was he," says Fuller, "whose faith fought the first duel with fire itself, and overcame it." His crimes were the denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation and of the lawfulness of worshipping images. In 1407 William Thorpe, another priest, a man distinguished for his learning, was burnt for the same heresies. He acknowledged Wyclif and some of Wyclif's friends as his teachers.

In 1414 the vigour with which the Church and the Crown

15 Fitzjames Stephen, in his History of the Criminal Law of England (ii. 446-447), gives the dates (a) of the writ for burning SawtreMarch 2, 1400; (b) of the passing of the Act, March 10, 1400. For a defence of the bishops against Sir Edward Coke, see Collier, iii. 254–259. 16 Fuller, ii. 391.

were repressing the new doctrines was met with the menace of a popular outbreak. Notices were fixed against the doors of London churches that if the persecution went on, a hundred thousand men would rise in arms. There were wild rumours of a design to seize the person of the King (Henry V.). The King left his palace at Eltham, where it was said that the conspirators meant to surprise him. St. Giles's Fields, where the insurgents were to meet, was occupied with troops. Only eighty men were found, but these, it is said, were armed. Others were seized at Harringay Park. Thirty-nine of the prisoners were hanged as traitors and then burnt as heretics.

If a royal proclamation is to be trusted, there was a widespread plot to destroy the hierarchy, to suppress the monasteries, to confiscate the estates of the Church, to proclaim Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who was popularly regarded as the Lollard leader, Protector of the realm. Oldcastle escaped to Wales and remained in concealment till 1417. In that year the Duke of Albany and Earl Douglas crossed the English border with a considerable army, invited, it is said, by the Lollards, who had promised to join them. Sir John Oldcastle came out of hiding and appeared in the neighbourhood of London. The Picts were driven out of the kingdom by the Duke of Bedford, and Sir John Oldcastle fled to Wales. He was arrested and tried by the House of Lords, and condemned as a traitor and a heretic. Like the Lollards caught in St. Giles's Fields, he was first hanged and then burnt.

Under Chichely (appointed Archbishop of Canterbury 1414) the prisons were crowded with persons accused of holding the opinion of Wyclif. Some of them were burned, but to have burned all who were convicted might have created popular sympathy with the martyrs. The Lollards' Tower at Lambeth is the memorial of Chichely's primacy and of the severity with which he pursued heresy. The persecution went on under Chichely's successors. Large numbers of men and women were arrested in different parts of the country: many abjured the erroneous opinions with which they were charged; many, layman and priests, mechanics and serving-men, citizens of London and country people, were sent to the flames.

In 1457 Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, who had written against the " Bible-men," was himself charged with heresy. He

taught that it is not necessary to believe in the Holy Catholic Church, or in the communion of saints, or in transubstantiation, or in the infallibility of General Councils, or in the security of the universal Church from error.17 He recanted, but was deposed from his bishopric and thrown into prison, where he is said to have remained till his death in 1460.

"The civil wars," says Fuller, "diverted the prelates from troubling the Lollards, so that this very storm was a shelter to those poor souls." 18 But the persecution was vigorously renewed on the accession of Henry VII.; and the faith and the patience of the last of the martyrs that died for the truth they had learned from Wyclif gave courage to the earliest of the martyrs that died for the truth they had learnt from Luther.

In the letter of Henry III. to the sheriffs of Oxfordshire (1263) already quoted,19 he charged them to suppress "the meetings, conventicles, or contracts" of certain heretical persons who were "making their meetings, assemblies, and unlawful matches against the honesty of the Church and good manners." In the preamble to the Act De Heretico Comburendo the Lollards are described as making "unlawful conventicles and confederacies"; and "the privy conventicles" of the heretics are mentioned in an official letter of Chichely's to the Bishop of London in 1416. Of these early" assemblies," "conventicles, and confederacies" few traces have been discovered. But from an entry in a manuscript register of William Gray, Bishop of Ely, we learn that in 1457 there was a secret congregation at Chesterton, near Cambridge, which met for divine worship and had at least three teachers 20 who denied the doctrine of Transubstantiation; maintained that fasting is not binding on labourers and married people, but only on priests and monks; that it is better to confess to a man cut off from the Catholic Church than to a priest; that there is no benefit in burial in consecrated ground; that extreme unction does no good to the body and only defiles the soul; that prayer in the fields is as profitable as prayer in the church; and that the presence 17 Stow, Annals (1631), 402–403; and Collier, iii. 388–394.

18 Fuller, ii. 469.

19 See p. 50, note 8.

20 John Baile, of Chesterton; Robert Sparke, of Reech; and John Crud [or Crowd], of Cambridge.

of the priest at the celebration of marriage was only made compulsory for the sake of gain.21

What these assemblies were is also illustrated by a deposition at the trial of Thomas Man, who was burnt for heresy at Smithfield in 1518, the year after Luther posted his ninetyfive theses on the doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, and before the influence of the great reformer could have been felt among the common people of England and indeed the deposition travels back to a time when Luther was a student at Erfurt and a child at Eisenach or Eisleben.

"In the deposition of one Thomas Risby, weaver of Stratford Langthorne, against the afore-named martyr Thomas Man, it appeareth by the Register, that he had been in divers places and countries in England, and had instructed very many, as at Amersham, at London, at Billerica, at Chelmsford, at Stratford Langthorne, at Uxbridge, at Burnham, at Henley-upon-Thames, in Suffolke and Northfolke, at Newbery and divers places more : where he himself testifieth, that as he went westward, he found a great company of well-disposed persons, being of the same judgment touching the sacrament of the Lord's supper that he was of, and especially at Newbery, where was (as he confessed) a glorious and sweet society of faithful favourers, who had continued the space of fifteen years together, till at last, by a certain lewd person, whom they trusted and made of their counsel, they were bewrayed; and then many of them, to the number of six or seven score, were abjured, and three or four of them were burnt. From thence he came then (as he confessed) to the Forest of Windsor, where he, hearing of the brethren who were at Amersham, removed thither, where he found a godly and a great company, which had continued in that doctrine and teaching twenty-three years. . . . Against these faithful Christians of Amersham was great trouble and persecution in the time of William Smith, bishop of Lincoln, about the year of our Lord, 1507, at which time divers and many were abjured, and it was called the 'Abjuratio Magna,'' the great Abjuration; and they which were noted of that doctrine and profession were called by the name of 'known men' or 'justfast' men. . . . In this congregation of the faithful brethren were four principal Readers or instructors; whereof one was Tilesworth, called then Dr. Tilesworth, who was burnt at Amersham. Another was Thomas Chase, called amongst them Dr. Chase, whom we declared before to be murdered and hanged in the bishop of

21 An account, in some particulars erroneous, of this passage in Gray's Register (Baker MSS. in the University Library, Cambridge) is given by Robert Robinson in his preface to Claude's Essay on the Composition of a Sermon. The Rev. J. Jackson Goadby, in his Byepaths in Baptist History, 14-16, has corrected Robinson's errors.