1399, 1400] HENRY IV. AND THE REFORMERS. . 11 those who are curious, in the various works | conceded to them consistently with the maingiven at the close of this chapter. AUTHORITIES. Froissart. Hardyng. Otterburne. Rolls of Parl. Rymer. Archæologia vi., xx., xxiii. Tytler, Hist. of Scotland ii. 459-517. CHAPTER III. Henry's. policy towards the clergy. His relation to the Reformers. Their position at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Statute for the burning of Heretics. William Sawtre, the first martyr. Sentence of degradation. Examination of William Thorpe. Impolicy and injustice of religious intolerance. A.D. 1401. One of the first acts of Henry IV. was to dispatch the earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland with a gracious message to a convocation of the province of Canterbury, which met on the 6th of October, 1399, in the Chapter-house of St. Paul's at London. While the new king begged the prayers of the Church for himself and the kingdom, he declared, first, that he would never demand any money from the clergy except in cases of the most extreme necessity; secondly, that he would protect them in all their liberties and immunities; and, thirdly, that he would assist them with all his power in exterminating heretics. The first of these promises was but indifferently observed: Henry IV., indeed, throughout his reign, demanded subsidies from the clergy as regularly as from the laity, and probably obtained altogether a larger amount of money from the former than any preceding English king; he even threatened on one or two occasions to take their money or goods from them by force; but still they acted as if they felt their interests to be bound up with his, and although they sometimes resisted, they did not desert him. Not even his daring execution of Archbishop Scrope, after the insurrection of 1405, made any permanent breach between him and the Church; a vague and inoperative censure, retracted on the first explanation, was the only notice taken of an act that in other times would have shaken the strongest throne in Christendom. On the other hand, Henry gratified the clergy by steadily supporting them in the assertion of all such powers as could be tenance of the integrity of the civil authority; and in particular in the assertion of that power upon which they set the highest value, the absolute and insolent tyranny exercised over religious opinion and belief. In the falling away of their old popular strength, they now had recourse to new expedients in order to sustain that tyranny, exposed as it was to a more vigorous resistance than it had ever before encountered. The accession of Henry the Fourth was favoured, rather than impeded, by the Reformers. He was not only the son of John of Gaunt; but he had been known while earl of Derby, to express sentiments respecting the wealth and power of the clergy, which were in harmony with those uttered by his father when he stood forth as the patron of Wycliffe in St. Paul's. But on ascending the throne, Henry began to look on the support of the clergy as necessary to the stability of his power; and it was no secret that the only peace-offering which could ensure him service from that quarter was the sacrifice of the Wycliffites. He knew the price: he promised that it should be paid. But to secure the good offices of the priesthood was not to gain every thing. By placing himself in such hands, Henry arrayed against him all who were intent, whether from political or religious reasons, on diminishing that priestly wealth and priestly power which threatened to absorb all other wealth and all other power. The existing relations of things in this respect were most unnatural, and the chance of perpetuating them depended on the ability to stay the progress of intelligence. To so great a hazard did the policy of Henry expose his crown and the dynasty he sought to establish. It was both an error and a crime, and the fruit natural to it was gathered in due season. His own reign was short and troubled; and that of his son added so far to the evils thus produced, as to prepare the way for a transfer of the sceptre to other hands in the time of his successor. Wycliffe left no heir to his authority or his influence; he had organised no sect or party, but his opinions had sunk into the hearts of multitudes. Knyghton (who wrote at Leicester, in the immediate neighbourhood of Wycliffe) declares in his bitterness, that "every second man you met was a Wycliffite." Under the vague name of Lollards they were everywhere; bound together only by common sympathies, and common jealousy of the clergy. Many of them, no doubt, believed more, and many of them less, than Wycliffe had taught, and applied doctrines to matters, and sought objects, which he | Wycliffite opinions. London was their stronghold. would have repudiatel. They were of all orders, ranks, classes; near the throne; in the baronial castle; in the city among the substantial burghers; in the peasant's hut; even in the monastery. CONVOCATION OF CLERGY. The sober and wealthy citizens were advancing in intelligence and freedom, jealous no doubt of riches gained by the clergy without risk or labour, and spent with splendour and ostentation, which shamed their more homely and frugal living. Nor were they without active proselytes in the lower and more unruly classes. Peter Patishull, an Augustinian Monk, though appointed one of the pope's chaplains, (a lucrative and honourable office, which conferred great privileges, and was commonly bought at a great price,) embraced the new doctrines, and preached publicly on the vices of the clergy at St. Christopher's in London. The Augustinians burst into the church, and served an interdict on the preacher. The Lollards drove them out. Patishull affixed a writing on the doors of St. Paul's, "that he had escaped from the companionship of the worst of men to the most perfect and holy life of the Lollards." The midland towns, rising into opulence, were full of Wycliffism; and this was especially the case at Leicester. There, the archbishop took his seat in full. pontificals on the trial of certain heretics, who seem to have been of note; and who were anathematised with bell, book, and candle, and were forced to read their recantation. Wycliffe's personal character and influence had cast a spell over some of the highest personages in the realm. His doctrines were looked The wide-spread existence of the heresy, as on with favour by the widow of the Black Prince, it was the fashion to call it, and the threatened by John of Gaunt, above all by the queen of danger to the power of the priesthood, impelled Richard II., Anne of Bohemia. The "Good the clergy to seek for the enactment of severe Queen Anne," as she was popularly called, if measures of repression. In England alone a not in doctrine a Wycliffite, was so in the Statute was necessary to legalise the burning foundation of her doctrine,-reverence for the of heretics. In all other parts of Christendom Scriptures. She had the Gospels at least in the magistrate had obeyed the summons of the Bohemian, in English, and in Latin. Through her attendants grew up not only the political, but the close and intimate religious connexion between Bohemia and England. Through them these doctrines passed to John Huss of Prague. Not only did the Council of Constance denounce these teachers as disciples of Wycliffe; in repelling and anathematising him it assumed that it was also repelling the Bohemian Reformers. An Englishman, Peter Payne, throughout the Hussite War, is one of the leaders of religion, one of the great authorities of the Bohemian faith. Among the Wycliffite noblemen the earl of Salisbury is claimed by Fox, and branded by Walsingham, as an obstinate and shameless Lollard, a despiser of images, a scoffer at the sacraments. A list has been preserved of ten or twelve knights of property and influence who openly avowed the clergy. The sovereign, either of his own supreme authority, or under the old Roman Imperial Law, had obsequiously executed the mandates of the bishop. The secular arm received the delinquent against the law of the Church. The judgment was passed in the Ecclesiastical Court or that of the Inquisition, but the Church, with a kind of evasion which it is difficult to clear from hypocrisy, would not be stained with blood. The clergy commanded the fire to be lighted and the victim to be tied to the stake by others, under the most awful threats; and thus acquitted themselves of the cruelty of actually burning their fellow creatures. King Henry IV. and the Parliament (even the Commons, now affrighted by the wild and revolutionary tenets ascribed to all the Lollards, and avowed by some) enacted the Statute which bears the ill-omened appellation, "for 1401] STATUTE FOR THE BURNING OF HERETICS. 13 burning of heretics." The preamble was directed | spiritual, and the keys of the Church, with the in the most comprehensive terms against the new preachers. censures of the same, do utterly contemn and despise; and so their wicked preachings and doctrines from day to day continue and exercise, to the hatred of right and reason, and utter destruction of order and good rule: "Whereas it is shewed to our sovereign lord the king on the behalf of the prelates and clergy of his realm of England in this present Parliament, that although the Catholic faith builded upon Christ, and by His apostles and the Holy Church sufficiently determined, declared, and approved, had been hitherto by good and by holy and most noble progenitors of our sovereign lord the king most devoutly observed, and the Church of England by his most noble progenitors and ancestors, to the honour of God and of the whole realm, laudably endowed, and in her rights and liberties sustained, without that the same faith or the said church was hurt or grievously oppressed, or else 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 faith of the Sarcaments of the Church, and the authority of the same, damnably thinking, and against the law of God and of the Church usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously in divers places under the colour of dissembled holiness, preach and teach these days openly and privily divers new doctrines, and wicked heretical and erroneous opinions, contrary to the same faith and blessed determinations of the Holy Church; and of such sect and wicked doctrine and opinions, they make unlawful conventicles and confederacies, hold and exercise schools, make and write books, wickedly instruct and inform people, and as much as they may excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people, and other enormities horrible to be heard daily do perpetrate and commit, in subversion of the said Catholic faith and doctrine of the Holy Church, in diminution of God's honour, and also in destruction of the estate, rights and liberties of the said Church of England; by which sect and wicked and false preachings, doctrines, and opinions of the said false and perverse people, not only greatest peril of the souls, but also many more other hurts, slanders, and perils (which God prohibit) might come to this realm, unless it be the more plentifully and speedily holpen by the king's majesty in this behalf; namely, whereas the diocesans of "And if any persons, of whatsoever kind, the said realm cannot by their jurisdiction estate, or condition, from henceforth do or spiritual, without aid of the said royal majesty, attempt against this royal ordinance and statute, sufficiently correct the said perverse people, or such books do not deliver, then the diocesan who go from diocese to diocese, and will may cause such persons in this behalf defamed not appear before the said diocesans, but or evidently suspected to be arrested, and under the same diocesans and their jurisdiction safe custody in his prisons to be detained, till "Upon which novelties and excesses above rehearsed, the prelates and clergy, and also the Commons of the said realm praying our | sovereign lord the king, that his royal highness would vouchsafe in Parliament to provide a convenient remedy; our sovereign lord the king, graciously considering the premises, and also the laudable steps of his most noble progenitors and ancestors, for the conservation of the said Catholic faith, and sustentation of God's honour, and also the safeguard of the estate, rights, and liberties of the Church of England, and for the eschewing of such dissensions, divisions, hurts, slanders, and perils, in time to come, and that this wicked sect, preachings, doctrines, and opinions should from henceforth cease and be utterly destroyed, by the assent of the states and other discreet men of the realm, being in the said Parliament, hath granted, stablished, and ordained, from henceforth firmly to be observed, that none within the realm, or any other dominions subject to his royal majesty, presume to preach openly or privily, without the license of the diocesan first required and obtained, (curates in their own churches, and persons hitherto privileged, and other of the canon law granted, only except,) that none from henceforth any thing preach, hold, teach, or instruct openly or privily, or make or write any book, contrary to the Catholic faith or determination of Holy Church, nor of such sect and wicked doctrines and opinions shall make any conventicles, or in any wise hold or exercise schools; that none from henceforth in any wise favour such preacher, or maker of any such and like conventicles, in holding or exercising schools, or making or writing such books, or so teaching, informing, or exciting the people, nor any of them maintain or any wise sustain; and that all and singular having such books or any writings of such wicked doctrine and opinions, shall deliver them to the diocesan of the place within forty days from the time of the proclamation of this ordinance and statute. of the Holy Church (which God prohibit) be sustained or in any wise suffered: In which all and singular the premises concerning the said ordinance and statute, the sheriffs, mayors, and bailiffs of the said counties, cities, boroughs, and towns, shall be attending, aiding and supporting to the said diocesans and their Nor was this statute an idle menace; the primate and the bishops hastened to make examples under its terrible provisions. they of the articles laid to him or them in this William Sawtre or Sautrey is the protomartyr of Wycliffism. But the first victim, while he displays most fully the barbarity of the persecutors, does not lead "the noble army" with much dignity. His sufferings alone entitle him to commiseration. He was chosen perhaps as an example to overawe London, and as one whose fate would not provoke dangerous sympathy. William Sawtre had been priest of St. Margaret's in King's Lynn: he was now a preacher at St. Osyth in the city. He had been already arraigned and convicted before the warlike bishop of Norwich. On his trial in London, he not only recanted and then withdrew his recantation, (a more pardonable weakness,) but he daringly denied that he had ever been on trial before. The record of the court of Norwich was produced in evidence that he had already been condemned as a heretic for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the following articles were entered as having been proved: "He saith, that he will not worship the cross on which Christ suffered, but only Christ that suffered upon the cross. "That he would sooner worship a temporal king, than the aforesaid wooden cross. "That he would rather worship the bodies of the saints, than the very cross of Christ on which he hung, if it were before him. "And if any person within the said realm and dominions, upon the said wicked preachings, doctrines, opinions, schools, and heretical and erroneous informations, or any of them, be before the diocesan sententially convict and the same wicked sect, preachings, doctrines, and opinions, schools and informations, do refuse duly to abjure, or after abjuration made fall into relapse, so that according to the holy canons he ought to be left to the secular court, (whereupon credence "That he would rather worship a man truly shall be given to the diocesan of the same contrite, than the cross of Christ. place, or to his commissaries in this behalf,) "That he is rather bound to worship a man then the sheriff of the county, or mayor, sheriffs, that is predestinate, than an angel of God. and bailiffs of the city, town, and borough, shall "That if any man would visit the monuments be personally present in preferring of such of SS. Peter and Paul, or go on pilgrimage to sentences, when they by the same diocesan or the tomb of St. Thomas, or any whither else his commissaries shall be required; the same for the obtaining of any temporal benefit; he persons after such sentence promulgate, shall is not bound to keep his vow, but he may receive, and them before the people in an high distribute the expenses of his vow upon the alms place do cause to be burnt; that such punishment of the poor. may strike fear to the minds of others, whereby no such wicked doctrine and heretical and erroneous opinions, or their authors and fautors in the said realm and dominions against the Catholic faith, Christian law, and determination "That every priest and deacon is more bound to preach the word of God, than to say the canonical hours. "That after the pronouncing of the sacramental words of the body of Christ, the bread remaineth 1401] FORM OF PRIESTLY DEGRADATION. Sawtre was therefore formally pronounced a relapsed heretic. 15 of the same nature that it was before, neither from the order of a deacon. And in sign of doth it cease to be bread." this thy degradation and actual deposition, we take from thee the book of Gospels, and the stole, and do deprive thee of the power of reading the Gospel, and of all and all manner of diaconal honour. same "We, Thomas, archbishop, by the authority, &c., do thee the aforesaid William, sub-deacon pretensed, clothed in the habit and vestment of a sub-deacon, a heretic and one relapsed, condemned by sentence as is aforesaid, degrade and depose from the order of a sub "In the name of God, Amen! We, Thomas, by the grace of God archbishop of Canterbury, primate of England, and legate of the see apostolical, by the authority of God Almighty, and blessed St. Peter and St. Paul, and of Holy Church, and by our own authority, sitting for tribunal or chief judge, having God alone before our eyes, by the counsel and consent of the whole clergy, our fellow brethren and deacon; and in sign of this we take from thee suffragans, assistants unto us in this present council provincial, by this our sentence definitive, do pronounce, degree, and declare, by these presents, thee William Sawtre, otherwise called Chatris, parish priest pretensed, personally appearing before us, in and of the crime of heresy, judicially and lawfully convicted as a heretic, and as heretic to be punished." The ceremony of degradation from all priestly offices took place in St. Paul's according to the form usual in such cases, the minute details being intended to impress the beholders with dread. As each part of the following formula was uttered, Sawtre was first attired in the respective garments with their appropriate insignia of office, and was then stripped of them with contumely. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen! We, Thomas, by God's permission archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and legate of the apostolic see, do thee William Sawtre, otherwise called Chatris, chaplain pretensed, clothed in the habit and apparel of a priest, a heretic and one relapsed into heresy, by our sentence definitive condemned, by the counsel, assent, and authority, and by the conclusion of our co-bishops and prelates and of the whole clergy of our provincial council, degrade and depose from the order of a priest. And in sign of this thy degradation and actual deposition, for thine incorrigibility we take from thee the paten and chalice, and do deprive thee of all power of celebrating mass, and also we pull from thy back the casule (chasuble) and take from thee the priestly vestments and deprive thee of all manner of priestly honour. "We, Thomas, archbishop, by the same authority, counsel, and assent as before, do thee the aforesaid William, deacon pretensed, clothed in the habit and apparel of a deacon, having the book of the Gospels in thy hands, a heretic, and one relapsed into heresy, condemned by sentence as is aforesaid, degrade and depose the albe and maniple, and do deprive thee of all manner of sub-diaconal honour. "We, Thomas, archbishop, by the same authority do thee the aforesaid William, acolyte pretensed, clothed in the habit of an acolyte, heretic and relapsed, by our sentence condemned, degrade and depose from the order of an acolyte; and in sign of this, we take from thee the candlestick and taper, and the urceolum, and do deprive thee of all manner of honour of an acolyte. "We, Thomas, archbishop, &c., do thee the aforesaid William, exorcist, being a heretic and relapsed, and by our sentence condemned, degrade and depose from the order of an exorcist; and in sign of this, we take from thee the book of exorcisms, and do deprive thee of all manner of honour of an exorcist. "We, Thomas, archbishop, &c., do thee the aforesaid William, reader pretensed, clothed in the habit of a reader, a heretic and relapsed, and by our sentence condemned, degrade and depose from the order of a reader; and in sign of this, we take from thee the book of the divine lections, that is the book of the church legend, and do deprive thee of all manner of honour of a reader. "We, Thomas, archbishop, &c., do thee the aforesaid William Sawtre, sexton pretensed, clothed in the habit of a sexton, and wearing a surplice, being a heretic and relapsed, by our sentence condemned, degrade and depose from the order of a sexton; and in sign of this do take from thee the keys of the church, and the surplice, and do deprive thee of all honour and commodity of a sexton. "Moreover, by the authority of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and our own, and by the authority, counsel, and assent of our whole council provincial, we do degrade and depose thee William Sawtre alias Chatris, from the orders, benefices, and privileges, and the habit and fellowship of the church, for thy pertinacity incorrigible, before |