Council of
‘ The earth-
quake.’
Royal
letters.
Repeal of
the statute.
368 Constitutional History. [chap.
from the chancellor issued on the bishop’s certificate ɪ. This
was not all : on the 17th of May the archbishop had assembled
a body of bishops, jurists, and divines, who drew up a series of
propositions which were ascribed to the heterodox preachers
and which they pronounced to be heretical2. During the con-
sultations of this body, which lasted until May 21, an earth-
quake was felt in London, which caused no small consternation,
and the heretics regarded it as a divine interposition in their
favour5. On the 12th of July the archbishop obtained from
the king letters empowering the bishops to arrest all persons
who maintained the condemned propositions, to* commit them
to their own prisons, or to those of other authorities, and to
keep them there until the council should determine what was
to be done with them 4. A brisk series of prosecutions followed
during the summer ; trials were held and excommunications
issued ; but the delinquents submitted ; and, when in the
October parliament the knights of the shire insisted that the
statute of May, not having duly passed the commons, should be
repealed, all attempts at further persecution' ended for the
time5. The clergy had to content themselves with the old
process of the spiritual courtsδ ; the Lollard party were em-
boldened to bring before parliament the extravagant proposi-
tions of their rashest leaders 7.
Wycliffe died in 1384 ; soon after that the political troubles
of Richard’s reign threw the religious difficulty altogether into
the shade ; the condition of the papacy was not such as to
invite critical examination. After the victory of the appellants
in 1388 royal letters were issued for the seizure of heretical
books and the imprisonment of heretical teachers8, and in 1389
1 Rot. Parl. iii. 125 ; Stat. 5 Ric. II, p. 2. c. 5 ; Statutes, ii. 25.
3 Wilkins, Cone. iɪi. 157 sq. ; Fasc. Ziz. pp. 272 sq.
3 Wycliffe, Trialogus, iv. 27, 36,37; Fasc. Ziz. p. 283.
4 Wilkins, Cone. iii. 156. Letters in the same sense were directed to
the chancellor of Oxford ; ɪb. p. 167 ; Faso. Ziz. pp. 312 sq.
5 Rot. Parl. iii. 141 ; see above, vol. ii. pp. 488, 494.
6 See for example the injunctions issued by bishop Wakefield of Worcester
in 1387; Wilk. Cone. iii. 202 ; Thomas, Wore. App- p- 123.
7 Fasc. Ziz. pp. 360-369 ; above, vol. iɪ. p. 512.
8 Wilk. Cone. iii. 191 ; above, vol. ii. p. 512; Prynne, 4th Inst. pp.
396~398∙
XIX.]
Législation on Heresy.
369
an attack made by Courtenay on the Leicestershire Lollards, Prosecn-
uɪider the royal letters of 1382, ended in the submission recanta,
of the accused1. In 1391 the prosecution of Swynderby
showed that the prelates had no other legal weapon against
the heretics than the old spiritual process, whilst the heretics
took care not to provoke extreme measures bytheir obstinacy2.
A long manifesto of the party, presented in parliament in
1395, roused Richard himself to take measures of precaution,
and suggested further proceedings3.
In 1396 Thomas Arundel succeeded to the primacy; he
immediately held a council which condemned the heretical
propositions1 ; but political affairs prevented any new legisla-
tion until, in 1401, having obtained the promise of aid from
the king and the help of a sympathetic parliament, he procured The statute
the passing of the statute ‘de haeretico5.’ This act went far tɪeo,'passed
beyond that of 1382, both in its description of the evil and in 4°1'
the nature of the remedy prescribed. A certain new sect had Teneur of
• . 1 1 ∙ J η act∙
arisen which usurped the office of preaching, and which, by
holding unlawful conventicles, teaching in schools, circulating
books and promoting insurrection, defied all authority ; the
diocesan jurisdiction was helpless without the king’s assistance,
for the preachers migrated from diocese to diocese, and con-
temned the citations of the courts ; the prelates and clergy, and
the commons also, had prayed for a remedy, the former in a
long, and the latter in a brief petition ; in conformity with their
request the king in the usual form granted, established and
ordained, that none should presume to preach openly or pri-
vately without the licence of the diocesan, except curates in
1 Wilk. Cone. iii. 208 sq.
2 Swynderby's appeal (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iii. 127) states dis-
tinctly that after excommunication the bishop must seek the succour of the
king’s law and ‘ by a writ of Significavit put a man in prison. ’ Death is
the punishment of heresy, but the sentence cannot ’be given without the
king’s justices ib.
s See above, vol. ii. p. 512. Royal letters of the year 1394, against a
heretic in Hereford, are in Prynne, 4th Institute, pp. 227, 228, and
proceedings against Wycliffe’s books were constantly going on at Oxford
during these years.
4 Wilk. Cone. iii. 227 sq.
s See above, p. 33.
VOL. III. B b