The name is absent

64                Constituilonal History.             [chap.

advanced into Yorkshire, and on the 19th was defeated by
Sir Thomas Rokeby, at the head of the forces of the shire, on
Bramham Moor. The old earl fell in the battle ; Bardolf died
of his wounds ; the bishop was taken. In the spring the king
went to York and hanged the abbot of Hales. The Welsh war
went on without any show of spirit on either side ; France had
her own troubles to attend to. The king and the archbishop
were chiefly employed in negotiations for the healing of the
great schism, and for the holding of the Council of Pisa ; and
in the numerous councils of the clergy, for which this business
gave occasion, Arundel saw his opportunity of sharpening the
edge of the law against the Lollards. In 1408 councils were
held both at London and at Oxford¹, where the Wycliffite
party was strong and where another strong party that was not
TVycliffite resented the interference of the archbishop. In
January, 1409, Arundel published a series of Constitutions²;
one of which forbade the translation of the Bible into English
until such a translation should be approved by the bishop of
the diocese or a provincial synod; whilst another prohibited
all disputations upon points determined by the church. Great
efforts were made to enforce these orders at Oxford, and Richard
Courtenay, who was chancellor of the university in 1406 and
1410, seems to have engaged the good offices of the prince of
Wales in defence of the Iibertiesof the university³ ; thus helping
to widen the breach between him and Arundel. As was in-
evitable in the present state of opinion, ArundeTs oppressive
measures roused both the Wycliffite and the constitutional oppo-
sition, and he did not venture to meet another parliament¹ ;
he resigned in December, 1409 ⁵. A month afterwards Henry
gave the seals to his brother, Sir Thomas Beaufort, a layman

¹ Wilkins, Cone. iii. 306.

² ɪb. iii. 314-319. The seventh Constitution forbids the translation.

³ Wilkins, Cone. iii. 323 ; Chron. Henr. ed. Giles, p. 58 ; Wood, History
and Antiquities of Oxford, p. 205 ; Anstey, Munimenta Academica,
ɪ. 251∙

⁴ In a council held Nov. 21,1409, the king assigned £6899 6s. 8d., from
the subsidies, to the expenses of the household ; Rymer, viii. 6ιo.

⁵ December 21 ; Rymer, viii. 616. The Lord Ie Scrope of Masham was
made treasurer at the same time; Otterb. p. 267 ; Wals. ii. 282.

ʤ

not perhaps beyond suspicion of an alliance with the anti-
clerical party which his father had led thirty years before.

317. The session of 1410¹ was opened on January 27, with Parliament
a speech by bishop Beaufort, his brother having not yet assumed ° ¹⁴¹°"
his office. Thomas Chaucer, of Ewelme, himself a cousin of the
Beauforts², was speaker. The Lollards must have been strongly Proceedings
represented, as on the 8th of February the commons prayed for urdy.
the return of a petition touching Lollardy, which had been
presented in their name, requesting that nothing might be
enacted thereon⁴. No such petition accordingly appears on the
roll, but we learn from the historian Walsingham that it was
intended to obtain a relaxation of the recent enactments against
the heretics⁴. If we may believe the same writer, the party Petition of

ʌ _η                                         .                           ₁    ∙, . ₁ the Lollards₁

was so powerful as to attempt aggressive measures ; the knights 1410.

of the shire sent in to the king and lords a formal recommenda-
tion that the lands of the bishops and greater abbots should be
confiscated, not for a year only, as had been suggested before,
but for the permanent endowment of fifteen earls, fifteen
hundred knights, six thousand esquires, and a hundred hospitals,
J-2θ₁ooo being still left for the king⁵. The extravagance and

^l Eulog. iii. 416; Rot. Parl. iii. 622 sq.

² Thomas Chaucer of Ewelme in Oxfordshire was son of a sister of
Katherine Swinford. The king warned him, when he admitted him as
speaker, that nothing should be said but what was honourable and likely
to produce concord ; Rot. Parl. iii. 623.

ɜ Rot. ParL iii. 623.

⁴ Wals. ii. 283 ; they petitioned for an alteration of the statute of
heresy, and that clerks convicted might not be committed to the bishops’
prisons. The Rolls contain a petition that persons arrested under the
statute of 1401 may be bailed in the county where they are arrested, and
that such arrests may be made by the sheriffs regularly: but ‘le roy so
voet ent aviser;’ Rot.Parkiii. 626. The Eulogium (iii. 417) mentions a
statute made in this parliament allowing friars to preach against the
Lollards without licence from the bishops. In a convocation held Feb.
17, 1409, the statute ‘ de heretico ’ of 1401 was rehearsed at length ; Wilk.
Cone. iιi. 328.

⁵ Wals. ii. 282, 283. Fabyan, p. 575, gives a full account of the scheme ;
the temporalities of the prelates are estimated at 332,000 marks per annum.
It is also described in Jack Sharp’s petition in 1431. It is added that
^ɪɪo,ooo might be secured for the king ; £110,000 fbr a thousand knights
and a thousand good priests, and still there would be left to the clergy
^¹43∕7²4 ^ios∙ 4^2^c^∙ And all this without touching the temporalities of
colleges, chantries, Premonstratensian canons, cathedrals, monks, nuns,
Carthusians, Hospitallers, or Crouched Friars ; Amundesham (ed. Riley),
ⁱ∙ 453-456.

VOL. III.                      F

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