The Church under Henry IV : The Lollards

Henry was supported in the main by the higher clergy, whose interests he had promised to respect; though some of them, like Archbishop Scrope of York, were bitterly opposed to him. The lower clergy were generally hostile; the friars hated the "usurper" and preached disloyalty to the masses ; the monks, widely disaffected, aided in hatching plots and creating turbulence among the peasantry. The age was one of great doubt and uncertainty as to what to do and think. Men did not know where to look for authority, either in church or state. The Council of Pisa, called in 1409 to bring to an end the Great Schism, made the situation worse by choosing a third pope, so that from the Council of Pisa to that of Constance there were three popes, each claiming to be the head of the church. This grievous division of Christendom into three parts created great confusion in men's minds, and increased the numbers of those who were following the heretical teachings of Wycliffe.

King and archbishop were at one in their opinion of the heretics. Henry upheld the church in its persecution of the Lollards, and aided the bishops to suppress them by force. The Parliament of 1401, at the special request of Arundel, the persecuting archbishop of Canterbury, passed a statute authorizing the burning of heretics, the Statute De Hoeretico Comburendo, which was the first law passed in England for the suppression of religious opinions. According to this statute, the sheriffs, mayors, and bailiffs were to carry out the sentence of the ecclesiastical court in the case of a person refusing to abjure, or who, having once abjured, had relapsed. They were to cause such persons to be burnt "in a high place that such punishment might strike fear into the minds of others." Even while this bill was before parliament, William Sawtre, vicar at Lynn, was burnt alive by command of the king.' An Evesham tailor, Badby, was burnt in 1410, after a formidable trial before a convocation at London, where he had been condemned for asserting that "Christ sitting at supper could not give his disciples his living body to eat." Prince Henry (afterward Henry V) personally sought to persuade Badby to recant, but without success. Others, like William Thorpe, were imprisoned, though not burnt. During the reign of Henry IV there is nothing to show that the Lollards ever engaged in any conspiracy or plot. Doubtless many of them desired not only to reform the doctrines of the church, but also to deprive the clergy of their great endowments, and so to reorganize the church along purely spiritual lines, free from the sordid motives of honor and wealth that had influenced it hitherto. In the next reign, the Lollards became offenders not only against the church, but against the state also.

Henry V

Henry IV died in 1413, leaving the crown, without opposition, to the Prince of Wales, who ascended the throne on May 20 as Henry V. The traditions that Prince Halls early years were a time of rioting and dissipation are mainly the exaggerations of later writers, for the prince as king showed a sobriety and dignity of demeanor wholly at variance with the account that Shakespeare has given of him and Falstaff. He had already directed affairs during the illness of his father, and had shown his military ability in the many battles that his father had been called upon to fight. He was possessed of nobility of character, considerable learning, and gracious manners. His life was a brilliant one, but his aims were injurious to England, and his statesmanship was of a distinctly inferior type. He was a warrior, but he was also a mystic, and his eyes were turned to the past rather than to the future; he was a believer in religious persecution, and deemed the continuance of the war with France an obligation as holy as was the maintenance of the faith of the church.

Further Persecution of the Lollards: Oldcastle

Under Richard II the Lollards had generally recanted; under Henry IV they had become martyrs for their faith; under Henry V they were not only heretics, but revolutionists also. The chief Lollard of the time was a knight of Herefordshire, Sir John Old-castle, a soldier and a scholar, "who had openly encouraged the sectarian preachers on his estate and in his castle."' Summoned to appear and answer for his heresy before the bishops, he at first refused to obey. But at the king's command he came, and was condemned as a heretic and handed over to the secular power "to do him thereupon to death" (1413). Old-castle escaped, and for four years became the supposed leader of a Lollard conspiracy against the king. He was charged with aiding the Welsh and negotiating with the Scotch. His followers were accused of sedition and conspiracy. A new statute was passed against them; sheriffs and justices were ordered to arrest them and bring them to justice. Finally, in 1418, Oldcastle was captured, hanged as a traitor, and afterward his body was burned because he had been a heretic. From this time forward Lollardry became a faith for the poorer classes. Those who were burnt were generally parish priests or lowly persons. Men like Bishop Pecock, of higher rank, recanted. During the Wars of the Roses there is little evidence of activity among the Lollards.