t appear before the said diocesans; but the jurisdiction
spiritual, the keys of the church, and the censures of the same, do
utterly contemn and despise; and so their wicked preachings and
doctrines they do from day to day continue and exercise, to the
destruction of all order and rule, right and reason."

Something of these violent accusations is perhaps due to the horror
with which false doctrine in matters of faith was looked upon in the
Catholic church, the grace by which alone an honest life was made
possible being held to be dependent upon orthodoxy. But the Lollards had
become political revolutionists as well as religious reformers; the
revolt against the spiritual authority had encouraged and countenanced a
revolt against the secular; and we cannot be surprised, therefore, that
these institutions should have sympathized with each other, and have
united to repress a danger which was formidable to both.

[Sidenote: Power conferred upon the bishops of arresting _ex officio_.]

[Sidenote: The stake and the orthodox faith.]

The bishops, by this act, received arbitrary power to arrest and
imprison on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will
and pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who
persisted in heresy, or relapsed into it after abjuration, were
sentenced to be burnt at the stake,--a dreadful punishment, on the
wickedness of which the world has long been happily agreed. Yet we must
remember that those who condemned teachers of heresy to the flames,
considered that heresy itself involved everlasting perdition; that they
were but faintly imitating the severity which orthodoxy still ascribes
to Almighty God Himself.

[Sidenote: The Commons petition the Crown for a secularization of church
property.]

[Sidenote: Accession of Henry V.]

The tide which was thus setting back in favour of the church did not
yet, however, flow freely, and without a check. The Commons consented to
sacrifice the heretics, but they still cast wistful looks on the lands
of the religious houses. On two several occasions, in 1406, and again
1410, spoliation was debated in the Lower House, and representations
were made upon the subject to the king.[25] The country, too, continued
to be agitated with war and treason; and when Henry V. became king, in
1412, the church was still uneasy, and the Lollards were as dangerous as
ever. Whether by prudent conduct they might have secured a repeal of the
persecuti