es to the best of his
power.[65] In the next Parliament a statute was drawn up in which
relapsed heretics were condemned to the flames. And still more
remarkable than this mode of punishment, which was that of the
Church-law, is the regulation of the procedure in this statute. In
former times the sentence had been pronounced by the archbishop and
the collective clergy of the province, and the King's consent had to
be asked before it was executed. The decision was now committed to the
bishop and his commissary, and the sheriff was instructed to inflict
the punishment without further appeal, and to commit the guilty to the
fire on the high grounds in the country, that terror might strike all
the bystanders. It is clear how much the power of the bishops was thus
extended. Soon after, on the proposal of the lay lords, at whose head
the Prince of Wales is named, a further statute passed, in which to
spread the rumour that King Richard was yet alive, and to teach that
the prelates ought to be deprived of their worldly goods, are treated
as offences of equal magnitude and threatened with a similar
punishment; the object being alike in both,--to raise a tumult. And in
fact, when Henry V himself had ascended the throne, an outbreak did
occur, in which these causes co-operated. The Lollards were
strengthened in their resistance to the government of the house of
Lancaster by the rumour that their rightful King was yet alive. Henry
V was obliged to crush them in open battle, and then force them to
remain quiet by a new statute, which enacted the confiscation of their
goods as well.[66] His alliance and friendship with the Emperor
Sigismund was based on the fact, that he regarded the Hussites as only
the successors of the Lollards.

This orthodox tendency was now moreover combined with a strict
Parliamentary government. Under the Lancasters there is no complaint
as to illegal taxes; they allowed the moneys voted by the Parliament
to be paid over to treasurers named by itself and accountable to it;
that which earlier Kings had always rejected as an affront, the claim
of Parliament to exercise a sort of supervision over the King's
household, the Lancasters admitted; the royal officers were bound by
oath to observe the statutes and the common law; the prerogative,
hitherto exercised by the Kings, of softening the severity of the
statutes by proclamations contravening their purpose was expressly
abolished.

The Lancasters owed their