degeneracy, and
that faith and manners might be changed together.

The history of the time is too imperfect to justify a positive conclusion.
It is possible, however, that the success of the revolution effected by
Henry IV. was due in part to a reaction in the church's favour; and it is
certain that this prince, if he did not owe his crown to the support of the
church, determined to conciliate it. He confirmed the Statutes of
Provisors,[86] but he allowed them to sink into disuse. He forbade the
further mooting of the confiscation project; and to him is due the first
permission of the bishops to send heretics to the stake.[87] If English
tradition is to be trusted, the clergy still felt insecure; and the French
wars of Henry V. are said to have been undertaken, as we all know from
Shakspeare, at the persuasion of Archbishop Chichele, who desired to
distract his attention from reverting to dangerous subjects. Whether this
be true or not, no prince of the house of Lancaster betrayed a wish to
renew the quarrel with the church. The battle of Agincourt, the conquest
and re-conquest of France, called off the attention of the people; while
the rise of the Lollards, and the intrusion of speculative questions, the
agitation of which has ever been the chief aversion of English statesmen,
contributed to change the current; and the reforming spirit must have
lulled before the outbreak of the wars of the Roses, or one of the two
parties in so desperate a struggle would have scarcely failed to have
availed themselves of it. Edward IV. is said to have been lenient towards
heresy; but his toleration, if it was more than imaginary, was tacit only;
he never ventured to avow it. It is more likely that in the inveterate
frenzy of those years men had no leisure to remember that heresy existed.

The clergy were thus left undisturbed to go their own course to its natural
end. The storm had passed over them without breaking; and they did not
dream that it would again gather. The immunity which they enjoyed from the
general sufferings of the civil war contributed to deceive them; and
without anxiety for the consequences, and forgetting the significant
warning which they had received, they sank steadily into that condition
which is inevitable from the constitution of human nature, among men
without faith, wealthy, powerful, and luxuriously fed, yet condemned to
celibacy, and cut off from the common duties and common pleasures of
ordinary life.