but a prelude
to the Statute of Heresy which was passed at the opening of 1401. By the
provisions of this infamous Act the hindrances which had till now
neutralized the efforts of the bishops to enforce the common law were
utterly taken away. Not only were they permitted to arrest all preachers
of heresy, all schoolmasters infected with heretical teaching, all owners
and writers of heretical books, and to imprison them even if they recanted
at the king's pleasure, but a refusal to abjure or a relapse after
abjuration enabled them to hand over the heretic to the civil officers,
and by these--so ran the first legal enactment of religious bloodshed
which defiled our Statute-book--he was to be burned on a high place before
the people. The statute was hardly passed when William Sautre became its
first victim. Sautre, while a parish priest at Lynn, had been cited before
the Bishop of Norwich two years before for heresy and forced to recant.
But he still continued to preach against the worship of images, against
pilgrimages, and against transubstantiation, till the Statute of Heresy
strengthened Arundel's hands. In February, 1401, Sautre was brought before
the Primate as a relapsed heretic, and on refusing to recant a second time
was degraded from his orders. He was handed to the secular power, and on
the issue of a royal writ publicly burned.

[Sidenote: England and France]

The support of the nobles had been partly won by a hope hardly less fatal
to the peace of the realm, the hope of a renewal of the strife with
France. The peace of Richard's later years had sprung not merely from the
policy of the English king, but from the madness of Charles the Sixth of
France. France fell into the hands of its king's uncle, the Duke of
Burgundy, and as the Duke was ruler of Flanders and peace with England was
a necessity for Flemish industry, his policy went hand in hand with that
of Richard. His rival, the king's brother, Lewis, Duke of Orleans, was the
head of the French war-party; and it was with the view of bringing about
war that he supported Henry of Lancaster in his exile at the French court.
Burgundy on the other hand listened to Richard's denunciation of Henry as
a traitor, and strove to prevent his departure. But his efforts were in
vain, and he had to witness a revolution which hurled Richard from the
throne, deprived Isabella of her crown, and restored to power the baronial
party of which Gloucester, the advocate of war, h