History of the English People, Volume III | Page 2

those persons that have been against the
good purpose and the common profit of the realm."
[Sidenote: Statute of Heresy]
The deposition of a king, the setting aside of one claimant and the
elevation of another to the throne, marked the triumph of the English
Parliament over the monarchy. The struggle of the Edwards against its
gradual advance had culminated in the bold effort of Richard the
Second to supersede it by a commission dependent on the Crown. But
the House of Lancaster was precluded by its very position from any
renewal of the struggle. It was not merely that the exhaustion of the
treasury by the war and revolt which followed Henry's accession left
him even more than the kings who had gone before in the hands of the
Estates; it was that his very right to the Crown lay in an
acknowledgement of their highest pretensions. He had been raised to
the throne by a Parliamentary revolution. His claim to obedience had
throughout to rest on a Parliamentary title. During no period of our
early history therefore were the powers of the two Houses so frankly
recognized. The tone of Henry the Fourth till the very close of his reign
is that of humble compliance in all but ecclesiastical matters with the
prayers of the Parliament, and even his imperious successor shrank
almost with timidity from any conflict with it. But the Crown had been
bought by pledges less noble than this. Arundel was not only the
representative of constitutional rule; he was also the representative of
religious persecution. No prelate had been so bitter a foe of the Lollards,
and the support which the Church had given to the recent revolution
had no doubt sprung from its belief that a sovereign whom Arundel
placed on the throne would deal pitilessly with the growing heresy. The
expectations of the clergy were soon realized. In the first Convocation

of his reign Henry declared himself the protector of the Church and
ordered the prelates to take measures for the suppression of heresy and
of the wandering preachers. His declaration was 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, had long been the head. The dread of war was increased by a
pledge which Henry was said to have given at