vert the country from such a plan, the archbishop advised the king in open parliament to assert his right to the French throne; and the device, happily according with the warlike bent of the monarch, as well as dazzling the people with the prospect of such an extensive foreign conquest, withdrew public attention from the project of plundering the church, and the measure was never agitated again *.

possessions, or woulde haue intermitted in their holy francheses, or desired ayde of them against his and their common enemies; then tongues talked and pennes wrote that he was a tirant, a depressor of holy religyon, an enemy to Christe's churche and his holy flocke, and a dampned and accursed persone with Dathan and Abiron to the depe pitte of Hel. Whereof, the proverbe began, geue and be blessed, take away and be accursed." Hen. IV. fol. 11. Had the author looked a little abroad into the conduct of other classes, he would have had more charity for the poor monks.

* Holinshed, Vol. ii. p. 545. et seq. Ken. p. 312. et seq. Parl. Hist. Vol. I. p. 324. et seq. See also Fox's Martyr. about taking the temporalities of the church. There had been publications to that effect, Vol. i. p. 711. After the conviction of Sir John Oldcastle, (commonly called Lord Cobbam by courtesy, in consequence of his having married the heiress of that family,) which took place in the 1st H. 5., there was a slight insurrection in his favour, which gave a great advantage to the ruling party. Wals. Ypod. Neust. p. 576 & 577. For an account of Oldcastle, see Fox's Martyr. Vol. I. See also Howel's State Trials, Vol. i.

The clergy laboured to alarm the prince, and also the nobility, into the belief that the Lollards would have all things in common; at all events, that the measures of that sect would disorganize society. This appears particularly from the charge against Wickliffe of his having had John Balle as a precursor, and from the ordinance of the Lords, 5 R. II. which was obtruded upon the nation by that king and his clergy as an act of the legislature; wherein it is said of the Lollards, "these persons do also preach divers matter of slander, to endanger discord and dissention betwixt divers estates of the realm, as well spiritual as temporal, in exciting the people to the great pearl of all

We have been the more particular in relating this plan of seizing upon the temporalities of the church, both because it gives an insight into the springs of action under the most momentous circumstances, and because it completely disproves the view taken by Mr. Hume, of the estimation in which the Lower House of Parliament was held at this period. That branch of the legislature which could have the boldness to conceive, and the spirit to persist in such revolutionary schemes, was unquestionably not devoid of influence, or unimportant in the constitution.

The doctrine of Wickliffe penetrated into other countries, particularly into Bohemia, where it diffused itself widely in spite of every effort to sup press it, even by the way of croisade at the instigation of the Pope; but in England, as the aristocracy renounced all concern for it, when they despaired of obtaining the temporalities of the church, and as the new sect were exposed to severe laws and violent persecution, it declined till similar tenets were revived in a new form under

the realm;-they maintain their errors by strong hand and by great rout." See late publication of statutes of the realm, Vol. ii. p. 25, &c. But it is needless to multiply authorities. As Oldcastle, who brought the bill into parliament against the clerical property in the 11th of Henry IV., sealed his faith with his blood, it may fairly be concluded that he was actuated by pure principles; and an inference may thence arise in favour of his coadjutors; but they, far from giving a similar testimony in their own favour, deserted their creed when they could not carry their measures, and he, in all probability, acted as much from the conviction that he never could accomplish his object without holding out such a bribe to the laity, as from enmity to the possessions of the church.

Henry VIII. The human mind is so moulded by the circumstances in which it is placed, and so readily imbibes the current opinions, that, if a change in religion do not proceed rapidly, it commonly fails. The doctrine becomes antiquated; zealots meet with no encouragement from public applause; and persecution, which in the burst of enthusiasm, would have created proselytes by attracting a generous sympathy towards the martyrs, and consequently arming them with every sentiment that inspires fortitude under suffering, comes then accompanied with all the freezing feelings of general reprobation and despair of the cause.

The powers with which the clergy were armed by the legislature, for the suppression of heresy, enabled them to extend their authority, by confounding legal exertions against their usurped privileges, with attempts to disclaim the jurisdiction, and impugn the soundness of the church; and their arrogance, rapacity, and oppression, seem to have been almost unlimited *. The charge of heresy was resorted to against every one who denied them the most profound reverence, or resisted their unjust demands; while their pleas of sanctuary and of clergy obstructed the criminal justice of the kingdom. Every reader of history knows, that the clergy tried to exempt, not only their own body, who were actually in orders, but all who could read, and demand the privilege of

Halle, 188. Holinshed, 911. One priest had often ten or twelve benefices.

that sacred class, from the ordinary jurisdiction; and the alarming height to which their insolence, and the privilege pleaded by them, were carried, are exemplified in what occurred during the reign of Henry VIII. In the preceding reign, a statute was devised to draw a distinction between mere lay scholars, or men who could read, and clerks actually in orders; by which the first were subjected to a slight punishment for crimes, and prevented from pleading the benefit of clergy a second time; but the act did not pass without censure from the church. By the 4th Henry VIII. c. 2. the benefit of clergy was denied to murderers and robbers who were not in holy orders; but the law was so deeply resented by the priesthood, that they publicly branded it “as an act contrary to the law of God and to the liberties of the holy church; and it was maintained that all who had assented to it, as well spiritual as temporal persons, had incurred the censures of the church." The case of Richard Hunne, a merchant taylor in London, during the same reign, affords a melancholy proof of the use they made of the power with which they had been entrusted for the extirpating of heresy. He had been questioned by a clerk of Middlesex for a mortuary pretended to be due for a child of his that had died at five weeks old; and as he resisted the demand, he was sued for the sum before the ecclesiastical court. In this predicament, he con

* Burnet, Hist. of Ref. vol. i. p. 21, et seq. Book I.

sulted counsel, who advised him to prosecute the clerk in a premunire for bringing him before a foreign court, which the spiritual court then was, as it sat by authority from the Pope's legate. A measure which struck so sensibly at the pretensions of the priesthood, provoked them to such a degree, that they immediately attacked Hunne on a charge of heresy, and imprisoned him in the Lollards' tower. The poor man was soon found strangled in jail; and a jury having sat on the body, acquitted it of suicide, and charged the servants of the clergy with murder; but the verdict did not restrain the clergy from showing their pitiful malice upon the corpse. They sat in judgment on it; and having convicted it of heresy, delivered it over to the secular power to be burnt -a ceremony which was performed with all solemnity in Smithfield; and they, at the same time, abused the jury as false, perjured caitiffs, and interposed with the king to prevent an inquisition into the murder. These proceedings, while they evince the extravagant pretensions and atrocity of the clergy, also, in the train of events, proved their folly. The Reformation by Luther soon began to convulse Europe; and circumstances of so crying a nature roused the attention of Englishmen, while the nobility and gentry, who complained grievously of the extortions of ecclesiastics t, were ready to embrace an opportunity to

* Burnet, Hist. of Ref. p. 24, et seq.

+ Halle, p. 1880. Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. i. p. 129.