We have, through many centuries, been compelled to measure our progress by mere barren dates, which present no idea to the mind, as in a long night of sickness we count the clock, because nothing else occurs to diversify the tedious stillness; but we may now advance from æra to æra of lively interest, and high importance. Henry the fourth, before his usurpation of the throne, pretended to favour the popular doctrines of the Wickliffites or Lollards; but when in the seat of power, he courted the clergy to sanctify his crimes thus while they pronounced their ghostly benediction on his treason, he burned those whom they branded for heretics.

In this reign was enacted the barbarous law, which consigns men to the flames for their religious opinions, A statute so abhorrent to humanity, justice, and religion was too welcome to the ignorant and savage clergy, to lie idle in their hands. In the year one thousand four hundred and one, William Sautré, a priest of London, was accused of various crimes, one of which may suggest the nature of the rest-he would not worship the cross, but only him that died on it. That the honour of the priesthood might not be tarnished, before he was delivered to the secular power he was degraded to a layman, by stripping him of all the foppery of the sacred orders*.

But many viewed the horrid death of this proto

* As a priest he was deprived of the patin and chalice; the chasule was stripped from his back as a deacon; the New Testament, and the stole were taken from him as subdeacon; the alb and maniple as acolyte; that he might cease to be an exorcist, he was deprived of the book of conjurations; the volume of church legends was taken from his hands, and with it the office of reader; with the key of the church door he resigned the office of sexton, He was then committed to the flames,-Fuller, b. IV. p. 156.

protestant martyr, as a chariot of fire, in which, like Elijah, his happy spirit ascended to the skies. John Badby, an illiterate mechanic, suffered for the same cause; and though the prince of Wales made him the most tempting offers, if he would conform to the faith of the holy church, he nobly persisted to give his body to be burned, for what appeared to him a a purer faith. Even the House of Commons was suspected of being tinged with the heretical pravity, for they proposed to the king to seize the church lands, and petitioned for a mitigation of the severities towards the Lollards. But the king and the clergy afforded each other mutual support. The lords spiritual and temporal petitioned that justice might be done upon these troublers of Israel; complaining that unlawful conventicles were held, and that preaching in schools, and private houses diffused the poison of heresy among his majesty's liege subjects. Already Wickiffe's bible was secreted as a precious, though forbidden, treasure, and the effects of it appeared in teaching men to despise consecrated walls, to hold meetings wherever they could hear the Scriptures explained, and offer worship congenial with its spirit and dictates to God alone, through "one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." These were the nonconformists of their day; and their numbers were so great, that it was confessed to be impossible to provide prisons to contain them; for Walsingham, the historian, is said to have reckoned them at a hundred thousand.

When Henry the fourth had departed to answer to the eternal King, for introducing the practice of burning men alive for religion, and archbishop Arun

del, who had been the great incendiary, both in church and state, had been starved to death by a disease in his throat (which the Lollards interpreted as a judgment on him, for starving the souls of men), new troubles still vexed the clergy, and called forth all their bigotry, Sir John Oldcastle, lord Cobham, had been considered as the head of the Lollards, and was therefore singled out, in the quaint language of that age, to turn or burn. Henry the fifth, esteeming the valiant knight, tried his powers of persuasion upon him; but as he remained immoveable, he was committed to prison. Having made his escape, he fled into Wales, where he lay for some time concealed. By the serpentine craft of the clergy, the king was induced to believe a ridiculous story of his raising an insurrection against the throne, so that when he was taken, it was pretended that he suffered as a traitor, and not as a heretic*. Thus they laboured to blacken the character of a man who was, perhaps, too eminent and popular to be executed ostensibly for his religion: but, when hung up by a chain around his waist, he endured the flames with a fortitude and joy which proclaimed a mind rich in the approbation of heaven, and in the prospect of eternal glory.

The council of Constance, which burned John Huss, condemned Wickliffe as a heretic; and by its order his bones were dug up and burnt, and the ashes thrown into a neighbouring brook. In this act they displayed the fury of the dragon, rather than the craft of the serpent; for it served only to give to Wickliffe, and his opinions, the publicity which truth ever seeks, but which, though frequently dangerous * Warner's Ecc. Hist. part I. p. 506. Fuller.

to its disciples, was now perfectly safe for our reformer. Had they burned the first copies of his bible, they might have left his bones to rest in peace. Now from time to time new fires were kindled, and martyrs sealed the truth with their blood. The name of one of them, which was Goose, afforded merriment to his enemies, who were, probably, glad of this opportunity to keep the people in good humour with these sickening spectacles, by jesting with innocent blood,

In Scotland, James Retby was burnt at Glasgow, for denying that the pope was Christ's vicar. Paul Craw, a Bohemian, suffered the same fate at St. Andrews; his enemies putting a ball of brass into his mouth, to prevent his addressing the spectators. Thirty persons were, at one time, cited before the archbishop of Glasgow as Lollards: but Adam Reid, who was one of them, accomplished by bold raillery what more serious arguments could not have effected, for he so turned the laugh upon the prelate that they all escaped*.

Buckinghamshire is most famous among the counties of England for the number of its martyrs, who braved the terrors of death with heroic fortitude. At Amersham, where the lovers of Christ and the Bible held their most numerous meetings, one Tylsworth was burnt, and his daughter compelled to set fire to the pile on which her father offered up his life, in obedience to him, "who gave himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." Several escaped out of the kingdom, and were celebrated on the continent for their useful labours and

Gillies' Historical Collections, vol. I. p. 44. Petrie Church Hist. 563.

patient sufferings. Many were branded on the cheek with the mark of a heretic, and those who recanted, were compelled to wear the mark of a faggot on their sleeve, to indicate that they were brands plucked out of the fire happy would it have been for them to have have borne this mark, in the scriptural sense, though their bodies had then been committed, without mercy, to the flames*!

Henry the fourth ascended the throne at the commencement of the sixteenth century. Viewing the confessors of the truth as obstinate rebels, who dared to think for themselves, or precise puritans, whose strictness condemned his own licentious manners, he felt towards them all the hatred which such men and such principles will ever kindle in the breasts of the wicked. When Luther arose in Saxony, the art of printing had afforded such facilities for the communication of sentiment, that England was affected by his attack on popery; and our youthful monarch, vain of his scholastic learning, was unwise enough to meet the reformer in the field of letters, where talents alone, and not titles, win the laurels. Luther treated his royal antagonist with sarcastic contempt, contending that truth and science know no difference between the prince and the plebeian. The pope, however, craftily flattered the vanity of the royal author, by rewarding him with the title of defender of the faith, which Henry was weak enough to value as the brightest jewel in his crownt.

*Fuller, book V. page 164.

+ It has been said, that the jester which Henry, according to the fashion of the times, retained at court, seeing the king overjoyed, asked the reason; and when told, that it was because his holiness had conferred this new title, he replied, my good Harry, let thee and me defend each other, and let the faith alone to defend itself,