When Henry left London, on the Monday after Taylor's condemnation, he left it never to return. His death, as we have seen, took place on the last day of August 1422. That Henry knew anything of the prosecution of this person, does not appear; and, if he had been made acquainted with the intended proceedings, whether he expressed any opinion upon them in favour of maintaining the faith by the secular arm, or in favour of the gentle and mild means of persuasion,—is a matter lost to history, and all inquiry into any of those points must be fruitless. Nor are we informed whether the poor man could produce the required bail, or whether he remained a prisoner till his death. Some expressions in the record of the subsequent transactions would induce us to infer that he had, after his condemnation, been at large and was again taken into custody (sub custodiâ carcerali iterum arrestatus). The striking fact, however, is this,—that Henry had not been dead six months before this same priest was brought up a prisoner in the custody of a jailor, and tried before the same court for a repetition of the very same offence; or rather, perhaps, for the very same individual act for which, a year and three quarters before, he had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The same accuser, the Bishop of Worcester, charged him with having, since his abjuration aforesaid, written, maintained, and communicated with a certain priest, named Thomas Smyth, living at Bristol, on paper in his own hand-writing, the alleged heretical opinions. Here it must be observed, that the charge was made by the same accuser, the Bishop of Worcester, before the same Judge Chicheley; that the place in which he was said to have held these doctrines was in each case the same, Bristol; that in each case the doctrines were said to have been conveyed by writing; and that, as to the time of the offence, the Bishop did not say it was after his previous condemnation, but only after his recantation, which took place in February 1420, just a year and a quarter before his sentence of imprisonment. And if we examine the four heretical opinions which were extracted, in 1423, by the Canonists out of his written communication to Thomas Smyth, we shall find them in substance nothing more or less than two of the opinions on which he was before condemned to imprisonment in 1421.
1.—All prayer which is a petition for any supernatural or gratuitous gift, is to be offered to God alone.
2.—Prayer is to be addressed only to God.[302]
3.—To pray to any creature is to commit idolatry.
4.—The faithful ought to address their prayers to God, not in reference to his humanity, but only with regard to his Deity.
This was the sum of his offence, involving precisely the identical opinions of which he had been pronounced guilty in 1421, after his recantation in 1420.[303]
After Lynewood had given his opinion that a relapsed heretic was to be left to the secular court, without hope of pardon, and without being heard as to the corporal punishment, his judges proceeded to the extreme execution of the law. Taylor was degraded on Monday the 1st of March, 1423, in the first year of Henry VI; and, the writ for his burning being issued on the same day, he suffered death in Smithfield.
How far these circumstances may be pronounced to bear on the subject, and to conspire in acquitting Henry of Monmouth of the charge with which his name has been unsparingly assailed, of having been in spirit and conduct a persecutor for religious opinions, deserves serious consideration. When it is borne in mind that the Lollards were certainly represented to Henry as the enemies of his throne and of the peace of the realm; that the Pope and the hierarchy of England were loud and incessant in their appeals to the authorities to extirpate such poisonous weeds from the garden of the Lord's heritage; that the Emperor Sigismund was most zealous in obeying such calls of the church, and caused his own land to flow with blood; that Henry's prelates made a direct personal appeal to him to prosecute heretics; that his council deemed it necessary to remind him of his duty in that point;[304] that his own chaplain openly charged him with want of zeal and with apathy in that good cause; that no single warrant for the execution of any one condemned for heresy alone was ever signed, or, as far as we can ascertain, was ever sanctioned, by him; that the only victims of the priesthood actually burnt for heresy alone during his reign were condemned and executed in Henry's absence from the kingdom; and that one person sentenced to imprisonment during Henry's life was, within a few months after his death, condemned to the flames, and actually burnt for the same offence; when all these points are fairly weighed, probably few will not feel satisfied that the judgment passed upon Henry, on the charge of persecution, is inconsistent with the soundest principles of historical investigation.
The Author, however, is induced to confess that a comparison of the events of Henry's reign with those which preceded his accession, and followed his death, has compelled him to form more than a merely negative opinion on Henry of Monmouth's principles and conduct and influence. In addition to the circumstances detailed in these chapters, he would solicit attention to one fact, which no historical writer seems to have noticed. During the last years of Henry IV. a greater number of persons appear to have suffered in the fires of martyrdom than the accounts of our chroniclers would lead us to suppose.[305] By the cruel operation of the law, the goods and chattels of convicted heretics were escheated to the crown; and when Henry came to the throne, several widows and orphans were suffering severely from the effects of that ruthless enactment. No sooner had he the power of relieving their distress, than, in the exercise of the most divine prerogative of the kingly office, he restored to many their confiscated property. The most correct notion of the motives which influenced him will be conveyed by the language itself of the several grants: "We, compassionating the poverty of Isabella, widow of Richard Turner, who was convicted and put to death for heresy, of our especial grace have granted to the said Isabella all the goods and chattels to us forfeited, for the maintenance of herself and of her children."[306] Similar grants are recorded, and all in the first year of his reign, to Alice widow of Walter Yonge, Isabella widow of John Horewood, and Matilda widow of John Fynche; their several husbands having suffered for maintaining opinions then pronounced heretical. This fact seems to be not only confirmatory of the views we have taken of Henry's tender-heartedness and sympathy with the afflicted and helpless, but indicative also of the absence of whatever approaches a persecuting and vindictive spirit towards those who had incurred the extreme penalty of the law for conscience-sake. The Author cannot but infer that Henry's dislike of persecution placed a considerable check on the fierceness with which it raged, both before and after his reign; that the sanguinary intentions of the priesthood were, to a very considerable degree, frustrated by his known love of gentler means; and that in England a greater portion of religious liberty was enjoyed during the years through which he sat on the throne, than had been tolerated under the government of his father, or was afterwards allowed through the minority of his son.
The Author entered upon the subject of the three last chapters with the view of ascertaining, on the best original evidence, the validity or the unsoundness of the charge of persecution for religion brought against Henry of Monmouth. Independently of the result of that investigation, he confesses himself to have risen from the inquiry impressed with mingled feelings of apprehension and of gratitude:—gratitude for the blessings of the Reformation; and apprehension lest, in our use of those blessings, and in the return made to their Almighty Donor, we may be found wanting. For no maxim can be more firmly established by the sound deductions of human wisdom, or more unequivocally sanctioned by the express words of revelation, than the principle that to whom much is given, of them will much be required. And on this principle how awfully has our increase of privileges enhanced our responsibility! By the Reformation, Providence has rescued us from those dangers which once attended an honest avowal of a Christian's faith; has freed us from those gross superstitions which once darkened the whole of Christendom; and has released us from that galling yoke under which the disciples of the Cross were long held in bondage. The bestowal of these blessings exacts at our hands many duties of indispensable obligation. The Author hopes he may be pardoned, if, in closing this subject, he refers to some of those points which press upon his own mind most seriously.