was allowed to die a natural death, and it was not until the beginning of the reign of Henry IV that a thoroughly reliable weapon for the suppression of heresy was placed in the hands of the Church. In the year 1401 the famous statute de Haeretico was passed; it enacted that no one should preach or write contrary to the Catholic faith or determination of holy church, or hold any conventicles or schools for teaching such doctrines, or favour or maintain any such teacher, and it empowered the diocesan to cause any one "defamed or evidently suspected" of being guilty of any of the offences enumerated in the statute to be arrested and detained in prison until he should canonically purge himself and abjure his heretical and erroneous opinions. The diocesan was to openly and judicially proceed against him according to the canonical decrees within three months of the arrest, and if he were convicted he was to be imprisoned and fined after the "manner and quality of the offence" at the discretion of the diocesan, but if he should refuse to abjure or after abjuration should relapse, so that according to the holy canons he ought to be left to the secular court, then he is to be handed over to the sheriff or other proper officer who shall receive him and "before the People in a high place do to be burnt 1." Before the statute was promulgated, and while the Parliament which passed it was still sitting, William Sawtre was pronounced by Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the provincial council, a relapsed heretic, degraded and committed to the secular court. A writ was accordingly issued by the King in Parliament ordering the heretic to be burned2, and the sentence was The Act declaring 5 Rich. II, stat. 2, cap. 5 void was omitted (it is said through the craft of the clergy) from the published editions of the statutes; therefore in the days of the Reformation 5 Rich. II, stat. 2, cap. 5 was treated as still subsisting, but it could hardly have been acted upon until the action of the House of Commons had been forgotten. It was finally repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act, 1863.

1 2 Henry IV, c. 15. Statutes of the Realm, II, p. 125.

2 A copy of the writ is to be found in Rot. Parl. III, 459.

carried out. The writ is dated February 26, though the Parliament which passed the statute de Haeretico did not break up until March 10, and this fact is the main basis of the argument that after the statute de Haeretico had been formally repealed, heretics might still be committed to the flames because the writ de Haeretico comburendo could issue at common law independently of the statute. Fourteen years later it was thought right to still further increase the severity of the law. 2 Hen. V, stat. 1, cap. 7 provides that the chancellor, justices, and magistrates shall make an oath to use all diligence in destroying all manner of heresies and errors, commonly called Lollardries, and that all persons convict of heresy and left to the secular power according to the laws of holy church shall forfeit their lands and tenements as in the case of attainder for felony, and that their goods and chattels shall also be forfeited to the King. These acts remained in full force till the year 1533, and were frequently resorted to. They placed almost unlimited power in the hands of the Church. There was no definition of heresy, and the bishops were thus empowered to punish any views which were at variance with their own. The procedure was also most drastic; a person once pronounced to be an obstinate or relapsed heretic was handed over to the civil power, which had no alternative but to execute the utmost rigour of the law. We can thus explain the total absence of any effort to establish a Jewish colony in England after the banishment from Spain in 1492. The knowledge of the severity of the English law combined with the memory of the cruelties that accompanied the expulsion two hundred years before would effectually discountenance any such attempt.

Under Henry VIII and Edward VI the law as to heresy was considerably altered, but it was not varied in such a way as to give any sort of toleration to those who held principles in conflict with the doctrines proclaimed by the sovereign as supreme head of the Church as binding on all its members. Many heretics were put to death in the

reign of Henry VIII, and in the short reign of Edward VI at least two persons were burned for heresy1. Mary, shortly after her accession, procured the passing of an "Acte for the renueing of three Estatutes made for the punishment of Heresies," providing that the three statutes enacted in the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, already mentioned, should "from the xxth day of Januarye next coming be revived and be in full force strengthe and effecte to all Intentes construcions and purposes for ever2." The fierce and merciless persecution that ensued has caused a horrible but not undeserved epithet to be added to the name of the first Queen regnant of England, and though the number of the victims may have been exaggerated in after years, hundreds were brought to the stake within the short period of less than four years that elapsed before the Queen's death 3. When Elizabeth came to the throne, the law was again recast. The first Act of Parliament passed in her reign, commonly called the Act of Supremacy (1 Eliz. cap.1, sect. 15) expressly repealed the Act of Philip and Mary under which the persecutions had taken place, as also the former statutes for the punishment of heresies revived by that Act; but it was by no means intended to allow heresy and error to go unpunished, and therefore by sect. 17 jurisdiction for the visitation" of all manner of errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities" was annexed to the crown, and by the following section the Queen was empowered to appoint commissioners to exercise her ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and to visit, reform, and correct

1 The principal statutes are 25 Hen. VIII, cap. 14, and 31 Hen. VIII, cap. 14 (the Act of the Six Articles), I Edw. VI, cap. 12, 1 Edw. VI, cap. 1, and 2 & 3 Edw. VI, cap. 1 (see sect. 3). The last two, though obsolete, are still technically in force. For the whole subject see Stephen's History of Criminal Law, vol. II, pp. 453-460.

2 1 & 2 Phil, and Mary, cap. 6.

The exact number is given as 277. For the persecution see Dodd's Church History, vol. II, pp. 101-109 ; Pike's History of Crime, vol. II, pp. 57–60, and 613.

all errors, heresies, &c., " to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue, and the conservation of the peace and unity of this realm "; but a later section (sect. 36) limited the power of the commissioners so appointed, by declaring that nothing should be adjudged heresy unless determined to be heresy by the authority of the canonical scriptures, or by certain general councils, or by the high court of Parliament, with the assent of the clergy in their convocation. This restriction was no doubt intended, and did in fact operate, to exempt Roman Catholics from prosecution for heresy-Papists obnoxious to the government were proceeded against for other crimes-but it could not in any way relieve or exempt Jews, or any one who impugned the sacred doctrine of the Trinity. Although the procedure established by the statutes passed under the Lancastrian kings was abolished, it seems to have been assumed that a culprit in the case of contumacy could be burned, and that the writ de Haeretico comburendo would issue at common law. There are several instances of this having taken place. Two Anabaptists were burned in the year 1575, and two Arians as late as 1612. One of these last, Bartholomew Legatt, was charged with holding thirteen damnable tenets, most or all of which are held by every believing Jew; the last two are short and are here inserted from the collection of state trials: "12. That Christ by his Godhead wrought no miracle. 13. That Christ is not to be prayed unto1." There has been considerable discussion among lawyers as to the legality of the punishment in these latter cases; into this discussion it is not our purpose to enter; it is enough to state the fact that the convictions took place and that the extreme penalty was enforced, to show what might have been the position of professing Jews openly living and practising their religion in this country.

Since the year 1612 no execution for heresy has taken place in England, nor were offenders, if it was intended to 1 2 State Trials, p. 729.

deal severely with them, brought before the ecclesiastical courts. They were, however, dealt with by the Court of High Commission, which had been constituted in its ultimate form in the year 1583 under the powers supposed to be conferred on the crown by the eighteenth section of the Act of Supremacy, the substance of which has already been given. The commissioners had no power to order capital punishment, but they were authorized to award "such punishment by fine, imprisonment, censure of the church or otherwise, or by all or any of the said ways, and to take such order for the redress of the same, as by their wisdom and discretions should be thought meet and convenient"; and these penalties were unsparingly inflicted. Their mode of procedure was most arbitrary, and by contemporaries not inaptly compared to that of the Inquisition. There was as a rule no jury, though the court could if it wished summon a jury; arrests were made without any legal warrant; the accused were punished, though there was no evidence against them, except such as was wrung out of their own mouths by means of the ex officio oath. "In two points alone it was distinguished from the Inquisition of Southern Europe. It was incompetent to inflict the punishment of death, and it was not permitted to extract confessions by means of physical torture." Such a court could be made a terrible engine of oppression by a zealous persecutor, for it assumed authority not merely to try but to seek out offenders; for example, on April 1, 1634, when Laud had held the primacy but a few months, a circular letter was sent by the commissioners to all officers of the peace in the kingdom, of the following tenor: "There remain in divers parts of the kingdom sundry sort of separatists, moralists, and sectaries, as namely-Brownists, Anabaptists, Arians, Traskites, Familists, and some other sorts, who, upon Sundays and other festival days, under pretence of repetition of sermons, ordinarily use to meet together in great numbers in private houses and other obscure places, and there keep