Cobham: "I will none otherwise believe in these points than I have told you before. Do with me what you will."
The archbishop: "We must needs do the law: we must proceed to a definite sentence, and judge and condemn you for an heretic."
Hereupon the archbishop stood up to pronounce sentence. The whole assembly — bishops, doctors, and friars — rose at the same time, and uncovered. The primate drew forth two papers which had been prepared beforehand, and proceeded to read them. The first set forth the heresies of which Lord Cobham had been convicted, and the efforts which the court, "desiring the health of his soul," had made to bring him to "the unity of the Church;" but he, "as a child of iniquity and darkness, had so hardened his heart that he would not listen to the voice of his pastor." "We, thereupon," continued the archbishop, turning to the second paper, "judge, declare, and condemn the said Sir John Oldcastle, knight, for a most pernicious and detestable heretic, committing him to the secular jurisdiction and power, to do him thereupon to death."
This sentence Arundel pronounced with a sweet and affable voice, the tears trickling down his face. It is the primate himself who tells us so; otherwise we should not have known it; for certainly we can trace no signs of pity or relenting in the terms of the sentence. "I pronounced it," says the archbishop, referring to the sentence dooming Sir John to the fire, "in the kindest and sweetest manner, with a weeping countenance." If the primate wept, no one saw a tear on the face of Lord Cobham. "Turning to the multitude," says Bale, "Lord Cobham said, with a most cheerful voice, 'Though ye judge my body, which is but a wretched thing, yet can ye do no harm to my soul. He that created it will, of his infinite mercy, save it. Of that I have no manner of doubt.' Then falling down on his knees, and lifting up his eyes, with hands outstretched toward heaven, he prayed, saying, 'Lord God eternal, I beseech thee, for thy great mercy's sake, to forgive my pursuers, if it be thy blessed will.' He was thereupon delivered to Sir Robert Morley, and led back to the Tower."
The sentence was not to be executed till afmr fifty days. This respite, so unusual, may have been owing to a lingering affection for his old friend on the part of the king, or it may have been prompted by the hope that he would submit himself to the Church, and that his recantation would deal a blow to the cause of Lollardism. But Lord Cobham had counted the cost, and his firm resolve was to brave the horrors of Smithfield, rather than incur the guilt of apostacy. His persecutors, at last, despaired of bringing him in a penitent's garb, with lighted tapers, to the door of St. Paul's, as they had done humbler and weaker confessors, there to profess his sorrow for having scoffed at the prodigious mystery of transubstantiation, and placed the authority of the Scriptures above that of the Church. But if a real recantation could not be had, a spurious one might be fabricated, and given forth as the knight's confession. This was the expedient to which his enemies had now recourse. They gave out that "Sir John had now become a good man, and had lowlily submitted himself in all things to holy Church;" and thereupon they produced and published a written "abjuration," in which they made Lord Cobham profess the most unbounded homage for the Pope (John XXIII.!), "Christ's Vicar on earth and head of the Church," his clergy, his Sacraments, his laws, his pardons and dispensations, and recommend "all Christian people to observe, and also most meekly to obey, the aforesaid;" and further, they made him, in this "abjuration," renounce as "errors and heresies" all the doctrines he had maintained before the bishops, and, laying his hand upon the "holy evangel of God," to swear that he should nevermore henceforth hold these heresies, "or any other like unto them, wittingly."
The fabricators of this "abjuration" had overshot the mark. But small discernment, truly, was needed to detect so clumsy a forgery. Its authors were careful, doubtless, that the eye of the man whom it so grievously defamed should not light upon it; and yet it would appear that information was conveyed to Cobham, in his prison, of the part the priests were making him act in public; for we find him sending out to rebut the slanders and falsehoods that were spread abroad regarding him, and protesting that as he had professed when he stood before the archbishop, so did he still believe, "This abjuration," says Fox, "never came into the hands of Lord Cobham, neither was it compiled by them for that purpose, but only to blear the eyes of the unlearned multitude for a time." Meanwhile — whether by the aid of his friends, or by connivance of the governor, is not certainly known — Lord Cobham escaped from the Tower and fled to Wales, where he remained secreted for four years.
CHAPTER 6
LOLLARDISM DENOUNCED AS TREASON
Spread of Lollardism — Clergy Complain to the King — Activity of the Lollards — Accused of Plotting the Overthrow of the Throne and Commonwealth — Midnight Meeting of Lollards at St. Giles-in-the-Fields — Alarm of the King — He Attacks and Disperses the Assembly — Was it a Conspiracy or a Conventicle? — An Old Device Revived.
LORD COBHAM had for the time escaped from the hands of his persecutors, but humbler confessors were within their reach, and on these Arundel and his clergy now proceeded to wreak their vengeance. This thing, which they branded as heresy, and punished in the fire, was spreading over England despite all their rigors. That the new opinions were dangerous to the authority of the Roman Church was sufficiently clear, but it suited the designs of the hierarchy to represent them as dangerous also to the good order of the State. They went to the king, and complaining of the spread of Lollardism, told him that it was the enemy of kings and the foe of commonwealths, and that if it were allowed to remain longer unsuppressed, it would in no long time be the undoing of his realm. "The heretics and Lollards of Wicliffe's opinion," said they, "are suffered to preach abroad so boldly, to gather conventicles unto them, to keep schools in men's houses, to make books, compile treatises, and write ballads; to teach privately in angles and corners, as in woods, fields, meadows, pastures, groves, and caves of the ground. This," they added, "will be a destruction to the commonwealth, a subversion to the land, and an utter decay of the king's estate royal, if a remedy be not sought in time."
This picture, making allowance for some little exaggeration, shows us the wonderful activity of these early Protestants, and what a variety of agencies they had already begun to employ for the propagation of their opinions. It justifies the saying of Bale, that "if England at that time had not been unthankful for the singular benefit that God then sent it in these good men, the days of Antichrist and his tyrannous brood had been shortened there long ago."
The machinations of the priests bore further fruit. The more effectually to rouse the apprehensions of the king, and lead him to cut off the very men who would have sowed the seeds of order in his dominions, and been a bulwark around his throne, they professed to adduce a specific instance in support of their general allegations of disloyalty and treason against the Lollards. In January, 1414, they repaired to Eltham, where the king was then residing, and startled him with the intelligence of a formidable insurrection of the Wicliffites, with Lord Cobham at their head, just ready to break out. The Lollards, they declared, proposed to dethrone the king, murder the royal household, pull down Westminster Abbey, and all the cathedrals in the reahn, and to wind up by confiscating all the possessions of the Church. To give a coloring of truth to the story, they specified the time and place fixed upon for the outbreak of the diabolical plot. The conspirators were to meet on a certain midnight "in Ficket Field beside London, on the back side of St. Giles," and then and there begin their terrible work. The king on receiving the alarming news quitted Eltham, and repaired, with a body of armed men, to his Palace of Westminster, to be on the spot and ready to quell the expected rebellion. The night came when this terrible plot was to explode, and to leave before morning its memorials in the overthrow of the throne, and the destruction of the hierarchy. The martial spirit of the future hero of Agincourt was roused. Giving orders for the gates of London to be closed, and "unfurling a banner," says Walden, "with a cross upon it" — after the Pope's example when he wars against the Turk — the king marched forth to engage the rebels. He
