At Shrewsbury, on the edge of Wales, the armies of the King and of the
revolutionists met. A number of Henry's enemies had sworn to single
him out in battle. The plot was divulged, and it is said that
thirteen knights arrayed themselves in armor resembling the King's in
order to mislead the assailants. The whole thirteen perished on that
bloody field, where fat Sir John Falstaff vowed he fought on Henry's
behalf "a long hour by Shrewsbury clock."[2]
[2] Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Part I, Act V, scene iv.
283. Persecution of the Lollards; Statute of Heresy; the First Martyr
(1401).
Thus far Henry had spent much time in crushing rebels, but he had also
given part of it to burning heretics. To gain the favor of the
clergy, and so render his throne more secure, the King favored the
passage of a Statute of Heresy. The Lords and bishops passed such a
law (to which the House of Commons seems to have assented).[3] It
punished the Lollards (S255) and also all others who dissented from
the essential doctrines of Rome with death.
[3] See Stubb's "Constitutional History of England," III, 32.
William Sawtrey, a London clergyman, was the first victim under the
new law (1401). He had declared that he would not worship "the cross
on which Christ suffered, but only Christ himself who had suffered on
the cross." He had also openly denied the doctrine of
transubstantiation, which teaches that the sacramental bread is
miraculously changed into the actual body of the Saviour. For these
and minor heresies he was burned at Smithfield, in London, in the
presence of a great multitude.
Some years later a second martyrdom took place. But as the English
people would not allow torture to be used in the case of the Knights
Templars in the reign of Edward II (S265), so but very few of them
seem to have believed that by committing the body to the flames they
could burn error out of the soul.
The Lollards, indeed, were still cast into prison, as some of the
extreme and communistic part of them doubtless deserved to be (S255),
but we hear of no more being put to cruel deaths during Henry's reign,
though later, the utmost rigor of the law was again to some extent
enforced.