753) Nevertheless the
clergy, and more especially the chantry priest, continued to live a life
of luxury and sloth, oftentimes spending the day in dicing, card playing,
cock fighting and frequenting taverns.

(M399)

The recent abortive attempt of Oldcastle gave rise to another Statute
against the Lollards,(754) by which the secular power, no longer content
with merely carrying into execution the sentences pronounced by
ecclesiastical courts, undertook, where necessary, the initiative against
heretics. Archbishop Arundel, the determined enemy of the Lollards, had
had no hand in framing this Statute--the last that was enacted against
them.(755) He had died a few months before parliament met, and had been
succeeded by Henry Chichele.

(M400)

Early in the following year (1415) the king made an offer of pardon to
Oldcastle, who was still at large, if he would come in and make submission
before Easter.(756) Instead of accepting so generous an offer, Oldcastle
busied himself in preparing for another rising to take place as soon as
the king should have set sail on his meditated expedition to France.
Lollard manifestoes again appeared on the doors of the London churches;
whilst Oldcastle himself scoured the country for recruits, to serve under
a banner on which the most sacred emblems of the church were
depicted.(757)

(M401)

In August (1415) another Lollard, John Cleydone by name, a currier by
trade, was tried in St. Paul's Church before the new Archbishop and
others, the civic authorities having taken the initiative according to the
provisions of the recent Statute, and arrested him on suspicion of being a
heretic. The mayor himself was a witness at the trial, and testified as to
the nature of certain books found in Cleydon's possession; they were "the
worst and the most perverse that ever he did read or see." Walsingham, who
styles Cleydon "an inveterate Lollard" (_quidam inveteratus Lollardus_),
adds, with his usual acerbity against the entire sect, that the accused
had gone so far as to make his own son a priest, and have Mass celebrated
by him in his own house on the occasion when his wife should have gone to
church, after rising from childbed.(758) Having been convicted of heresy
by the ecclesiastical court, the prisoner was again delivered over to the
secular authorities for punishment.(759) Both he and his books were
burnt.(760)

(M402)

Two years later Oldcastle himself was captured in Wales and brought t