it gave no power of life or death, or any
further severity against the person, than merely safe custody, a power
now given to any magistrate against persons accused of any one of a
large class of offences usually treated as light and trifling. But we
may suppose that the real bearing of this petition were altogether (p. 336)
the other way,--that it was intended to mitigate the severity of the
existing law,--to deprive the real persecutors of the power, which
they would undoubtedly have had, "of citing the suspected heretic,
punishing him by fine and imprisonment, and, in the case of a relapsed
or obstinate heretic, consigning him to the civil power for death."
This power the statute[255] 2 Hen. IV. c. 15, conferred on the
diocesans; and the petition in question might have been virtually a
suspension of that sanguinary law till the next session. If this be
so, we have precluded ourselves from ascribing any individual merit to
Henry of Monmouth above the rest of the peers who drew up the
petition; but he must share it equally with them; at all events, the
charge of his having been suborned by the clergy to present "a long
and bloody petition" falls to the ground. On this question, however,
it were better to cite the opinion of an author certainly able (p. 337)
to take a correct view of such subjects; and who, not having Henry the
Fifth's character before him at the time, but only the historical
fact, must be regarded as an unprejudiced authority. Mr. Hallam,[256]
in his History of the Middle Ages, makes this comment upon the
proceeding in question. "We find a remarkable petition[257] in 8 Henry
IV. professedly aimed against the Lollards, but intended, as I
strongly suspect, in their favour. It condemns persons preaching
against the Catholic faith or sacraments to imprisonment against the
next parliament, where they were to abide such judgment as should be
rendered by _the King and peers of the realm_. This seems to supersede
the burning statute of 2 Henry IV, and the spiritual cognizance of
heresy. Rot. Parl. p. 583; see too p. 626. The petition was expressly
granted; but the clergy, I suppose, prevented its appearing in the
Roll."[258] Certain it is, that, unless the statute framed upon this
petition suspended the power of the existing law, the hierarchy had
full authority, without the intervention of the civil magistrate, (p. 338)
to apprehend any one suspected of heresy, to try him, to sentence him,
and to deliver