ormed whether the poor man could produce the
required bail, or whether he remained a prisoner till his death. Some
expressions in the record of the subsequent transactions would induce
us to infer that he had, after his condemnation, been at large and was
again taken into custody (sub custodia carcerali iterum arrestatus).
The striking fact, however, is this,--that Henry had not been dead six
months before this same priest was brought up a prisoner in the
custody of a jailor, and tried before the same court for a repetition
of the very same offence; or rather, perhaps, for the very same (p. 409)
individual act for which, a year and three quarters before, he had
been condemned to perpetual imprisonment. The same accuser, the Bishop
of Worcester, charged him with having, _since his abjuration
aforesaid_, written, maintained, and communicated with a certain
priest, named Thomas Smyth, living at Bristol, on paper in his own
hand-writing, the alleged heretical opinions. Here it must be
observed, that the charge was made by the same accuser, the Bishop of
Worcester, before the same Judge Chicheley; that the place in which he
was said to have held these doctrines was in each case the same,
Bristol; that in each case the doctrines were said to have been
conveyed by writing; and that, as to the time of the offence, the
Bishop did not say it was after his previous condemnation, but only
after his recantation, which took place in February 1420, just a year
and a quarter before his sentence of imprisonment. And if we examine
the four heretical opinions which were extracted, in 1423, by the
Canonists out of his written communication to Thomas Smyth, we shall
find them in substance nothing more or less than two of the opinions
on which he was before condemned to imprisonment in 1421.

1.--All prayer which is a petition for any supernatural or gratuitous
gift, is to be offered to God alone.

2.--Prayer is to be addressed only to God.[302] (p. 410)

[Footnote 302: The Canonists seem to have made some
distinction between the first and the second of
these sentences.]

3.--To pray to any creature is to commit idolatry.

4.--The faithful ought to address their prayers to God, not in
reference to his humanity, but only with regard to his Deity.

This was the sum of his offence, involving precisely the identical
opinions of which he had been pronou