f
Arundel to energetic action. A council of bishops gathered in the summer
to denounce Lollardry and at once called on Henry to suffer Oldcastle to
be brought to justice. The king pleaded for delay in the case of one who
was so close a friend, and strove personally to convince Lord Cobham of
his errors. All however was in vain, and Oldcastle withdrew to his castle
of Cowling, while Arundel summoned him before his court and convicted him
as a heretic. His open defiance at last forced the king to act. In
September a body of royal troops arrested Lord Cobham and carried him to
the Tower; but his life was still spared, and after a month's confinement
his imprisonment was relaxed on his promise of recantation. Cobham however
had now resolved on open resistance. He broke from the Tower in November,
and from his hiding-place organized a vast revolt. At the opening of 1414
a secret order summoned the Lollards to assemble in St. Giles's Fields
outside London. We gather, if not the real aims of the rising, at least
the terror it caused, from Henry's statement that its purpose was "to
destroy himself, his brothers, and several of the spiritual and temporal
lords"; from Cobham's later declarations it is probable that the pretext
of the rising was to release Richard, whom he asserted to be still alive,
and to set him again on the throne. But the vigilance of the young king
prevented the junction of the Lollards within the city with their
confederates without, and these as they appeared at the place of meeting
were dispersed by the royal troops.

[Sidenote: Renewal of the French War]

The failure of the rising only increased the rigour of the law.
Magistrates were directed to arrest all heretics and hand them over to the
bishops; a conviction of heresy was made to entail forfeiture of blood and
estate; and the execution of thirty-nine prominent Lollards as traitors
gave terrible earnest of the king's resolve to suppress their sect.
Oldcastle escaped, and for four years longer strove to rouse revolt after
revolt. He was at last captured on the Welsh border and burned as a
heretic; but from the moment when his attempt at revolt was crushed in St.
Giles's Fields the dread of Lollardry was broken and Henry was free to
take a more energetic course of policy on the other side the sea. He had
already been silently preparing for action by conciliatory measures, by
restoring Henry Percy's son to the Earldom of Northumberland, by the
releas