of his followers was not extinguished, but the wisdom was extinguished which had directed it; and perhaps the being treated as the enemies of order had itself a tendency to make them what they were believed to be. They were left unmolested for the next twenty years, the feebleness of the Government, the angry complexion which had been assumed by the dispute with Rome, and the political anarchy in the closing decade of the century, combining to give them temporary shelter; but they availed themselves of their opportunity to travel further on the dangerous road on which they had entered; and on the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down all parties who had shared in the late disturbances.
They had been spared in 1382, only for more sharp denunciation, and a more cruel fate; and Boniface having healed, on his side, the wounds which had been opened, by well-timed concessions, there was no reason left for leniency. 1400–1.The character of the Lollard teaching was thus described (perhaps in somewhat exaggerated language) in the preamble of the Act of 1401.[1]
'Divers false and perverse people,' so runs the Act De Heretico comburendo, 'of a certain new sect, damnably thinking of the faith of the sacraments of the Church, and of the authority of the same, against the law of God and of the Church, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously, in divers places within