It might have been supposed that Henry’s family associations would have led him to a certain sympathy with the aims of the party which looked up to Wickliffe as its principal leader; nor is it unlikely that something of a sense of ingratitude was aroused by the adverse course of action which was followed by his father and himself. John of Gaunt had been at one time the strong supporter of Wickliffe. On the famous day when the reformer was arraigned before the princes and prelates of England, the Duke of Lancaster had stood by his side and had virtually saved him.

Whatever may have been the Duke’s motive in taking up this attitude, it was one which he was not able nor perhaps willing to maintain. It certainly did not make him popular; indeed it is possible that the Lollards themselves were not generally popular. Anyhow he was one of the most hated men in England when Wat Tyler’s insurrection broke out. His palace in the Savoy was burned, and he himself narrowly escaped with his life. During his latter years we find no traces of championship of the Lollards.

The discontent of this party with the established order of things was probably one of the causes which led to the establishment of the house of Lancaster on the English throne. If so, any services that were rendered by the party were ill repaid. When Henry the Fourth came to the throne he found himself under considerable obligations to Thomas Arundel, who had been expelled from the see of Canterbury, and who now received it again. Arundel was vehemently opposed to the new ways of thinking, and took an active part in the measures—measures of a severity unprecedented in England—which were taken to suppress them.

It has been suggested that among the faults of which Henry made confession after he succeeded to the throne was a favourable reception which his conscience accused him of giving to heretical opinions. The suggestion cannot be said to be founded on anything like evidence. Theological errors are not the usual temptation of a young prince, and there is nothing in Henry’s after-life to make us fancy that in his youth he was inclined to freedom of thought. All that we know of him would rather incline us to a contrary belief. There is, however, the fact that there was some relation, perhaps we may say, of personal friendship between Henry and the Lollard leader, Oldcastle.

Sir John Oldcastle, sometimes styled Lord Cobham, as having married the heiress of that peerage, was a distinguished soldier who had served in the campaigns of the reign of Henry the Fourth. It is probable, though we do not know for certain, that he was associated with the young Prince during a part at least of his operations on the Welsh borders. Henry must have appreciated his qualities as a soldier; at any rate, the action that he took with respect to him indicates, as we shall see, some amount of personal interest. Walsingham, indeed, expressly says that he was Henry’s familiaris, or, we may say, intimate friend.

In Henry’s first year, Convocation requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to proceed against Sir John Oldcastle for offences against ecclesiastical law and for heresy. The Archbishop was willing enough to act, but did not care to do so without permission of the King, of whose friendship for the accused he was aware. He represented the matter to the King, and the King, sending for Oldcastle, bade him attend at court to recant his heretical opinions. His arguments and remonstrances were of no avail; Oldcastle was willing to render him all obedience and service in temporal things, but to the Pope and his commands he owed no allegiance. The King, finding him immovable, remitted him to the judgment of the Ecclesiastical Court.

It is needless to relate in detail the proceedings which followed. Oldcastle, still dissatisfied with the tribunal before which he was to appear, again appealed to the King. First he presented to him a statement of the articles of his belief. Henry refused to receive it. He then offered to bring a hundred knights and esquires who would clear him, it is to be presumed, by challenge of battle. This proposal was rejected, but Henry admitted him to a private interview. He again pleaded to have his cause tried by the King in person. The King repeated his refusal, this time with some irritation: the accused, he said, could not have all things ordered after his own pleasure: the Archbishop ought to be, and should be, his judge. Meanwhile, till the time came for him to stand his trial, he must be kept a prisoner in the Tower.

The trial, of which a complete account has been preserved, was held on September 23rd. Oldcastle was of course condemned, and delivered over to punishment by the secular arm. Time, however, was given him to reconsider his opinions, and he was again committed to the Tower.

What followed, it is impossible to say with any certainty. Oldcastle, we know, escaped from the Tower, but the insurrection which is said to have been made by some of his friends and followers is a matter involved in great mystery. That the King apprehended some danger is manifest. On December 4th we find him sending orders to certain magistrates enjoining them to arrest various persons whom he had otherwise named to them. There is also record of a pardon granted to a person who had given intimation of the conspiracy, and of a pension settled upon him for life in reward of his services. Early in the next month a proclamation was sent out, offering large rewards for the arrest of Sir John Oldcastle, who had escaped from the Tower.

So much we know from documents of State. To what overt acts the conspirators proceeded, if conspirators there were, is not so clear. Walsingham gives a circumstantial account of the affair, which, omitting his reflections, is as follows:

“The King kept Christmas duly at Eltham, and there the Lollards, making a conspiracy, resolved to take or slay the King unawares with his brothers. But certain of the conspirators warned the King of his danger, so that the King quietly removed himself to Westminster, that place being safer and more populous. The Lollards met at nightfall in the fields that are called St. Giles’, near to London, where it was reported that Sir John Oldcastle was waiting for his followers. You might see crowds of men hurrying throughout the streets, who had been drawn from all the counties of the realm by great promises of reward. All these, being asked why they made such haste, declared that they were going to meet the Lord Cobham, who had hired them at his own costs. But the King, knowing what had been done, bade his followers arm themselves. Some counselled delay, but the King would not listen to them, having heard that the rebels purposed, if they should prevail, to destroy straightway the monasteries of Westminster, of St. Albans, and St. Paul, and all the Friars’ houses in London. Hereupon a proclamation was issued, offering a general pardon to all persons that had preached heretical doctrines and had plotted against the King’s life. But Sir John Oldcastle and eight others, these eight being prisoners in the Tower, were exempted by name. For this cause the King proceeding to the said Fields, against the advice of his people, some time after midnight, waited for what the next day might bring forth. Many who sought the camp of the Lord Cobham came unawares into the King’s camp, and were so taken prisoners. The chief of the rebels heard how that the King had come with a strong army, and had taken many of their men. They were much troubled also that no one came to join them out of the city, from which they had looked for many thousands. For the King had given orders that the gates should be shut and be kept close, that none save such as were known to be of his party might go forth. And indeed ’tis said that had he not so done, there would have gone forth of servants and apprentices as many as fifty thousand. Thereupon the Lollards took to flight. As for their leader, none knew to what place he had betaken himself, for though the King offered a thousand marks to any who should give him up, yet no one was found who for so great a reward would give him up.”

That this is the account of an unfriendly historian need not be said. It is more to the point to remark that for most of his narrative Walsingham relies upon hearsay. And even so, there is not a syllable said about armed resistance. That there was a great concourse of people may be taken as certain, as also that they were called together by sympathy for their leader. That they meditated any designs against the King is not by any means so clear. Henry had all a soldier’s impatience of such gatherings; nor was he yet so assured of his throne as he shortly became. He may have been justified in apprehending a danger which yet, after all, may not have really existed.

Walsingham was a monk, and wrote from a monk’s point of view. Titus Livius, who, though not a contemporary, must have heard many contemporaries discuss the matter, says simply that the King, having learnt on Twelfth-day that certain persons had assembled in a field at the back of St. Giles’ Church, led some soldiers against them, who easily dispersed them, killing some and taking others prisoners.

His words read like the account of an attack upon a body of unarmed men. It is noticeable that the punishment which followed was punishment for heresy, not for treason; and it is expressly stated that priests as well as laymen suffered. The rest of the story may be briefly told. Oldcastle remained at large for nearly four years. Walsingham reports him to have attempted a rising on the occasion of Henry’s departure on his French expedition, and mentions rumour of a plot which he had formed against the King’s person in the beginning of 1417, and of negotiations with the Scots later on in the same year. The monk clearly saw the hand of the arch-Lollard and his followers whenever there was any mischief going on. The end came not many weeks after. He was captured in Wales after what would seem to have been a fierce resistance, for several of his captors as well as the prisoner himself were wounded. Taken to London, he was brought before Parliament, the session being specially prolonged in order that his case might be heard. The proceedings that followed cannot be described as a trial. He was asked what he had to say on his behalf why he should not be condemned. His answer seemed to be irrelevant to his judges, and the Duke of Bedford, who was acting as Regent, bade him keep to the point. His doom was sealed, if indeed it had not been fixed before, when he denied the jurisdiction of his judges, and declared that he would answer only to his liege-lord Richard, then alive in Scotland. He suffered death by burning, being hung on a chain fastened to a gallows, while a fire was lighted beneath. Of the special barbarity of this punishment Henry may be acquitted. He was absent in France; nor is it likely that the execution was delayed till he could be consulted. We may even believe that it would not have been allowed had he been in England. Indifferent as he was to suffering, and relentless where any military necessity was concerned, he was not cruel, and would hardly have ordered the torture of a brave soldier for whom he had once had some personal regard. But there is no reason to suppose that he would have spared Oldcastle’s life. There was a growing severity in the treatment of heresy, and he was quite in accord with it. Shocking as such severity seems to us now, it was one of the ways in which the religious earnestness of the age expressed itself. The Council of Constance, while active to cleanse the Church of abuses, saw, we cannot doubt, a cognate duty in sternly repressing what it considered the vagaries of heresy. The safe-conduct of Sigismund had not protected John Hus from this orthodox zeal; nor is there any reason to suppose that this postponement of good faith to a pious duty called forth anything more than a transient feeling of self-reproach. The “blush of Sigismund” has become historical; but this Prince seems to have soon recovered his self-satisfaction; nor did the perjury committed in the interests of the true faith make him a less honoured guest or less trusted adviser of the English king. Henry, in fact, though he may be acquitted of any personal barbarity, was in full accord with the spirit which sent Sir John Oldcastle to the stake.