Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/439

 should take an oath to destroy Lollardy, and to assist the bishops therein; that "heretics convict" should forfeit their lands, goods, and chattels; that the justices should have power to inquire into offences against the Act, and to issue a capias with other stringent provisions of the same kind.

Archbishop Chicheley, who succeeded Arundel in 1414, did his best to eclipse the zeal and fame of his predecessor. In 1416 he enjoined all his suffragans and archdeacons in the province of Canterbury "diligently to inquire twice every year after persons suspected of heresy." Wherever heretics were reported to dwell, three or more of that parish should be obliged "to take an oath that they would certify in writing to the suffragans, archdeacons, or their commissaries, what persons were heretics, or kept private conventicles, or differed in life and manners from the common conversation of the faithful, or asserted heresies or errors, or had any suspected books written in the vulgar English tongue, or received, favoured, or were conversant with any persons suspected of error or heresies." The diocesans, upon information received, were to "issue out process against the accused persons, and if they did not deliver them over to the secular court, yet they should commit them to perpetual or temporary imprisonment, as the nature of the cause required, at least until the sitting of the next Convocation."

This device of the Archbishop's amounted, clearly, to nothing short of a petty Inquisition in every parish, and the words in italics show how easily it