Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/564

 deserts of the said cause, being of us diligently searched, weighed, and pondered before, to the intent that the said John Claydon shall not infect others with his scab: by the consent and assent of our reverend brethren Richard, bishop of London, John, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and Stephen, bishop of St. David's, and of other doctors, as well of divinity as of both laws, and also of other discreet and learned men assisting us in this behalf, we do judge, pronounce, and declare the said John Claydon to be relapsed again into his heresy which he before did abjure; finally and definitively appointing him to be left unto the secular judgment, and so do leave him, by these presents.

Thus John Claydon, receiving his judgment and condemnation of the archbishop, was committed to the secular power, and by them secular unjustly and unlawfully was committed to the fire, for that the temporal magistrates had no such law sufficient for them to burn any such man for religion condemned of the prelates, as is above sufficiently proved and declared. But to be short, 'quo jure, quaqua injuria,' John Claydon notwithstanding, by the temporal magistrates not long after, was had to Smithfield, where meekly he was made a burnt offering unto the Lord, 1415.

Robert Fabian, and other chronologers who follow him, add also, that Richard Turming, baker, of whom mention is made before in the examination of John Claydon, was likewise the same time burned with him in Smithfield. Albeit in the Register I find no sentence of condemnation given against the said Turming, neither yet in the Story of St. Alban's is there any such mention of his burning made, but only of the burning of John Claydon aforesaid: wherefore the judgment hereof I leave free to the reader. Notwithstanding, concerning the said Turming this is certain, that he was accused to the bishops, and no doubt was in their hands and bands. What afterwards was done with him, I refer it unto the authors.

The next year after the burning of these two aforesaid, and also of John Huss, being burnt at Constance, which was 1416, the prelates of England seeing the daily increase of the gospel, and fearing the ruin of their papal kingdom, were busily occupied, with all their counsel and diligence, to maintain the same. Wherefore, to make their state and kingdom sure, by statutes, laws, constitutions, and terror of punishment, as Thomas Arundel and other prelates had done before, so the before-named Henry Chichesley, archbishop of Canterbury, in his convocation holden at London, maketh another constitution (as though there had not enough been made before) against the poor Lollards; the copy and tenor whereof he sendeth abroad to the bishop of London, and to other his suffragans, by them to be put in strait execution, containing in words as.

Henry, by the grace of God, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and legate of the chief seat; to our reverend brother in the Lord, Richard, by the grace of God, bishop of London, health and brotherly love, with continual increase. Lately, in our last convocation in St. Paul's Church, in London, being kept by you and other our brethren and clergy of our province, we do remember to have made this order under written, by your consents: 'Whereas, among many other our cares, this ought to be chief, that by some means we may take those heretics, who, like foxes, lurk and hide themselves in the Lord's