Henry IV, Political Insecurity, and Dependence on the Church

When Henry IV ascended the English throne in 1399, he did so under conditions that left his position far from secure. He was not the peaceful heir of a long, uncontested line. He had deposed his cousin Richard II, a move that, however politically justified in the minds of many, carried the unmistakable mark of usurpation. In medieval thinking, a king who took the crown by force, rather than by undisputed hereditary succession, always faced the lingering question: By what right do you reign?

Henry’s reign began amidst rebellions and plots. Powerful magnates who had helped him to power soon turned against him or were suspected of disloyalty. The northern Percies revolted. Wales rose under Owen Glendower. France remained a threat. In such a climate, Henry needed allies who could lend his rule a veneer of moral legitimacy and help stabilize the realm.

The Church—with its bishops, abbots, and clergy spread throughout every shire—was an obvious partner. If the hierarchy stood publicly behind Henry, preaching obedience from the pulpit and presenting him as God’s chosen king, his shaky title would be strengthened. In return, the Church expected the king to defend it from heresy and dissent, especially from the growing Lollard movement that challenged both doctrine and ecclesiastical power.

This mutual dependence produced a grim outcome. Under Henry IV, English monarchy and Church leadership moved into closer alliance against those who questioned the prevailing religious order. And because Lollards grounded their challenges in Scripture and were found in every social rank—from craftsmen to knights—the alliance focused its energy on suppressing Wycliffite belief with new severity.

What earlier kings and bishops had treated as an annoyance or an internal dispute now became a political danger. For Henry IV, who owed his throne in part to ecclesiastical support, to tolerate Lollardy would have seemed like ingratitude, even treachery. The result was the first formal statute in English law prescribing death by burning for persistent heretics.

The 1401 Statute for Burning Heretics and Its Implications

In 1401, Parliament, at the urging of leading bishops, enacted the statute commonly known by its opening words: De heretico comburendo—“On the burning of heretics.” This law marked a turning point in English religious policy. For the first time, the secular power committed itself in explicit terms to execute those condemned for certain forms of religious dissent.

The statute did not invent the concept of heresy, nor did it create ecclesiastical courts. Bishops’ courts had long claimed the right to examine doctrine, discipline clergy, and censure laypersons for religious offenses. What De heretico comburendo did was to bind the crown to the Church’s judgments. Once an ecclesiastical court declared an individual a “relapsed” or obstinate heretic—someone who, after correction and opportunity to recant, persisted in condemned beliefs—the statute required the secular arm to receive that person and carry out execution by burning.

The law specifically targeted those who: publicly or privately taught doctrines already condemned; held or distributed books judged heretical; or persisted in unauthorized preaching and sacramental practices.

Lollards were plainly in view. Their English Bibles, their criticisms of transubstantiation, their denial of the spiritual legitimacy of certain Church practices, and their unauthorized preaching all fell under suspicion. The statute did not name Wycliffe or his followers directly, but its timing and subsequent application made clear that the Lollard movement was its primary focus.

The implications were far-reaching. A believer who once might have faced fines, penances, or imprisonment for doctrinal dissent now knew that continued faithfulness could lead to death by fire. The Church’s condemnations, once primarily spiritual and social in consequence, now carried the weight of capital punishment.

This fusion of ecclesiastical censure with royal law represented precisely the kind of alliance Wycliffe had feared: a Church that wielded the sword of the state to enforce doctrines and practices not grounded in Scripture. Under Henry IV, the legal machinery of persecution stood ready. It would soon be used.

William Sawtry’s Martyrdom Over Transubstantiation

The first to suffer under the new statute—and often remembered as the first recorded Lollard martyr burned in England—was William Sawtry (or Sawtrey), a priest whose conscience had been bound by Scripture against the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Sawtry had initially served as a parish priest in Norfolk. There, Lollard influence was strong, and he came into contact with Wycliffite teachings. He began to question whether the bread and wine in the Mass truly changed substance into the body and blood of Christ. Searching the Scriptures, he saw that the Bible still called the consecrated elements “bread” and “cup” and that Christ, risen and ascended, possessed a glorified body at the right hand of God—not a body multiplied on innumerable altars.

For this, Sawtry was summoned before ecclesiastical authorities and pressured to recant. At one point, he faltered and signed a form of submission. But his conscience did not let him rest. He continued to wrestle with the biblical text and returned to his earlier conviction: that Christ is present spiritually and sacramentally, not by a literal change in the elements. Unable to remain silent, he persisted in his rejection of transubstantiation and in his criticism of aspects of the traditional Mass.

Transferred eventually to London, he was again arrested and brought before a tribunal presided over by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, Henry IV’s powerful ally in the struggle against Lollardy. There, Sawtry made a remarkable confession. He declared that he would rather worship the Lord Jesus Christ reigning in Heaven than the consecrated host on the altar. For the authorities, this exposed the core of his “heresy”: he refused to adore the bread as Christ Himself.

The court declared him a relapsed heretic—one who, after previous recantation, had fallen back into error. Under De heretico comburendo, this status sealed his fate. He was handed over to the secular arm, which, following the prescribed ritual, had him burned at Smithfield in London around 1401.

Sawtry’s martyrdom sent a clear message. Denial of transubstantiation, especially when combined with English Bible reading and criticism of the Church’s wealth, would not be tolerated. The stake was no longer a theoretical threat; it was a fiery reality. Lollards across England took note, weighing the cost of confession more soberly than ever.

John Badby, Prince Henry, and the Stakes at Smithfield

Despite the warning provided by Sawtry’s death, others continued to affirm Lollard convictions, especially concerning the sacrament of the altar. One of the most striking cases was that of John Badby, a tailor from Evesham in Worcestershire—a layman, not a priest. His story demonstrates both the severity of ecclesiastical courts and the personal involvement of the royal family in efforts to suppress Wycliffite teaching.

Badby was accused of denying transubstantiation, specifically the teaching that the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ. In examination, he reportedly declared that if every host consecrated in every Mass were truly Christ’s body, then there would be many thousands of Christs, an absurdity that offended both reason and faith. Christ, he insisted, could not be so multiplied.

At first, Badby was examined in Worcester. When he refused to recant, he was transferred to London and brought before Archbishop Arundel. There, the pressure intensified. The authorities offered him repeated opportunities to renounce his beliefs and conform to the Church’s doctrine. Each time, he refused, anchored in his understanding of Scripture and his conscience before God.

His case drew the attention of Prince Henry, the future Henry V, who at that time still had some reputation for zeal and piety as well as for youthful excess. At Badby’s execution in 1410 at Smithfield, the prince was personally present. Moved, perhaps, by a mixture of curiosity, political calculation, and a desire to win a soul, he intervened in a way that reveals both the cruelty and the twisted mercy of the period.

As Badby stood bound in a barrel or cask, surrounded by faggots, the fire was lit. When the flames rose and he cried out in agony, the prince is said to have ordered the fire doused and offered him pardon, freedom, and a pension if he would recant and accept the Church’s teaching on the sacrament. It was a dramatic gesture—salvation in this life held out on the condition of renouncing conviction.

Badby refused. Even under torture, he would not deny what he believed Scripture taught about the Lord’s Supper. The fire was rekindled, and he perished in the flames, an ordinary craftsman whose unwavering conscience brought him into direct confrontation with a future king.

The execution of John Badby confirmed that Lollardy reached into the artisan classes, not only among scholars and nobles. It also demonstrated that the crown was no passive observer. Royal power, personified in Prince Henry, stood ready to use both bribe and fire to extinguish what it regarded as dangerous doctrine.

Sir John Oldcastle, Failed Rising, and Final Execution

If Badby’s death showed Lollardy among artisans, the story of Sir John Oldcastle—Lord Cobham—revealed its reach into the nobility and the fraught intersection of religious dissent with politics and armed resistance.

Oldcastle was a knight of Herefordshire, a veteran of campaigns in France, and a man of considerable influence. More importantly for the Lollard story, he was closely connected to Prince Henry and the royal court. Through sermons, reading, and friendships, Oldcastle embraced Wycliffite teaching. He criticized clerical abuses, defended English Scripture, and questioned doctrines such as transubstantiation and priestly mediation in ways that aligned him with the Lollards.

For a time, his status and friendship with the prince shielded him. But after Henry V came to the throne in 1413, pressure from Archbishop Arundel and others forced the issue. The king, now responsible for the spiritual and political stability of the realm, could not easily ignore a prominent nobleman accused of heresy. Oldcastle was arrested and examined.

In the course of his trial, he refused to affirm the Church’s teaching on the sacrament and rejected the authority of the pope as essential to the faith. While professing loyalty to the king, he insisted that Scripture alone must determine doctrine and that the Church had strayed in many areas. Ecclesiastical authorities declared him a heretic, and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London to await execution.

What followed complicated the picture. Oldcastle escaped from the Tower, likely aided by sympathizers. Soon after, in early 1414, a Lollard-inspired gathering took place at St. Giles’ Fields outside London, apparently intending to assemble supporters and, perhaps, seize control of the king’s person or press for reforms. The details are debated, and Oldcastle’s precise role is difficult to pin down. The government, however, interpreted the event as a conspiracy and rising against both crown and Church.

Henry V acted swiftly. The gathering was dispersed; many were captured and later executed. Oldcastle went into hiding, moving about for several years with the help of friends. During this time, official proclamations presented him as both traitor and heretic—a double threat to church and realm.

In 1417, he was finally captured in Wales, brought to London, and condemned without further theological debate. This time, the charges of treason and heresy combined. He was hanged as a traitor and, in fulfillment of De heretico comburendo, burned as a heretic—an especially gruesome combination meant to send the clearest possible warning.

Oldcastle’s fall served royal and ecclesiastical purposes. The crown used his case to reinforce obedience and discourage any union of religious dissent with political opposition. The Church used his execution to show that even high birth offered no protection to those who rejected its doctrines. For many Lollards, his fate confirmed both the danger of militancy and the unforgiving determination of those who opposed reform.

Local Decrees, Bishops’ Courts, and Ordinary Believers on Trial

While the cases of Sawtry, Badby, and Oldcastle stand out, the everyday face of persecution unfolded in quieter settings: diocesan synods, bishops’ visitation articles, local inquiries, and small-scale trials held in chapter houses, manors, and churches across the country.

In 1408, the Constitutions of Archbishop Arundel, passed at a synod in Oxford, gave structure to this local repression. They forbade the translation of any part of Scripture into English without episcopal approval and banned the reading of “any such book” composed in the time of John Wycliffe or since. Preaching without license, especially on controversial topics, became grounds for arrest.

Bishops’ courts in dioceses such as Lincoln, Norwich, Hereford, London, and others began to pursue suspected Lollards with growing vigor. Charges brought against ordinary believers give a vivid glimpse of what it meant to live as a follower of Wycliffe in the fifteenth century. Accusations included: owning an English New Testament or portions of the Gospels; teaching friends or children passages from the Sermon on the Mount; refusing to swear by saints or to venerate images; speaking against pilgrimages, indulgences, or the invocation of Mary; denying transubstantiation or questioning the power of priests to absolve sin; attending clandestine Bible readings in cottages or barns.

Records mention men like James Brewster, charged because he possessed “a certain little book of Scripture in English,” and women like Agnes Ashford, rebuked for teaching part of the Sermon on the Mount to a neighbor and warned not to teach even her own children such doctrines without authorization.

Some defendants, facing the threat of imprisonment, fines, or worse, recanted, performing public penance, wearing distinguishing garments, or swearing oaths to avoid certain meetings and books. Others stood firm, accepting punishment rather than deny what they believed Scripture taught. A number of Lollards, especially in the early fifteenth century, were executed by burning under the provisions of De heretico comburendo. Many more endured lesser yet still harsh penalties.

Local decrees multiplied. In some counties, bishops forbade the possession of any religious book in English without a license. In others, officials ordered clergy to report suspect parishioners. Kings issued proclamations against Lollard assemblies. The combined effect was to push the movement underground, forcing believers to weigh each conversation, each book, each gathering against the risk of betrayal.

Yet, as the very existence of these records shows, persecution did not succeed in eradicating Lollardy. Ordinary men and women continued to stand before bishops’ courts, confessing that they had read the English Bible, that they believed salvation comes through Christ alone and not through masses, indulgences, or pilgrimages, and that the Scriptures must govern the Church.

Under fire and sword—under statutes, stakes, and courts—the Lollard witness survived. Not in strength of numbers or public triumph, but in steady, quiet fidelity to the Word of God that Wycliffe had labored to loose from its Latin chains.

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