Lancaster, in his eagerness to show his gratitude to the priests, ordered that every incorrigible heretic should be burnt alive, to terrify his companions.[209] Practice followed close upon the theory. A pious priest named William Sawtre had presumed to say: "Instead of adoring the cross on which Christ suffered, I adore Christ who suffered on it."[210] He was dragged to St. Paul's; his hair was shaved off; a layman's cap was placed on his head; and the primate handed him over to the _mercy_ of the earl-marshal of England. This mercy was shown him--he was burnt alive at Smithfield in the beginning of March, 1401. Sawtre was the first martyr to protestantism.
[209] Ibid. p. 586. This is the statute known as 2 Henry IV. c. 15, the first actual law in England against heresy.
Encouraged by this act of faith--this _auto da fé_--the clergy drew up the articles known as the "Constitutions of Arundel," which forbade the reading of the Bible, and styled the pope, "not a mere man, but a true God."[211] The Lollards' tower, in the archiepiscopal palace of Lambeth, was soon filled with pretended heretics, many of whom carved on the walls of their dungeons the expression of their sorrow and their hopes: _Jesus amor meus_, wrote one of them.[212]
[211] Not of pure man but of true God, here in earth. Ibid. p. 596.
[212] "Jesus is my love." These words are still to be read in the tower.
To crush the lowly was not enough: the Gospel must be driven from the more exalted stations. The priests, who were sincere in their belief, regarded those noblemen as misleaders, who set the word of God above the laws of Rome; and accordingly they girded themselves for the work. A few miles from Rochester stood Cowling Castle, in the midst of the fertile pastures watered by the Medway,
The fair Medwaya that with wanton pride Forms silver mazes with her crooked tide.[213]
In the beginning of the fifteenth century it was inhabited by Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, a man in high favour with the king. The "poor priests" thronged to Cowling in quest of Wickliffe's writings, of which Cobham had caused numerous copies to be made, and whence they were circulated through the dioceses of Canterbury, Rochester, London, and Hertford. Cobham attended their preaching, and if any enemies ventured to interrupt them, he threatened them with his sword.[214] "I would sooner risk my life," said he, "than submit to such unjust decrees as dishonour the everlasting Testament." The king would not permit the clergy to lay hands on his favourite.