ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Henry IV was on the throne, there was only one other victim in addition to 

 Sawtre, namely Bradby, a tailor of Worcester diocese. During the successive 

 episcopates of Tottington and Courtenay (1407-16) there seems to have 

 been no Lollard persecution in the diocese of Norwich. On the accession of 

 Henry V, Lollardism, under Sir John Oldcastle, assumed a more distinctly 

 political character, and a still more severe Act to check its progress was passed 

 by the laity in Parliament in 1414. 1 Under this law the king's justices were 

 empowered to search out offenders, ' to arrest and deliver them to the ordinary 

 for trial,' who on conviction handed them back to the secular power for 

 execution. It was under this Act, passed in defence of the government and 

 providing for the execution of heretics, as ' traitors to the king,' that all the 

 burnings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took place. 



It is, however, only fair to remember that in 141 6 Convocation, under 

 Archbishop Chicheley, provided that heretics were to be inquired after by the 

 bishops or their officials in each rural deanery twice a year. But there is no 

 available evidence of any serious prosecution of heretics having been initiated 

 by the ecclesiastical authorities under these ordinances of Convocation. 2 



Under the episcopate of John Wakering (1416-25) some severity seems 

 to have been shown towards the Lollards of Suffolk and Norfolk, but none 

 were put to death. 3 Of the persecution in the days of his successor, Bishop 

 Alnwick (1426-36), Foxe gives more particular accounts. On 6 July, 1428, 

 a special commission was issued for apprehending Lollards in the eastern 

 counties to John Exeter and to Jacolit Germain, the keeper of Colchester 

 Castle. The valley of the Waveney, at the junction of the two counties of 

 Norfolk and Suffolk, had become a hotbed of Lollardism, of which Loddon 

 and Gillingham in the former county, and Beccles and Bungay in the latter, 

 were the chief centres. Their ringleader was one William White, an 

 ex-priest, who had been censured before the Convocation at St. Paul's in 1422 

 for preaching at Tenterden, Kent, without sufficient licence and for teaching 

 heretical doctrine. Two years later he had made a solemn abjuration of his 

 heresies before Archbishop Chicheley at Canterbury, and had sworn on the 

 Gospels never to teach or preach any more. But ere long he was busily at 

 work in Suffolk and Norfolk, making Bergholt in the former county his chief 

 residence. He ceased to wear the priestly habit, suffered his tonsure to grow, 

 and married one Joan, who shared his views. White was summoned to 

 appear before a council in London in July to answer for his relapse, but 

 refused to obey ; he was then arrested and taken before Bishop Alnwick 

 and William Bernham his chancellor, John Exeter acting as registrar of the 

 court. The bishop summoned a diocesan synod on 13 September, 1428, in 

 the chapel of his palace at Norwich. William Worsted, prior of Norwich, 

 Thomas Walden and John Lowe, the respective provincials of the Carmelite 

 and Austin Friars, several other friars of the four great mendicant orders, and 

 various secular clergy were present, and before them White was brought in 

 chains. He was examined under a variety of heads as to his teaching and 

 preaching on the eucharist, baptism, confession, the unlawfulness of church 

 property, and the mendicant orders, as well as to his former abjuration, his 



1 2 Hen. V, cap. 7. ' Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury, v, 56-7. 



5 ' The documents ' of Wakering's time ' which Foxe refers to and dresses up in his usual extravagant 

 manner have perished ' {None. Dioc. Hist. 144). 



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