Down to the beginning of the fifteenth century there had been no statute law in England for the burning of heretics. In all other parts of Christendom the magistrate, as under the old Roman imperial law, had obeyed the mandate of the bishops. England stood alone: without a legal warrant no officer would have executed the ecclesiastical criminal. "In all other countries," says Milman, "the secular arm received the delinquent against the law of the church. The judgment was passed in the ecclesiastical court or that of the Inquisition; but the church, with a kind of evasion which it is difficult to clear from hypocrisy, would not be stained with blood. The clergy commanded, and that under the most awful threats, the fire to be lighted and the victim tied to the stake by others, and acquitted themselves of the cruelty of burning their fellow-creatures." But the end of this honorable distinction for England was come. The obsequious Henry, to gratify the archbishop, issued a royal edict, ordering every incorrigible heretic to be burnt alive. The lying tongues of the priests and friars had so industriously circulated reports of the wild and revolutionary purposes of the Lollards, that Parliament became alarmed and sanctioned the King's decree.
In the year 1400 "the burning of heretics" became a statute law in England. "On a high place in public, before the face of the people, the incorrigible heretic is to be burnt alive." The primate and the bishops hastened to their work.
William Sautree is the first victim under this terrible edict. He is the proto-martyr of Wycliffism. He was a preacher at St. Osyth's in London. Through natural fear of suffering he had recanted and again relapsed at Norwich; but afterward, coming to London, and gaining more strength of mind through faith, he openly preached the gospel, and testified against transubstantiation. He was now doomed to the flames as a relapsed heretic. "The ceremony of his degradation," says the historian, "took place at St. Paul's, with all its minute, harassing, impressive formalities. He was then delivered over to the secular arm, and for the first time the air of London was darkened by the smoke of this kind of human sacrifice."
The second victim of this sanguinary edict was a plain working man. His crime was a common one among the Lollards—the denial of transubstantiation. This poor man, John Badby, was brought from Worcester to London to stand his trial. But what must the plain country-man have thought, when he found himself before the dignified tribunal of the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishops of London, Winchester, Oxford, Norwich, Salisbury, Bath, Bangor, St. David's, Edmund Duke of York, the Chancellor, and the Master of the Rolls? Arundel took great pains to persuade him that the consecrated bread was really and properly the body of Christ. Badby's answers were given with courage and firmness, and in words of simplicity and plain sense. He said that he would believe "the omnipotent God in Trinity," and said, moreover, "if every host being consecrated at the altar were the Lord's body, that then there be twenty thousand gods in England. But he believed in one God omnipotent." This incorrigible heretic was condemned to be burnt alive by these wolves, or rather fiends, in sheep's clothing. The Prince of Wales chanced to be passing through Smithfield just as the fire was kindling, or he came on purpose to witness the auto da ff. He looked on the calm inflexible martyr; but on the first sensation of the fire, he heard the word, "Mercy" fall from his lips. The prince, supposing that he was entreating the mercy of his judges, ordered him to be pulled out of the fire. "Will you forsake heresy?" said young
Henry; "will you conform to the faith of holy mother church? If you will, you shall have a yearly maintenance out of the King's treasury." The martyr was unmoved. It was to the mercy of God, not of man, that he was appealing. Henry, in a rage, ordered him to be thrust back into the blazing fagots, and he gloriously finished his course in the flames.