Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

318 REGINALD PECOCK.
early in his career more papal than the Pope, he
drifted into heretical opinions, which formed a sort
of Lollardy of his own. He denied the descent of
our Lord into hell, belief in the Holy Ghost, the
Catholic Church, and the Communion of Saints,1 as
articles of faith ; but he seems never to have adopted
the sect's errors respecting Sacrifice and Sacraments.
In 1457 he was brought before the Primate, then
Archbishop Bouchier, on the formal charge of heresy.
He submitted to a public recantation, and himself
delivered to the flames eleven volumes of his works
at St. Paul's Cross. As he watched them being consumed,
he exclaimed : " My pride and presumption
h a ve brought ^ upon me these troubles and reproaches
". The sentence of the Court wras confine-
ment for life, and the place chosen was the Abbey
of Thorney, in Cambridgeshire. To be allowed only
to hear Mass, to be restricted to the Breviary, a
Mass-book, a Psalter, a legend and T a Bible,'2 I and to
have no writing materials, were part of the bishop's
penance. Those ages of faith rigorously sacrificed
the good of the individual to that of the multitude,
and they preferred to condemn even a bishop who
had recanted, to solitary confinement, rather than
restore him to a liberty which might have en-
dangered other souls. "
The unclouded days of Henry VI. were drawing to
a close when he made the royal foundations of Eton
1 Wilkins, Concilia. See his Retractation, iii. p. 576.
-Stevenson, p. 178.