This was the sum of his offence, involving precisely the identical opinions of which he had been pronounced guilty in 1421, after his recantation in 1420.[303] [Footnote 303: Consequently he was then, in 1421, as much, as afterwards in 1423, a relapsed heretic, subject to the punishment of death.] After Lynewood had given his opinion that a relapsed heretic was to be left to the secular court, without hope of pardon, and without being heard as to the corporal punishment, his judges proceeded to the extreme execution of the law. Taylor was degraded on Monday the 1st of March, 1423, in the first year of Henry VI; and, the writ for his burning being issued on the same day, he suffered death in Smithfield. * * * * * How far these circumstances may be pronounced to bear on the subject, and to conspire in acquitting Henry of Monmouth of the charge with which his name has been unsparingly assailed, of having been in spirit and conduct a persecutor for religious opinions, deserves serious consideration. When it is borne in mind that the Lollards were (p. 411) certainly represented to Henry as the enemies of his throne and of the peace of the realm; that the Pope and the hierarchy of England were loud and incessant in their appeals to the authorities to extirpate such poisonous weeds from the garden of the Lord's heritage; that the Emperor Sigismund was most zealous in obeying such calls of the church, and caused his own land to flow with blood; that Henry's prelates made a direct personal appeal to him to prosecute heretics; that his council deemed it necessary to remind him of his duty in that point;[304] that his own chaplain openly charged him with want of zeal and with apathy in that good cause; that no single warrant for the execution of any one condemned for heresy alone was ever signed, or, as far as we can ascertain, was ever sanctioned, by him; that the only victims of the priesthood actually burnt for heresy alone during his reign were condemned and executed in Henry's absence from the kingdom; and that one person sentenced to imprisonment during Henry's life was, within a few months after his death, condemned to the flames, and actually burnt for the same offence; when all these points are fairly weighed, probably few will not feel satisfied that the judgment (p. 412) passed upon Henry, on the charge of persecution, is inconsistent with the soundest principles of historical investigation. [Footnote 304: The Minutes of Council, 27th May, 1415, record that the King should be advised, as to issuing a commission to the Archbishops and Bishops, to take measures, each in his own diocese, to resist the malice of the Lollards. The King replied, that he had committed the subject to the charge of the chancellor.]