When any were degraded, excommunicated, and sent to the seculars, the sanguinary lay penalties took their course.[410] The chief offence for which the Church withdrew all protection was obstinate or repeated heresy. In the earlier period those found guilty were branded on the forehead[411] and cast out[412] (as once from Oxford, to die of cold and starvation) excommunicate, or they might be imprisoned and have their property confiscated.[413] But with the rise and multiplication of militant sectaries, the Church urged the State to proceed to extremities. Heretics were ruthlessly burned alive by popular custom[414] (and were sometimes “lynched” like negro criminals in the United States; _vide_ Lea, _Middle Ages_, i. pp. 219, 222, 308), and in time this became formally recognised.[415] Pedro of Aragon in 1197, the Emperor Frederic II. by the _Edict of Cremona_ in 1238, Louis IX. of France by his _Établissements_ in 1270, and Henry IV.[416] of England in 1400, made burning at the stake the legitimate punishment of persistent or relapsed heretics.[417] But it was not the severities of the Church that kept arousing the jealousy and opposition of the secular power. It was the immunity it afforded to those under its protection[419] which moved the State to attack clerical privileges, and, in the course of ages, to remove them entirely. In Saxon times lay and episcopal authorities acted closely together, but William of Normandy, doubtless continuing the Continental movement already alluded to, separated the ecclesiastical from the secular courts. King Henry II. had succeeded to the throne after a period of civil war and devastating brigandage, in which the Church had fortified its position and extended its jurisdiction,[420] and was bent upon reasserting the power of the central government. He found that the clergy and the clerks[421] were outside his control, and in the middle ages they were a numerous body,[422] as many people were received into orders who had little or nothing to do in their own profession, and who were debarred by rule from obtaining a livelihood otherwise.[423] So the king employed all his efforts to place the clerks under his justices.