Wycliffe’s enemies were indefatigable during his life; and after his death they persecuted his disciples. Oxford was regarded as infected with his heresies; and those who followed his scriptural doctrines were distinguished as “Lollards.” The heads of the university were, therefore, required, on pain of excommunication, to inquire, every month, whether any scholar held doctrines contrary to the decisions of the church. “Twelve inquisitors of heresy--for this dreadful name,” as Dr. Southey remarks, “had been introduced among us--were appointed at Oxford, to search out heresy and heretical books.” King Richard II. being deposed, was succeeded, A.D. 1392, by Henry II., a dupe of the prelates; and under him they procured the sanguinary statute, _ex officio_, which authorised the bishops, as inquisitors, to proceed against all persons suspected of heresy. This was the first law in England for the burning of men on account of religion. William Sawtree, parish priest of St. Osith’s, London, was the first that was condemned to the stake in England, A.D. 1400; and the forms of degradation and execution were carefully observed, that it might be an exact precedent for future occasions. These forms, Dr. Southey states, “were probably derived from the practice of the accursed Inquisition in Languedoc; and they were well devised for prolonging the impression on the spectators.” After the ceremonies of degradation, “the cap of a layman was placed upon his head, and Archbishop Arundel then delivered him, as a lay person, to the secular court of the high constable and marshal of England there present; beseeching the court to receive favourably the said William Sawtree, unto them thus recommitted. For with this hypocritical recommendation to mercy the Romish church always delivered over its victims to be burnt alive! Sawtree accordingly suffered martyrdom at the stake in Smithfield, leaving a name slandered by the Romanists, but held in deserved respect for the sake of the Gospel by British Christians.” Wycliffe’s disciples continued to be sought after by the inquisitors, and many suffered at the stake for Christ. But volumes are required to detail their sufferings and triumphs. Archbishop Arundel procured “a law for ever,” A.D. 1410, “that whosoever they were that should read the Scriptures in the mother tongue,” which was then denounced as “Wycliffe’s learning,” should “forfeit lands, cattle, body, life, and goods, from their heirs for ever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”