_L._ He has omitted the judgment against a heretic, because, I think, no jury can find heresy, nor no judge temporal did ever pronounce judgment upon it. For the statute of 2 _Hen. V_, _c._ 7, was, that the bishop having convicted any man of heresy, should deliver him to the sheriff, and that the sheriff should believe the bishop. The sheriff therefore was bound by the statute of 2 _Hen. IV_, after he was delivered to him, to burn him; but that statute being repealed, the sheriff could not burn him, without a writ _de heretico comburendo_, and therefore the sheriff burnt Legat (9 King James) by that writ, which was granted by the judges of the common-law at that time, and in that writ the judgment is expressed. _P._ This is strange reasoning. When Sir Edward Coke knew and confessed, that the statutes upon which the writ _de hæretico comburendo_ was grounded, were all repealed, how could he think the writ itself could be in force? Or that the statute, which repealeth the statutes for burning heretics, was not made with an intent to forbid such burning? It is manifest he understood not his books of common-law. For in the time of Henry IV and Henry V, the word of the bishop was the sheriff’s warrant, and there was need of no such writ; nor could be till the 25 _Hen. VIII_, when those statutes were repealed, and a writ made for that purpose and put into the register, which writ Fitzherbert cites in the end of his <cite lang="la">Natura Brevium_. Again, in the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was published a correct register of original and judicial writs, and the writ _de hæretico comburendo_ left out; because that statute of 25 _Hen. VIII_, and all statutes against heretics, were repealed, and burning forbidden. And whereas he citeth for the granting of this writ, in the ninth year of James I, the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Baron, and two Justices of the Common-Pleas, it is, as to all but the Lord Chief Justice, against the law. For neither the judges of Common-Pleas, nor of the Exchequer, can hold pleas of the Crown without special commission; and if they cannot hold plea, they cannot condemn. _L._ The punishment for felony is, that the felon be hanged by the neck till he be dead. And to prove that it ought to be so, he cites a sentence, from whence I know not, _Quod non licet felonem pro felonia decollare._. _P._ It is not indeed lawful for the sheriff of his own head to do it, or to do otherwise than is commanded in the judgment, nor for the judge to give any other judgment than according to statute-law, or the usage consented to by the King; but this hinders not the King from altering his law concerning judgments, if he see good cause.