Note 250 — Chapter XXIX

Footnote 250: This view of heresy we find to have been at a very early date propagated and encouraged by the Pope and the See of Rome. Walsingham records, that, three years before Richard II.'s deposition from the throne, "the Pope wrote to him with a prayer (orans) that he would assist the prelates of the church in the cause of God, and of the King himself, and of the kingdom, against the Lollards; whom he declared to be traitors, not only of the church, but of the throne. And he besought him with the greatest urgency (obnixiùs) to condemn those whom the prelates should have declared heretics.—Ypod. Neust. 1396.(back)