De Heretico Forisfaciendo: Felony Forfeiture and the Punishment of Heresy

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In England during the late middle ages and the early modern period 'heretics' - those Christians who dissented from the Church's teaching on matters of doctrine - were widely persecuted. It was held to be the duty of the clergy and the crown to coerce erring Christians into retracting their views and to protect the rest of society from such false beliefs. Heretics who refused to recant or who, having previously renounced their views, then relapsed were burnt at the stake. Between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries about 400 men and women were thus condemned. While burning was the most dramatic, it was not the only punishment inflicted on condemned heretics, who also lost their lands and possessions. It is with forfeiture by heretics that this project is concerned. The confiscation of heretics' estates raises a number of questions: some are peculiar to this practice, while others apply generally to the enforcement of religious uniformity.One question specific to forfeiture that we could ask is who obtained a heretic's estate: the Church, the king or queen, the lord whose tenant the heretic was, the community in which he or she lived, or his or her family and friends? This project approaches the problem through the crown's interest in such an estate; one of several claims, its advantage to the historian is in leaving behind extensive evidence revealing the pursuit of this royal right. Indeed, most records relating to heresy forfeiture are found in the Exchequer, the department of government concerned with the collection of the crown's income. Answering our first question raises another: how was this royal right exercised and also evaded? The crown's efforts to secure a heretic's property - often against the interests of other parties (including the victim's family and friends) - depended on the work of its agents and on the co-operation of local communities in arranging and serving upon inquest juries. The degree to which ordinary people helped and also hindered the identification of heretics' estates illuminates popular reactions to the persecution. By looking at forfeiture, this project sees heresy in the same light as did contemporaries: as a felony, that is, a capital crime like murder, rape, and robbery. The bracketing together of these offences exemplifies the way in which the persecution of heresy combined religious and secular power. In theory, this meant harmonizing the international laws of the Church, the operation of church courts in England, the customs of the common law, and acts passed by parliament. In practice, this meant dividing responsibility between the clergy (who defined heresy and judged cases), the monarch (who aided the Church in detecting heretics and in enforcing its sentences), and laymen (who contributed by detecting and testifying against heretics). But how prepared was the crown to accept its merely supporting role, and laymen the subordination of their own laws to those of the Church? Forfeiture provides another perspective on the shifting balance between religious and secular authority. While the break with Rome undermined the Church's independence in punishing heretics and unsettled definitions of what beliefs were heretical, it did little to alter the conviction that heresy itself was a crime deserving severe punishment, of which forfeiture remained one element.