A HISTORY OF LONDON executions for heresy in London, the one which had the most extraordinary- consequences was that of Richard Wyche, vicar of Deptford, in June 1440. ' The people of his opinions ' regarded him as a saint, and made pilgrimages to the place on Tower Hill where he and his servant had been burnt, carrying away the ashes as relics. The vicar of All Hallows Barking encouraged them, ' to satisfy his false covetousness,' for they brought offerings as to a shrine. He even caused his servant to make a list of imaginary miracles performed there. The crowds became so great that on 14 July the deputy mayor and some aldermen had to intervene in order to restrain them. Next day the king ordered the sheriffs to command the people not to resort to Tower Hill or to speak of Wyche as innocent, and on 16 July the wardens of the livery companies were told to order their members not to make conventicles or in any way to help or favour Lollards, and to prevent their wives, servants, and apprentices from doing so. The vicar of All Hallows and many others were imprisoned, and a watch was set on Tower Hill night and day till the beginning of August.^**' Possibly these disturbances made the authorities more cautious in pro- ceeding to extreme measures. Whatever the reason, Wyche seems to have been the last heretic of any social importance burnt in London for more than ninety years. There were executions and recantations at intervals during the whole of that time ; but most of them are barely mentioned by the chroniclers. The fact that in 1441, when the Bishop of London ordered solemn processions and prayers to be made for the welfare of the army in France, he added among the subjects for intercession that the heresies of the Lollards might be put far away,^^" shows perhaps that their teaching was still considered a serious danger to the Church. But though Lollardry continued to exist in London till the Reformation its adherents henceforth seem to have been obscure persons, mostly poor. The normal religious life of the City appears to have been but little affected by the Lollard movement. During the late 14th and early 15th centuries many citizens, clerical and lay, obtained permission from the pope to have portable altars, to celebrate mass before daybreak, and to choose their own confessors ; "^ and indulgences of forty days or more were granted by the pope and archbishop in favour of various churches."' The civic customs included many religious observances, which are described in the Liber Albus, compiled in 141 9. It is probable that most of them were already ancient ; but one began in 1406, when before the election of a new mayor a Mass of the Holy Ghost was solemnly sung in the Guildhall chapel, that the commonalty might be enabled by the grace of the Holy Ghost peaceably to nominate two fit persons, and it was ordained that henceforth such a service should be held annually. The day after the election the mayor and aldermen used to go in procession to St. Paul's ; '" Rec. Corp. Journ. iii, fol. 46, 46^, 47 ; Close, 18 Hen. VI, m. 3d. (roughly translated in Foxe, op. cit. iii, 703) ; Chnn.of Lend. (ed. Nicolas), 125 ; Chron. ofLond. (ed. Kingsford), 147, 153 ; Hist. Coll. nt sup. 183 ; An Engl. Chron. (Camd. Soc), 56. The life of Wyche seems to have had little connexion with London, but he wrote a letter from there in 14 10, and was imprisoned in the Fleet in 1419 ; see Engl. Hist. Rev. V, 530 ; Fasc. Zix. (Rolls Ser.), 370, 501 ; Wylie, Hist, of Engl, iii, 463, 466 ; Wilkins, Cone, iii, 395. '" D. & C. St. Paul's, A, box 80, no. 3049. "' Cal. of Papal Letters, passim. Instances occur at this period of fabrication of bulls ; Wilkins, Cone, iii, 336-7, 431- '" Cal. of Papal Letters, iv, 356 ; v, 202. St. Pancr.is Soper Lane Rec. Bk. 1360, 1374. 222
