knowing at the ſame time that they were delivering the unhappy victim to certain death. Hence the capital puniſhments inflicted on the antient Donatiſts and Manichaeans by the emperors Theodoſius and Juſtinian[1]: hence alſo the conſtitution of the emperor Frederic mentioned by Lyndewode[2], adjudging all perſons without diſtinction to be burnt with fire, who were convicted of hereſy by the eccleſiaſtical judge. The ſame emperor, in another conſtitution[3], ordained that if any temporal lord, when admoniſhed by the church, ſhould neglect to clear his territories of heretics within a year, it ſhould be lawful for good catholics to ſeiſe and occupy the lands, and utterly to exterminate the heretical poſſeſſors. And upon this foundation was built that arbitrary power, ſo long claimed and ſo fatally exerted by the pope, of diſpoſng even of the kingdoms of refractory princes to more dutiful ſons of the church. The immediate event of this conſtitution was ſomething ſingular, and may ſerve to illuſtrate at once the gratitude of the holy ſee, and the juſt puniſhment of the royal bigot: for upon the authority of this very conſtitution, the pope afterwards expelled this very emperor Frederic from his kingdom of Sicily, and gave it to Charles of Anjou[4].
Christianity being thus deformed by the daemon of perſecution upon the continent, we cannot expect that our own iſland ſhould be entirely free from the ſame ſcourge. And therefore we find among our antient precedents[5] a writ de haeretico comburendo, which is thought by ſome to be as antient as the common law itſelf. However it appears from thence, that the conviction of hereſy by the common law was not in any petty eccleſiaſtical court, but before the archbiſhop himſelf in a provincial ſynod; and that the delinquent was delivered over to the king to do as he ſhould pleaſe with him: ſo that the crown had a control over the ſpiritual power, and might pardon the convict by iſſuing
