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ENGLISH LAW. 467 little attention. Even as late as 1372 a man was arrested in South- wark with the head and face of a corpse in his possession, and a book of magic was found in his trunk. Tried before the Inquisi- tion he would infallibly have confessed under torture a series of misdeeds and have ended at the stake ; but he was brought before Sir J. Knyvet, in the King's Bench. No indictment even was found against him ; he was simply sworn not to practise sorcery and was discharged, but the head and book were burned at Tot- hill at his expense. To the fair and open character of English law is doubtless to be attributed the comparative exemption of the island from the terror of sorcery, but when, at last, persecuting excitement arose in the Lollard troubles, the Church used its influ- ence with the new Lancastrian dynasty to suppress the emissaries of Satan. In 1407 Henry IY. issued letters to his bishops reciting that sorcerers, magicians, conjurers, necromancers, and diviners abounded in their dioceses, perverting the people and perpetrating things horrible and detestable. The bishops, therefore, were com- missioned to imprison all such malefactors, either with or without trial, until they should recant their errors or the king's pleasure could be learned respecting them. The placing of the matter thus in the hands of the Church, and depriving the accused of all legal safeguards, is most significant as a recognition that the ordinary forms of English law were not to be depended upon in such cases, and that public opinion as yet was too unformed for juries to be trusted. Under the regency the royal council seems to have assumed jurisdiction over the matter. In 1432 a Dominican of Worcester, Thomas Northfield, suspected of sorcery, was sum- moned before it with all his books of magic. A few days later it heard the celebrated Witch of Eye, Margery Jourdemayne, with the Dominican John Ashewell and John Virby, a clerk, who had been confined at Windsor under charge of sorcery, but they were discharged on giving bonds for good behavior. The Witch of Eye did not fare so well when, in 1441, she was implicated in the accu- sation brought against the Duchess of Gloucester, of making and melting a wax figurine of Henry VI. The duchess confessed and escaped with the penance of walking bareheaded thrice through the streets with wax tapers of two pounds each, and offering them at the shrines of St. Paul's, Christ Church, and St. Michael's in Cornhill, after which she was imprisoned and finally banished to