The Church was declared to have become apostate, its priesthood was denounced as no priesthood, its sacraments as idolatry.
[Sidenote: Lollardry and the Church] It was in vain that the clergy attempted to stifle the new movement by their old weapon of persecution.

The jealousy entertained by the baronage and gentry of every pretension of the Church to secular power foiled its efforts to make persecution effective.

At the moment of the Peasant Revolt Courtenay procured the enactment of a statute which commissioned the sheriffs to seize all persons convicted before the bishops of preaching heresy.

But the statute was repealed in the next session, and the Commons added to the bitterness of the blow by their protest that they considered it "in nowise their interest to be more under the jurisdiction of the prelates or more bound by them than their ancestors had been in times past." Heresy indeed was still a felony by the common law, and if as yet we meet with no instances of the punishment of heretics by the fire it was because the threat of such a death was commonly followed by the recantation of the Lollard.

But the restriction of each bishop's jurisdiction within the limits of his own diocese made it impossible to arrest the wandering preachers of the new doctrine, and the civil punishment--even if it had been sanctioned by public opinion--seems to have long fallen into desuetude.