heresy is the holding of religious views regarded or defined as unacceptable by the church and, if persisted in, carried the punishment of burning. The first notable British heretics were Pelagius and Celestius, who taught in Rome in the early 5th cent., and argued, against Augustine, that man's own efforts could steer him towards salvation. Condemned by Pope Innocent I, pelagianism continued to find support in Britain and St Germanus was sent over in 429 specifically to deal with it. Accusations of heresy were rarely made against lay people, who neither preached nor published, and whose grasp of Christian doctrine was often, as their pastors complained, distressingly approximate. The assumption was that they were ignorant of the truth and seldom persisted in error when it was pointed out to them. Heresy was hardly a problem in the Anglo-Saxon church or in the immediate post-Conquest period, and only a handful of cases can be identified. Nevertheless the church remained on its guard. A group of weavers, possibly Cathars, arrived in 1165 from Flanders or Germany and settled in Worcester: they were branded and not allowed to remain. Concern over heresy dates from Wyclif's challenge to the doctrine of transubstantiation and his attacks upon the wealth of the church, which, coming in the 1370s at a time of economic unrest, gained him considerable support. Though Henry IV's act De heretico comburendo passed in 1401 it was only after Oldcastle's lollard rebellion in 1414 that systematic persecution of heresy began. In Scotland, James Resby, a follower of Wyclif, was burned at Perth in 1407, and a Hussite at St Andrews in 1432. There was a marked revival of lollardy in the late 15th and early 16th cents., which merged with the Lutheran heresy. Henry VIII repealed De heretico comburendo in 1533 but retained the right to burn heretics. Edward VI then repealed all statutes against heresy, though it remained an offence at common law. Mary at once revived the previous statutes and Elizabeth abolished them again in 1558. anabaptists continued to suffer since they were regarded as totally subversive of the social order, James ordering a burning in 1612. In Scotland the laws against heresy were repealed by the Reformation Parliament of 1560. In Charles II's reign, an Act of 1677 abolished the writ De heretico comburendo, but reiterated the right of ecclesiastical courts to punish heresy, short of death.

Though persecution of laymen for heresy ceased, the careers of clerics and academics (in holy orders) could still be jeopardized by charges of heresy, and the offence of blasphemy remained dangerous. James Nayler, a quaker, was whipped, branded, and had his tongue bored for blasphemy in 1656/7, and Thomas Aikenhead, a mere youth, was executed in Edinburgh in 1697. William Whiston, Newton's successor at Cambridge, was deprived of his chair in 1710 for arianism; John Simon, professor of divinity at Glasgow, was suspended in 1729 on the same charge; Thomas Woolston, a fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, lost his fellowship in 1721, was prosecuted for blasphemy in 1729, and died in prison. Later prosecutions included the publishers of Paine's The Age of Reason (1797, 1812, 1819), the publisher of Shelley's Queen Mab (1821), and George Holyoake for a lecture (1842). In 1977 Mary Whitehouse brought a successful private action against Gay News for printing a poem portraying Christ as a homosexual. Existing legislation against blasphemy protects Christianity only and there has been pressure to extend it to cover Islam and other religions.

J. A. Cannon