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HYPATIA BRADLAUGH BONNER: PENALTIES UPON OPINION, or SOME RECORDS OF THE LAWS OF HERESY AND BLASPHEMY [1912, 1934]

- Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) was a secularist, well-known in Victorian times, for birth control activities, campaigning for 'affirmation' rather than Church of England swearing in, and being ejected from Parliament.
      His life intersected with overt Jewish penetration; I cannot say whether Bradlaugh was secretly funded in his campaigns, and his selection and promotion as party candidate and MP, but it's clearly possible. Joseph McCabe in his Freemasons booklet states he was definitely a Freemason. He published The Laws Relating to Blasphemy and Heresy in 1878.
      Bradlaugh's daughter was Hypatia Bradlaugh.
      All that follows refers to legal actions, not just in heresy and blasphemy, but sedition of British societal power structure. At no point is covert Jewish power—the 'Bank of England', and the Jewish parts of the 'Church of England'—ever mentioned. The publishers were a typical collection of Jews, censoring with complete ruthlessness gains which Jews had made. Hence the lists of executions, convictions and imprisonments are all from the Jewish perspective and of course mostly postdate William of Orange. I personally hope revisionism will take hold and this will change. Many of the legal cases may be understood as 'turf wars' between Jew writings and their beneficiaries, and the English.
      The 'J' suffix means 'Judge'.
      Apart from the already-mentioned censorship, the book is interesting on the interrelations & changes of power structures & systems of beliefs; e.g. Rome, Popes, bishops, Kings, nobles, heretics, peasants etc etc

-Published as #39 in the Thinker's Library series by Watts & Co
- Well laid out small format with dates and names in the margins
- 1912 Introduction by Bonner refers to 1878 Bradlaugh pamphlet & 1882 'History of Criminal Law' & a few other things; & 'a new generation has come to manhood.. recent recrudescence of prosecutions for blasphemy..'
- pp 1 ff seem to have been added by F W Read, who 'revised and enlarged the third edition'. (Thinkers Library aren't good on saying who wrote what); seems to refer to, among others, 1914 Criminal Justice Administration Act, Bowman v Secular Society 1915-1917 [IMPORTANT!], and J W Gott 1922 (who got 9 months hard labour), and Blasphemy Laws (Amendment) Act, 1930.
- Unindexed in the sense there's no way to look up particular subjects; however there are dated notes of cases in the margins
- Sources quoted include J R Green and Hallam; and volumes on constitutional history and law. There's a larger book, G D Nokes A History of the Crime of Blasphemy of about the same date. I haven't attempted to survey recent works.

People gullible about early Christianity might like this, from the start of the book:
The period of real or supposed Jewish expulsion (1290 to 1649, say) is not mentioned in any way, as of course is to be expected in Jewish-controlled publishing in England in 1900-ish. They would not want to draw any attention to it. Or to the possibility that (as in Spain) there were crypto-Jews in England. There's some evidence that Jews secretly collaborated with Catholics; again, this is never mentioned by Bonner or her editor(s). Note that Scotland never expelled Jews; there's no discussion of Scottish laws relating to religion, though there must have been enlightening tales to tell.

Note: is 'Christianity' part of English law? Of the following all but Coleridge say yes, but in a hesitating way, since obviously Biblical exhortations aren't part of the law at all [Law of property? Laws on arms and soldiering? Tithes? Slavery etc?]
      41 Eliz./ 1649 Judge Jermin/ 1649 and 1657 Lord Keble/ 1676 Matthew Hale/ 1726 Raymond/ 1797 Kenyon (on bookseller of Tom Paine)/ ? Tenterden/ 1883 Coleridge/ ? Erskine
      Somewhere in the book is a Judge stating that the Church of England is 'established' and thus differs from all other religions.

This is English law only, and only the Christian religion: legal and violent actions by Jews, Muslims, etc aren't considered even in passing. This book naturally assumes that blasphemy and heresy are opinions which should not be subject to legislation, and equally naturally says nothing about e.g. The Talmud.. Interesting and curious cases include George Fox and James Naylor (the latter's tongue being bored, forehead branded, and the remainder of his life at hard labour); Paine's The Age of Reason; a forged Act of Parliament used by bishops to make money.

- Index (pages ix-xi) lists Cases & Laws chronologically; the newest parts therefore are at the end of the book. The following list is NOT EXHAUSTIVE:
12th and 13th Centuries
WYCLIFFE 1378
STATUTE OF HERETICS 1400 seems to be de haeretico comburendo [Note: revisionism: it appears heretics were burnt long before witches - abolished 1677]
WILLIAM SAWTRE 1400
JOHN BADBY 1410
HENRY V
HENRY VI .. HENRY VII
HENRY VIII
EDWARD VI
DEPRAVING THE LORD'S SUPPER
IN DEROGATION OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
EDWARD WIGHTMAN 1611 ['Last person burnt for heresy in England..']
GEORGE FOX 1656
HOBBES 1666
9 WILLIAM III/ 60 GEORGE III/ 6 GEORGE IV
CHAMBERLAIN OF LONDON v. EVANS
JOHN TAYLOR, 1676
(gap of 52 years!)
THOMAS WOOLSTON, 1728
DE COSTA v. DE PAZ, 1745
THOMAS WILLIAMS 1797 [Selling one copy of Tom Paine Part 2]
SHELLEY V WESTBROOKE 1817
1817ff RICHARD CARLILE [And 150 or so 'ordinary people'; this was in connection with selling Tom Paine's 'The Age of Reason']
[Huge list of 19th Century people...]
LAWRENCE v SMITH 1822 [Book on physiology pirated by a bookseller who claimed it was blasphemous and hence not subject to copyright; Lord Eldon refused injunction against bookseller 'considering the law does not give protection to those who contradict the Scriptures']
WADDINGTON 1822 [inc. description of selling books in a way that neither buyer nor seller could see each other]
COMMISSIONERS' REPORT ON THE LAW 1841
CHARLES SOUTHWELL 1842
ACT OF 1842
THOMAS PATERSON 1843
1845 last date Ecclesiastical Court ordered imprisonment for heresy for not exc 6 months
BRADLAUGH 1859
"ESSAYS AND REVIEWS" 1864
"THE NATIONAL REFORMER" 1868
ANNIE BESANT 1878
DR PANKHURST 1886
SPENCER BEQUEST 1887
RELIGIOUS PROSECUTIONS ABOLITION BILL 1889
[Several bequests inc Jones 1907 to organisations of Secular Society type]
HARRY BOULTER 1908
J A JACKSON (SHANGHAI) 1911
J W GOTT 1911
FREDERICK CHASTY AND DOUGLAS C. MUIRHEAD 1912
1914 CRIMINAL JUSTICE ADMINISTRATION ACT
BOWMAN V SECULAR SOCIETY 1915-1917 [Long court case; family tried to get money, taking their claim to House of Lords. Includes the part of the judgment that Christianity is not part of the laws of England; this is 'rhetoric' (126); and discusses legal position as to whether anti-Christian objects are legal - or something like that. Lord Sumner is quoted]
J W GOTT 1922
BLASPHEMY LAWS (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1930 [inc. Draft Bill]

    - 4: '.. In the long run persecution, unless it is extermination, always tends to injure the cause of the persecutor and exalt that of the martyr. Catholics, formerly the persecutors, became proscribed in their turn; and laws which might have been used against them remained unrepealed till 1926.' - typical rather weak argument; cp perhaps arguments to abolish capital punishment.
Note: feeble revisionism: Bradlaugh is quoted after title page: '.. the sedition, blasphemy and immorality punished in one age are often found to be the accepted, and sometimes the admired, political, religious, and social teaching of a more educated period. ...' (Hence, laws to 'punish differences of opinion are as useless as they are monstrous.') - More typical unsupported (except by a few related cases, which in any case are rather obsolete)
    - 5-6: '.. the law of Rome... You will get laws intended to aggrandise the priests, to shield them from civil and criminal responsibility, and to enable them to extort money with ease and hoard it with safety. .. also.. many statutes .. to despoil of their property, to banish, even to kill, all those sects of Christians who did not bow the knee to Rome, but were guilty of the crime of understanding the teaching of Christ differently from the Roman bishops. Few people are aware of the ruthless violence with which all dissent from the Church of Rome was stamped out. Before a century had passed under the Christian Emperors the catalogue of Rome's victims was to be reckoned by hundreds of thousands. In a statute passed in the year 428 against heretics we have a curious numeration of sects.. Arians and Macedonians, Pneumatomachi and Apollinariani and Novatiani or Sabbatiani, Eunomiani, Tetraditae, Valentiniani, Papianistae, Montanists or Priscillianists, Marcianists, Borboriani, Messaliani, Eutychitae or Enthusiastae, Donatists, Audiani, Hydroparastatae, Tascodrogitae, Batrachitae, Hermeieciani, Photiniani, Saccophori, and, worst of all, the Manichaeans and Nestorians. .. about thirty sects who were broken up and destroyed by the criminal law.' [From W A Hunter, 'The Past and Present of our Heresy Laws']
(NB p 17 mentions Ebion, Cerinthus, Valentinian, Arrius, Macedonius, Simon Magus, Manes, Manichaeus, Photius, and the Anabaptists as ten heresies 'laid to' Edward Wightman).
    - 6: [Forgery by bishops of an Act of Parliament in c 1380 when the only power of the bishops was excommunication; they wanted something more severe. Note: power: 'Henry IV .. purchased the support of the nobles by a promise to reverse the peace policy of his predecessor, and the support of the clergy by the even more terrible promise of persecution. ..'
    - 7: Statute of Heretics 1400: may be the same as de hæretico comburendo - unsure from here.
'.. power to the bishops .. to arrest and imprison .. all preachers of heresy.. all schoolmasters.. all owners and writers of heretical books. On a refusal to abjure or a relapse after abjuration, the heretic could "be handed over to the civil officers.. to be burnt.." .. the earliest and most ferocious laws against heretics were.. the handiwork of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal...'
    - 9ff: 'The powers of the clergy under the law were still further extended in 1414 under Henry V... The Statute of Heretics was only finally abolished in 1677, under Charles II...' [gives various estimated for total deaths; and names of sundry persons who were burnt.] '.. Henry VIII...'
    -16: [last person burnt to death for heresy usually spoken of as Bartholomew Legate, but in fact Edward Wightman was burned about a month later.]
    - 27: [Note: power: 1748 bye-law fining people who refused to serve in the Corporation of London, but with legal proviso that such persons must have taken the sacrament in the Church of England .. etc; in this way Dissenters were fined huge sums of money.]

    Pages 22-25 discuss February 24, 1698: '[An Act 9 William III, c. 32] ... any person or persons having been educated in, or at any time having made profession of, the Christian religion within this realm shall ... assert or maintain there are more gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority... [then—my wording—if convicted shall be sacked from any job; if convicted again, in addition jailed for three years] ... a Bill was read a first time in the Lords “for the more effectual suppressing of Atheism, Blasphemy, and Profaneness.” ... On March 7 a Bill was read a first time “for the more effectual suppressing Profaneness, Immorality, and Debauchery.” ... On May 18 the Commons disagreed with the Lords' amendment to leave out “having been educated in, or at any time having made profession of, the Christian religion.” ... The Commons represented that the amendment “will subject the Jews who live amongst us to all the pains and penalties contained in the Bill, which must therefore of necessity ruin them or drive them out of the kingdom; ...” The Lords decided not to insist ...'
      It seems to follow that, at that time, the aristocracy wished to disallow Jews from continuing what they presumably thought was a false religion. Possibly the Commons at the time was Jew-supported, following Cromwell. much like the 'Labour' party in the 20th century.

    - 28ff Judge-made law as to blasphemy - 1676. Sir Matthew Hale. Someone called Taylor, described as mad, saying things like 'religion is a cheat' and also claiming to be Christ's younger brother. Hale said "... Christianity being part and parcel of the laws of England, therefore to reproach the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the law." Hale's judgment has been followed and his words slavishly adopted by Lord Chief Justice after Lord Chief Justice for two hundred years.. to Lord Chief Justice Coleridge [see below] .. in 1883. .. Hale's observation introduced a conundrum..
Various similar phrases eg from 41 Eliz. and 1649, Judge Jermin. And Lord Keble at the same trial, and 1657....
    - 34: Thomas Woolston, Fellow of Sydney Sussex published various works. 1726 Six Discourses on the Miracles. 30 000 copies said to have been sold, 60 pamphlets in reply. No extract is quoted here. Lord Chief Justice Raymond: "Christianity in general is parcel of the common law of England, and therefore to be protected by it. ... To say that an attempt to subvert the established religion is not punishable by these laws upon which it is established is an absurdity." Woolston never seems to have got out of prison - perhaps because of a fine and huge 'recognisance' of £2000 - and died about four years later in jail.
    - 35: de Paz, Jew, £1200 bequest for a 'jesuba' declared illegal; £1000 given to the Foundling Hospital.
    - 39 Revisionist view of Wilberforce: '.. name.. handed down in honour during the past hundred years for his unwearied endeavours to procure the emancipation of the slave; but .. he was a ruthless persecutor of his heretical fellow-countrymen. ..' (Account of The Society employing Erskine against the bookseller Williams - Erskine found Williams' children had small pox, or something, but The Society wouldn't be merciful - Erskine refused any further contact with them). Ashhurst J said attacks upon Christianity are crimes which e.g. strip the law of the dread of future punishment.
    - 43: [Last use of the pillory. Abolished 1837]
    - 45-46: [Two juries find William Hone in 1817 Not Guilty 'received with a burst of applause from the court' - parody of Athanasian Creed but apparently with political overtones though what these were aren't made clear; probably Tom Paine related]
    - 46ff: Paine's Age of Reason: Richard Carlile arrested 1817 for 'The Parodies..', then 1819 ('at the instance of the Society for the Suppression of Vice') Three day trial apparently Lord Chief Justice; judgment three years and £1,500 fine. Carlile jailed six years. Then his wife - two years. Then sister - three years as also wouldn't pay. 53: '.. his shopmen and shopwomen came forward to sell the condemned work, and they also were sent to prison.. Volunteers came from all parts of the country.. first behind the counter in the shop, next in the dock, and finally in the gaol. ... It has been estimated that about 150 persons were imprisoned in this way..'
    - 50fn: '.. People were sent to prison for staying away from church without satisfactory excuse so late as 1842.'
    - 63ff: History of the Taxes on Knowledge by Collet Dobson Collet
    - 80 Thomas Pooley case which attracted John Stuart Mill's attention, then Buckle, who investigated it thoroughly
    - 83: Bolton Concert Hall 1859 'walls placarded with the announcement that the lectures would not be permitted to take place.' - breaches of contract for the next 25 years.
    - 87 Essays and Reviews off 1860 'produced a great outcry in ecclesiastical circles.'
    - 103: Lord Chief Justice Coleridge in 1883; opened up a new reading of the law [on blasphemy, and/or blasphemous libels]. He said Jews and nonconformists now have civil rights. Christianity isn't the law of the land. He said Hale, Raymond, and Tenterden used it in that sense. (This was an offensive cartoons trial).
      105ff outlines the outcome: Coleridge was himself surprised. Chief Justice Kenyon (Christian Evidences) & Chief Justice Best (beauty of the Christian religion) made fun of. W Blake Odgers accepted the ruling; Sir J F Stephen didn't and said it was essentially and fundamentally bad. This was on grounds of manner rather than matter.
    - 126 Charles Bowman's gift to the Secular Society Ltd.
      'One matter of great interest is the final denial of the famous dictum that Christianity is part of the law of the land. A trenchant passage may be quoted from Lord Sumner: "With all respect for the great names of the lawyers who have used it, the phrase 'Christianity is part of the law of England' is really not law; it is rhetoric, as truly as was Erskine's peroration when prosecuting Williams: 'No man can be expected to be faithful to the authority of man who revolts against the Government of God.' One asks what part of our law may Christianity be, and what part of Christianity may it be that is part of our law? Best C.J. once said in Bird v. Holbrook (a case of injury by setting a spring-gun): 'There is no act which Christianity forbids that the law will not reach: if it were otherwise, Christianity would not be, as it has always been held to be, part of the law of England'; but this was rhetoric too. Spring-guns indeed were got rid of, not by Christianity, but by Act of Parliament. 'Thou shalt not steal' is part of our law. ... [ellipses in original] 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself' is not part of our law at all. Christianity has tolerated chattel slavery; not so the present law of England." '
    - 132-139: CONCLUSION
    - 135: 'Christians are hardly in a position to complain .. while representative of their religion heap coarse and scurrilous insults upon Freethinkers as a body, ..' [Missionary Exhibition, London, 1911 'to some extent.. regarded as a gross travesty and an insult by some of those whose native religions were being thus exploited for the entertainment of the British public.']

Valuable small book to tell, or remind, people how Christianity in its powerful times acted against blasphemy and heresy. Throughout the book, there are accounts of how Christianity was viewed by lawyers, up to the case of Bowman during WW1, when, though not before, it was explicitly conceded that Christianity is not 'part of the law of the land'.

The weakness of this book is, of course, that it has no comparisons with other groups and their censorships, notably of course Jews, but in general with other belief systems. It will be a long time before Jewish-imposed laws in the USSR and other conquered areas can have any honest presentation. Its possible strength is that it predates post-1945 Jewish supremacism. There may be second-hand copies still available.

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Notes, HTML, by Rae West in the 1990s. Online review 20 Feb 2017. Expanded version 1 Sept 2019.