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So did Wicliffe proclaim. In his public lectures he now spoke of the Pope as "Antichrist, the proud worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and purse-kervers." And in one of his tracts that remain he thus speaks They [the Pope and his collectors] draw out of our land poor men's livelihood, and many thousand marks by the year, of the king's money, for Sacraments and spiritual things, that is cursed heresie of simony, and maketh all Christendom assent and meyntene his heresie. And certes though our realm had a huge hill of gold, and never other man took thereof but

approval of his conduct as a commissioner, and his growing influence at the court.

The Parliament, finding that the negotiation at Bruges had come to nothing, resolved on more decisive measures. The Pope took advantage of the king's remissness in enforcing the statutes directed against the Papal encroachments, and promised many things, but performed nothing. He still continued to appoint aliens to English

1 Great Sentence of Curse Expounded, c. 21; MSS. apud Lewis, Life of Wiclif.

went back to Rome with no inconsiderable sum

livings, notwithstanding his treaties to the contrary. If these usurpations were allowed, he would soon proceed to greater liberties, and would appoint to secular dignities also, and end by appropriating as his own the sovereignty of the realm. It was plain to the Parliament that a battle must be fought for the country's independence, and there were none but themselves to fight it. They drew up a bill of indictment against the Papal usurpations. In that document they set forth the manifold miseries under which the country was groaning from a foreign tyranny, which had crept into the kingdom under spiritual pretexts, but which was rapaciously consuming the fruits of the earth and the goods of the nation. The Parliament went on to say that the revenue drawn by the Pope from the realm was five times that which the king received; that he contrived to make one and the same dignity yield him six several taxes; that to increase his gains he frequently shifted bishops from one see to another; that he filled livings with ignorant and unworthy persons, while meritorious Englishmen were passed over, to the great discouragement of learning and virtue; that everything was venal in "the sinful city of Rome;" and that English patrons, corrupted by this pestilential example, had learned to practise simony without shame or remorse; that the Pope's collector had opened an establishment in the capital with a staff of officers, as if it were one of the great courts of the nation, "transporting yearly to the Pope twenty thousand marks, and most commonly more;" that the Pope received a richer revenue from England than any prince in Christendom drew from his kingdom; that this very year he had taken the firstfruits of all benefices; that he often imposed a special tax upon the clergy, which he sometimes expended in subsidising the enemies of the country; that "God hath given his sheep to the Pope to be pastured, and not shorn and shaven;" that "therefore it would be good to renew all the statutes against provisions from Rome," and that "no Papal collector or proctor should remain in England, upon pain of life and limb; and that no Englishman, on the like pain, should become such collector or proctor, or remain at the court of Rome." 1

In February, 1372, there appeared in England an agent of the Pope, named Arnold Garnier, who travelled with a suite of servants and six horses through England, and after remaining uninterruptedly two and a half years in the country,

Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. i., p. 561. Sir Robert Cotton's Abridgment, p. 128. Lewis, Life of Wiclif, pp. 34-37. Hume, Edw. III., chap. 16.

of money. He had a royal licence to return to England, of which he afterwards made use. He was required to swear that in collecting the Papal dues he would protect the rights and interests of the crown and the country. He took the oath in 1372 in the Palace of Westminster, in presence of the councillors and dignitaries of the crown. The fears of patriots were in no way allayed by the ready oath of the Papal agent; and Wicliffe in especial wrote a treatise to show that he had sworn to do what was a contradiction and an impossibility.

It was Wicliffe who breathed this spirit into the Commons of England, and emboldened them to fight this battle for the prerogatives of their prince, and their own rights as the free subjects of an independent realm. We recognise his graphic and trenchant style in the document of the Parliament. The Pope stormed when he found the gage of battle thrown down in this bold fashion. With an air of defiance he hastened to take it up, by appointing an Italian to an English benefice. But the Parliament stood firm; the temporal Lords sided with the Commons. "We will support the crown," said they, "against the tiara." The Lords spiritual adopted a like course; reserving their judgment on the ecclesiastical sentences of the Pope, they held that the temporal effects of his sentences were null, and that the Papal power availed nothing in that point against the royal prerogative.

The nation rallied in support of the Estates of the Realm. It pronounced no equivocal opinion when it styled the Parliament which had enacted these stringent edicts against the Papal bulls and agents "the Good Parliament." The Pope languidly maintained the conflict for a few years, but he was compelled ultimately to give way before the firm attitude of the nation. The statutes no longer remained a dead letter. They were enforced against every attempt to carry out the Papal appointments in England. Thus were the prerogatives of the sovereign and the independence of the country vindicated, and a victory achieved more truly valuable in itself, and more lasting in its consequences, than the renowned triumphs of Crecy and Poictiers, which rendered illustrious the same age and the same reign.

This was the second great defeat which Rome had sustained. England had refused to be a fief of the Papal See by withholding the tribute to Urban; and now, by repelling the Pontifical jurisdiction, she claimed to be mistress on her own territory. The clergy divined the quarter whence these rebuffs

Lechler, Johann von Wiclif; MSS. in the Royal Library at Vienna, No. 1,337; vol. i., p. 341.

proceeded. The real author of this movement, which was expanding every day, was at little pains to conceal himself. Ever since his return from Bruges, Wicliffe had felt a new power in his soul, propelling him onward in this war. The unscriptural constitution and blasphemous assumptions of the Papacy had been more fully disclosed to him, and he began to oppose it with a boldness an eloquence, and a force of argument which he had not till now been able to wield. Through many channels was he leavening the nation-his chair in Oxford; his pulpit in Lutterworth; the Parliament, whose de

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bates and edicts he inspired; and the court, whose policy he partly moulded. His sentiments were finding an echo in public opinion. The tide was rising. The hierarchy took the alarm. They cried for help, and the Pope took up their cause, which was not theirs only, but his as well. "The whole glut of monks or begging friars," says Fox, were set in a rage or madness, which (even as hornets with their stings) did assail this good man on every side, fighting (as is said) for their altars, paunches, and bellies. After them the priests, and then after them the archbishop took the matter in hand, being then Simon Sudbury."

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no difficult matter to extract from his works doctrines which militated against the power and wealth of Rome. The Oxford professor had taught that the Pope has no more power than ordinary priests to excommunicate or absolve men; that neither bishop nor Pope can validly excommunicate any man, unless by sin he has first made himself obnoxious to God; that princes cannot give endowments in perpetuity to the Church; that when their gifts are abused they have the right to recall them; and that Christ has given no temporal lordship to the Popes, and no supremacy over kings. These propositions, culled from the tracts of the Reformer, were sent to Pope Gregory XI.1

These doctrines were found to be of peculiarly bad odour at the Papal court. They struck at a branch of the Pontifical prerogative on which the holders of the tiara have always put a special value. If the world should come to be of Wicliffe's

1 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. i., p. 557. Lewis, Life of Wielif, pp. 46-48. Wicliffe's adversaries sent nineteen articles enclosed in a letter to the Pope, extracted from his letters and sermons. See in Lewis the copy which Sir Henry Spelman has put in his collection of the English Courcils.

sentiments, farewell to the temporal power of the Popes, the better half of their kingdom. The matter portended a terrible disaster to Rome, unless prevented in time. For broaching a similar doctrine, Arnold of Brescia had done expiation amid the flames. Wicliffe had been too long neglected; he must be immediately attended to.

Three separate bulls were drafted on the same day, May 22nd, 1377, and dispatched to England. These bulls hinted surprise at the supineness of the English clergy in not having ere now crushed this formidable heresy which was springing up on their soil, and they commanded them no longer to delay, but to take immediate steps for silencing the author of that heresy. One of the bulls was addressed to Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and William Courtenay, Bishop of London; the second was addressed to the king, and the third to the University of Oxford. They were all of the same tenor. The one addressed to the king dwelt on the greatness of England, "as glorious in power and richness, but more illustrious for the piety of its faith, and for its using to shine with the brightness of the sacred page." The Scriptures had not

2 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. i., p. 556.

3 Lewis, Life of Wiclif, p. 49.

4 Ibid., p. 51.

yet been translated into the vernacular tongue, and the Papal compliment which turns on this point is scarcely intelligible.

The university was commanded to take care that tares did not spring up among its wheat, and that from its chairs propositions were not taught "detestable and damnable, tending to subvert the state of the whole Church, and even of the civil government." The bull addressed to the bishops was expressed in terms still more energetic. The Pope could not help wishing that the Rector of Lutterworth and Professor of Divinity " was not a master of errors, and had run into a kind of detestable wickedness, not only and openly publishing, but also vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his breast divers professions, false and erroneous conclusions, and most wicked and damnable heresies, whereby he might defile the faithful sort, and bring them from the right path headlong into the way of perdition." They were therefore to apprehend the said John Wicliffe, to shut him up in prison, to send all proofs and evidence of his heresy to the Pope, taking care that the document was securely sealed, and entrusted to a faithful messenger, and that meanwhile they should retain the prisoner in safe custody, and await further instructions. Thus did Pope Gregory throw the wolf's hide over Wicliffe, that he might let slip his Dominicans in full cry upon his track.1

The zeal of the bishops anticipated the orders of the Pope. Before the bulls had arrived in England the prosecution of Wicliffe was begun. At the instance of Courtenay, Bishop of London, Wicliffe was cited to appear on the 19th of February, 1377, in Our Lady's Chapel in St. Paul's, to answer for his teaching. The rumour of what was going on got wind in London, and when the day came a great crowd assembled at the door of St. Paul's. Wicliffe, attended by two powerful friends-John, Duke of Lancaster, better known as John of Gaunt, and Lord Percy, Earl Marshal of England-appeared at the skirts of the assemblage. The Duke of Lancaster and Wicliffe had first met, it is probable, at Bruges, where it chanced to both to be on a mission at the same time. Lancaster held the Reformer in high esteem, on political if not on religious grounds. Favouring his opinions, he resolved to go with him and show him countenance before the tribunal of the bishops. "Here stood Wicliffe in the presence of his judges, a meagre form dressed in a long light mantle of black cloth, similar to those worn at this day by doctors, masters, and

1 Fox, Acts and Mon., vol. i., p. 563. Lewis, Life of Wiclif, pp. 59, 51.

students in Cambridge and Oxford, with a girdle round the middle; his face, adorned with a long thick beard, showed sharp bold features, a clear piercing eye, firmly closed lips, which bespoke decision; his whole appearance full of great earnestness, significance, and character."?

But the three friends had found it no easy matter to elbow their way through the crowd. In forcing a passage something like an uproar took place, which scandalised the court. Percy was the first to make his way into the Chapel of Our Lady, where the clerical judges were assembled in their robes and insignia of office.

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Percy," said Bishop Courtenay, sharply—more offended, it is probable, at seeing the humble Rector of Lutterworth so powerfully befriended, than at the tumult which their entrance had created-" if I had known what masteries you would have kept in the church, I would have stopped you from coming in hither."

"He shall keep such masteries," said John of Gaunt, gruffly, "though you say nay."

"Sit down, Wicliffe," said Percy, having but scant reverence for a court which owed its authority to a foreign power-" sit down ; you have many things to answer to, and have need to repose yourself on a soft seat."

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He must and shall stand," said Courtenay, still more chafed; "it is unreasonable that one on his trial before his ordinary should sit."

"Lord Percy's proposal is but reasonable," interposed the Duke of Lancaster; "and as for you," said he, addressing Bishop Courtenay, "who are grown so arrogant and proud, I will bring down the pride not of you alone, but that of all the prelacy in England."

To this menace the bishop calmly replied " that his trust was in no friend on earth, but in God." This answer but the more inflamed the anger of the duke, and the altercation became yet warmer, till at last John of Gaunt was heard to say that "rather than take such words from the bishop, he would drag him out of the court by the hair of the head."

It is hard to say what the strife between the

2 Lechler, Johann von Wiclif, vol. i., p. 370. In 1851 a remarkable portrait of Wicliffe came to light in possession of a family named Payne, in Leicester. It is a sort of palimpsest. The original painting of Wicliffe, which seems to have come down from the fifteenth century, had been painted over before the Reformation, and changed into the portrait of an unknown Dr. Robert Langton; the original was discovered beneath it, and this represents Wicliffe in somewhat earlier years, with fuller and stronger features than in the other and commonly known portraits. (British Quarterly Review, Oct., 1858.)