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from it, so far from being abated or extinguished, were greatly aggravated; and a few years later, we find another General Council assembling at Constance, if haply it might effect what that of Pisa had failed to accomplish.1

We return to England. While the schism continued to scandalise and vex Romanists on the Continent, the growth of Lollardism was not less a torment to the clergy in England. Despite the vigour of Arundel, who spared neither edicts nor faggots, the seeds which that arch-enemy of the Papacy, Wicliffe, had sown, would ever be springing up, and mingling the wheat of Rome with the tares of heresy. Oxford, in especial, demanded the primate's attention. That fountain had savoured of Lollardism ever since Wicliffe taught there. It must be purified. The archbishop set out, with a pompous retinue, to hold a visitation of the university (1411). The chancellor, followed by a numerous body of proctors, masters, and students, met him at a little distance from the gates, and told him that if he came merely to see the town he was welcome, but if he came in his character of visitor, he begged to remind his Grace that the University of Oxford, in virtue of the Papal bull, was exempt from episcopal and archiepiscopal jurisdiction. This rebuff Arundel could ill bear. He left Oxford in a day or two, and wrote an account of the affair to the king. The heads of the university were sent for to court, and the chancellor and proctors were turned out of their office. The students, taking offence at this rigour, ceased their attendance on the public lectures, and were on the point of breaking up and dissolving their body.

After a warm contention between the university and the archbishop, the matter, by consent of both parties, was referred to the king. Henry decided that the point should remain on the footing on which Richard II. had placed it." Thus judgment was given in favour of the archbishop, and the royal decision was confirmed first by Parliament and next by John XXIII., in a bull that made void the privilege of exemption which Pope Boniface had conferred on the university."

This opened the door of Oxford to the archbishop. Meanwhile Convocation raised a yet louder cry of Wicliffitism in the university, and pressed the primate to interpose his authority ere that "former seat of learning and virtue" had become utterly corrupt. It was an astounding fact, Con

1 See ante, bk. iii., chap. 4.

2 Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 630.

3 This bull was afterwards voided by Sixtus IV. Wood, Hist. Univ.; Oxon, 205. Cotton's Abridgment, p. 480. Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 630.

vocation added, that a testimonial in favour of Wicliffe and his doctrines, with the seal of the university affixed to it, had lately issued from the halls of Oxford. Arundel did not delay. Presently his delegates were down on the college. These inquisitors of heretical pravity summoned before them the suspected professors, and by threats of Henry's burning statute compelled them to recant. They next examined the writings of Wicliffe. They extracted out of them 246 propositions which they deemed heretical.5 This list they sent to the archbishop. The primate, after branding it with his condemnation, forwarded it to the Pope, with a request that he would stamp it with his final anathema, and that he would send him a bull, empowering him to dig up Wicliffe's bones and burn them. "The Pope," says Collier, "granted the first, but refused the latter, not thinking it any useful part of discipline to disturb the ashes of the dead." 6

While, with the one hand, Arundel maintained the fight against the infant Protestantism of England, with the other he strove to promote a Catholic revival. He bethought him by what new rite he could honour, with what new grace he could crown the "mother of God." He instituted, in honour of Mary, "the tolling of Aves," with certain Aves, the due recital of which were to earn certain days of pardon. The ceremonies of the Roman Church were already very numerous, requiring a whole technological vocabulary to name them, and wellnigh all the days of the year for their observance. In his mandate to the Bishop of London, Arundel set forth the grounds and reasons of this new observance. The realm of England verily owed "Our Lady" much, the archbishop argued. She had been the "buckler of our protection." She had "made our arms victorious," and "spread our power through all the coasts of the earth." Yet more, to the Virgin Mary the nation owed its escape from a portentous evil that menaced it, and of which it was dreadful to think what the consequences would have been, had it overtaken it The archbishop does not name the monstrous thing; but it is easy to see what was meant, for the archbishop goes on to speak of a new species of wolves that waited to attack the inhabitants of England and destroy them, not by tearing them with their

4 The university seal, it is believed, was surreptitiously obtained; but the occurrence proves that among the professors at Oxford were not a few who thought with Wicliffe.

5 Fox, bk. v., p. 282; Lond., 1838.

6 Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 631.

7 Fox, bk. v., p. 280.

PERSECUTION OF EARLY ENGLISH PROTESTANTS.

teeth after the usual manner of wild beasts, but in the exercise of some novel and strange instinct, by mingling poison with their food. "To whom [Mary] we may worthily ascribe, now of late in these our times, our deliverance from the ravening wolves, and the mouths of cruel beasts, who had prepared against our banquets a mess of meat mingled full of gall." On these grounds the archbishop issued his commands (Feb. 10th, 1410), that peals should be tolled, morning and evening, in praise of Mary; with a promise to all who should say the Lord's prayer and a "hail Mary" five times at the morning peal, of a forty-days' pardon.

To whom, after "Our Lady," the archbishop doubtless thought, did England owe so much as to himself? Accordingly, we find him putting in a modest claim to share in the honours he had decreed

to his patroness. This next mandate, directed to Thomas Wilton, his somner, enjoined that, at what time he should pass through his Province of Canterbury, having his cross borne before him, the bells of all the parish churches should be rung, "in token of special reverence that they bear to us.' "3 Certain churches in London were temporarily closed by the archbishop, because "on Tuesday last, when we, between eight and nine of the clock, before dinner, passed openly on foot as it were through the midst of the City of London, with our cross carried before us, they showed toward us unreverence, ringing not their bells at all at our coming." "Wherefore we command you that by our authority you put all these churches under our indictment, suspending God's holy organs and instruments in the same." 4

"Why," inquires the chronicler, "though the bells did not clatter in the steeples, should the body of the church be suspended? The poor organs, methinks, suffered some wrong in being put to silence in the quire, because the bells rang not in the tower." There are some who may smile at these devices of Arundel to strengthen Popery, as betokening vain-glory rather than insight. But we may grant that the astute archbishop knew what he was about. He thus made "the Church present to Englishmen of that age. She awoke She awoke them from slumber in the morning, she sung them to repose at night. Her chimes were in their ears and her symbols before their eyes all day long. Every time they kissed an image, or repeated an Ave, or crossed themselves with holy water,

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they increased their reverence for "mother Church." Every such act was a strengthening of the fetter which dulled the intellect and bound the soul. At each repetition the deep sleep of the conscience became yet deeper.

The persecution against the Protestants did not abate. The pursuit of heretics became more strict; and their treatment, at the hands of their captors, more cruel. The prisons in the bishops' houses, heretofore simply places of confinement, were now often provided with instruments of torture. The Lollards' Tower, at Lambeth, was crowded with confessors, who have left on the walls of their cell, in brief but touching phrase, the record of their "patience and faith," to be read by the men of after-times; nay, by us, seeing these memorials are not yet effaced. Many, weak in faith and terrified by the violence that menaced them, appeared in penitential garb, with lighted tapers in their hand, at market crosses, and church doors, and read their recantation. But not all else England at this day would have been what Spain is. There were others, more largely strengthened from on high, who aspired to the glory, than which there is no purer or brighter on earth, of dying for the Gospel. Thus the stake had its occasional victim.

So passed the early years of English Protestantism. It did not grow up in dalliance and ease, amid the smiles of the great and the applause of the multitude; no, it was nurtured amid fierce and cruel storms. From its cradle it was familiar with hardship, with revilings and buffetings, with cruel mockings and scourgings, nay, moreover, with bonds and imprisonments. The mob derided it; power frowned upon it; and lordly Churchmen branded it as heresy, and pursued it with sword and faggot. Let us draw around its cradle, placed under no gorgeous roof, but in a prison-cell, with gaolers and executioners waiting beside it. Let us forget, if only for awhile, the denominational names, and ecclesiastical classifications, that separate us; let us lay aside, the one his lawn and the other his Genevan cloak, and, simply in our character of Christians and Protestants, come hither, and contemplate the lowliness of our common origin. It seems as if the "young child" had been cast out to perish; the Roman Power stands before it ready to destroy it, and yet it has been said to it, "To thee will I give England." There is a lesson here which, could we humble ourselves, and lay it duly to heart, would go far to awaken the love and bring back the union and strength of our first days.

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The Burning Bush-Petition of Parliament-Redistribution of Ecclesiastical Property-Defence of Archbishop Arundel The King stands by the Church-The Petition Presented a Second Time-Its Second Refusal-More Powerful Weapons than Royal Edicts-Richard II. Deposed-Henry IV.-Edict De Hæretico ComburendoGriefs of the King-Calamities of the Country-Projected Crusade-Death of Henry IV.

IN the former chapter we saw the Protestants of England stigmatised as Lollards, proscribed by edicts, and haled to prisons, which they left, the many to read their recantation at cathedral doors and market crosses, and the few to fulfil their witness-bearing at the stake. The tempest was

growing in violence every hour, and the little company on whom it beat so sorely seemed doomed to extinction. Yet in no age or country, perhaps, has the Church of God more perfectly realised the promise wrapped up in her earliest and most significant symbol, than in England at the pre

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CHAMBER IN THE LOLLARDS' TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE, WHERE THE REFORMERS WERE CONFINED.

make them more serviceable to both the crown and the nation.

The Commons represented to the king that the clergy possessed a third of the lands in the realm, that they contributed nothing to the public burdens, and that their riches disqualified them from the due performance of their sacred functions. Archbishop Arundel was by the king's side when the petition was presented by the Speaker of the House, Sir John Cheney. He was not the man to stand silent when such an accusation was preferred against his order. True it was, said the archbishop, that the clergy did not go in person to the wars, but it was not less true that they always sent

not because they were chary of their blood, or enamoured of ease, but because they wished to give their days and nights to prayer for their country's welfare, and especially for the success of its arms. While the soldiers of England were fighting, her priests were supplicating; the latter, not less than the former, contributed to those victories which were shedding such lustre on the arms of England.

The Speaker of the Commons, smiling at the primate's enthusiasm, replied that "he thought the

1 Holinshed, vol. iii., p. 30. Cobbett, vol. i., cols. 295, 296. Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 620.

prayers of the Church but a slender supply." Stung by this retort, Arundel quickly turned on Sir John, and charged him with profaneness. "I perceive, sir," said the prelate, "how the kingdom is likely to thrive, when the aids of devotion, and the favour of Heaven, are thus slighted and ridiculed."

The king "hung, as it were, in a balance of thought." The archbishop, perceiving his indecision, dropped on his knees before him, and implored Henry to remember the oath he had sworn on coming to the crown, to maintain the rights of the Church and defend the clergy; and he counselled him, above all, to beware incurring the guilt of sacrilege, and the penalties thereto annexed. The king was undecided no longer; he bade the archbishop dismiss his fears, and assured him that the clergy need be under no apprehensions from such proposals as the present, while he wore the crown; that he would take care to leave the Church in even a better condition than that in which he had found it. The hopes of the Lollards were thus rudely dashed.1

But their numbers continued to increase; byand-by there came to be a "Lollard party," as Walsingham calls it, in Parliament, and in the eleventh year of Henry's reign they judged the time ripe for bringing forward their proposal a second time. They made a computation of the ecclesiastical estates, which, according to their showing, amounted to 485,000 merks of yearly value, and contained 18,400 ploughs of land. This property, they suggested, should be divided into three parts, and distributed as follows: one part was to go to the king, and would enable him to maintain 6,000 men-at-arms, in addition to those he had at present in his pay; it would enable him besides to make a new creation of earls and knights. The second was to be divided, as an annual stipend, among the 15,000 priests who were to conduct the religious services of the nation; and the remaining third was to be appropriated to the founding of 100 new hospitals. But the proposal found no favour with the king, even though it promised to augment considerably his military following. He dared not break with the He dared not break with the hierarchy, and he might be justly suspicious of the changes which so vast a project would draw after it.

Addressing the Commons in a tone of great severity, he charged them never again, so long as he lived, to come before the throne with any such

1 Walsingham, pp. 371, 372. Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., pp. 620, 621. Hume, chap. 18-Hen. IV.

proposal. He even refused to listen to the request with which they had accompanied their petition, that he would grant a mitigation of the edict against heresy, and permit convicted Lollards to be sent to his own prisons, rather than be immured in the more doleful strongholds of the bishops. Even these small favours the Protestants could not obtain, and lest the clergy should think that Henry had begun to waver between the two faiths, he sealed his devotion to the Church by anew kindling the pile for the Lollards.

The

By other weapons were the Wicliffites to win England than by royal edicts and Paliamentary petitions. They must take slow and laborious possession of it by their tears and their martyrdoms. Although the king had done as they desired, and the edict had realised all that they expected from it, it would after all have been but a fictitious and barren acquisition, liable to be swept away by every varying wind that blew at court. But when, by their painful teachings, by their holy lives, and their courageous deaths, they had enlightened the understandings and won the hearts of their countrymen to the Protestant doctrine, then would they have taken possession of England in very deed, and in such fashion that they would hold it for ever. These early disciples did not yet clearly see wherein lay the great strength of Protestantism. political activity into which they had diverged was an attempt to gather fruit, not only before the sun had ripened it, but even before they had well sowed the seed. The fabric of the Roman Church was founded on the belief, in the minds of Englishmen, that the Pope was Heaven's delegate for conferring on men the pardon of their sins and the blessings of salvation. That belief must first be exploded. So long as it kept its hold, no material force, no political action, could suffice to overthrow the domination of Rome. Amid the scandals of the clergy and the decay of the nation, it would have continued to flourish to our day, had not the reforming and spiritual forces come to the rescue. We can the more easily pardon the mistake of the English Protestants of the fifteenth century when we reflect that, even yet, the sole efficacy-the omnipotency of these forces finds only partial belief in the general mind of even the religious world.

From the hour that the stake for Protestantism was planted in England, neither the king nor the nation had rest. Henry Plantagenet (Bolingbroke) had returned from exile, on his oath not to disturb

2 Holinshed, vol. iii., p. 48. Walsingham, p. 379. Collier, vol. i., bk. vii., p. 629.

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