History of the Reformation, vol. 5

Chapter 7

The Mendicant Friars—Their Disorders and Popular Indignation—Wickliffe—His Success—Speeches of the Peers against the Papal Tribuls—Agreement of Bruges—Courtenay and Lancaster—Wickliffe before the Convocation—Altercation between Lancaster and Courtenay—Riot—Three Briefs against Wickliffe—Wickliffe at Lambeth—Mission of the Poor Priests—Their Preachings and Persecutions—Wickliffe and the Four Regents

Thus in the first half of the fourteenth century, nearly two hundred years before the Reformation, England appeared weary of the yoke of Rome. Bradwardine was no more; but a man who had been his disciple was about to succeed him, and without attaining to the highest functions, to exhibit in his person the past and future tendencies of the church of Christ in Great Britain. The English Reformation did not begin with Henry VIII: the revival of the sixteenth century is but a link in the chain commencing with the apostles and reaching to us. HRSCV5 702.6

The resistance of Edward III to the papacy without had not suppressed the papacy within. The mendicant friars, and particularly the Franciscans, those fanatical soldiers of the pope, were endeavouring by pious frauds to monopolize the wealth of the country. “Every year,” said they, “Saint Francis descends from heaven to purgatory, and delivers the souls of all those who were buried in the dress of his order.” These friars used to kidnap children from their parents and shut them up in monasteries. HRSCV5 702.7

They affected to the poor, and with a wallet on their back, begged with a piteous air from both high and low; but at the same time they dwelt in palaces, heaped up treasures, dressed in costly garments, and wasted their time in luxurious entertainment. The least of them looked upon themselves as lords, and those who wore the doctor’s cap considered themselves kings. While they diverted themselves, eating and drinking at their well-spread tables, they used to send ignorant uneducated persons in their place to preach fables and legends to amuse and plunder the people. If any rich man talked of giving alms to the poor and not to the monks, they exclaimed loudly against such impiety, and declared with threatening voice: “If you do so we will leave the country, and return accompanied by a legion of glittering helmets.” Public indignation was at its height. “The monks and priests of Rome, was the cry, “are eating us away like a cancer. God must deliver us or the people will perish Woe be to them! the cup of wrath will run over. Men of holy church shall be despised as carrion, as dogs shall they be cast out in open places.” HRSCV5 703.1

The arrogance of Rome made the cup run over. Pope Urban V, heedless of the laurels won by the conqueror at Crecy and Poitiers, summoned Edward III to recognize him as legitimate sovereign of England, and to pay as feudal tribute the annual rent of one thousand marcs. In case of refusal the king was to appear before him at Rome. For thirty-three years the popes had never mentioned the tribute accorded by John to Innocent III, and which had always been paid very irregularly. The conqueror of the Valois was irritated by this insolence on the part of an Italian bishop, and called on God to avenge England. From Oxford came forth the avenger. HRSCV5 703.2

John Wickliffe, born in 1324, in a little village in Yorkshire, was one of the students who attended the lectures of the pious Bradwardine at Merton College. He was in the flower of his age, and produced a great sensation in the university. In 1348, a terrible pestilence, which is said to have carried off half the human race, appeared in England after successively devastating Asia and the continent of Europe. This visitation of the Almighty sounded like the trumpet of the judgment-day in the heart of Wickliffe. Alarmed at the thoughts of eternity, the young man—for he was then only twenty-four years old—passed days and nights in his cell groaning and sighing, and calling upon God to show him the path he ought to follow. He found it in the Holy Scriptures, and resolved to make it known to others. He commenced with prudence; but being elected in 1361 warden of Balliol, and in 1365 warden of Canterbury College also, he began to set forth the doctrine of faith in a more energetic manner. His biblical and philosophical studies, his knowledge of theology, his penetrating mind, the purity of his manners, and his unbending courage, rendered him the object of general admiration. A profound teacher, like his master, and an eloquent preacher, he demonstrated to the learned during the course of the week what he intended to preach, and on Sunday he preached to the people what he had previously demonstrated. His disputations gave strength to his sermons, and his sermons shed light upon his disputations. He accused the clergy of having banished the Holy Scriptures, and required that the authority of the word of God should be re-established in the church. Loud acclamations crowned these discussions, and the crowd of vulgar minds trembled with indignation when they heard these shouts of applause. HRSCV5 703.3

Wickliffe was forty years old when the papal arrogance stirred England to its depths. Being at once an able politician and a fervent Christian, he vigorously defended the rights of the crown against the Romish aggression, and by his arguments not only enlightened his fellow-countrymen generally, but stirred up the zeal of several members of both houses of parliament. HRSCV5 703.4

The parliament assembled, and never perhaps had it been summoned on a question which excited to so high a degree the emotions of England, and indeed of Christendom. The debates in the House of Lords were especially remarkable: all the arguments of Wickliffe were reproduced. “Feudal tribute is due,” said one, “only to him who can grant feudal protection in return. Now how can the pope wage war to protect his fiefs?”—“Is it as vassal of the crown or as feudal superior,” asked another, “that the pope demands part of our property? Urban V will not accept the first of these titles Well and good! but the English people will not acknowledge the second.”—“Why,” said a third, “was this tribute originally granted? To pay the pope for absolving John His demand, then, is mere simony, a kind of clerical swindling, which the lords spiritual and temporal should indignantly oppose.”—“No,” said another speaker, “England belongs not to the pope. The pope is but a man, subject to sin; but Christ is the Lord of lords, and this kingdom is held directly and solely of Christ along.” Thus spoke the lords inspired by Wickliffe. HRSCV5 703.5

Parliament decided unanimously that no prince had the right to alienate the sovereignty of the kingdom without the consent of the other two estates, and that if the pontiff should attempt to proceed against the king of England as his vassal, the nation should rise in a body to maintain the independence of the crown. HRSCV5 704.1

To no purpose did this generous resolution excite the wrath of the partisans of Rome; to no purpose did they assert that, by the canon law, the king ought to be deprived of his fief, and that England now belonged to the pope: “No,” replied Wickliffe, “the canon law has no force when it is opposed to the word of God.” Edward III made Wickliffe one of his chaplains, and the papacy has ceased from that hour to lay claim—in explicit terms at least—to the sovereignty of England. HRSCV5 704.2

When the pope gave up his temporal he was desirous, at the very least, of keeping up his ecclesiastical pretensions, and to procure the repeal of the statutes of Proemunire and Provisors. It was accordingly resolved to hold a conference at Bruges to treat of this question, and Wickliffe, who had been created doctor of theology two years before, proceeded thither with the other commissioner in April 1374. They came to an arrangement in 1375 that the king should bind himself to repeal the penalties denounced against the pontifical agents, and that the pope should confirm the king’s ecclesiastical presentations. But the nation was not pleased with this compromise. “The clerks sent from Rome,” said the Commons, “are more dangerous for the kingdom than Jews or Saracens; every papal agent resident in England, and every Englishman living at the court of Rome, should be punished with death,” Such was the language of the Good Parliament. In the fourteenth century the English nation called a parliament good which did not yield to the papacy. HRSCV5 704.3

Wickliffe, after his return to England, was presented to the rectory of Lutterworth, and from that time a practical activity was added to his academic influence. At Oxford he spoke as a master to the young theologians; in his parish he addressed the people as a preacher and as a pastor. “The Gospel,” said he, “is the only source of religion. The Roman pontiff is a mere cut-purse, and, far from having the right to reprimand the whole world, he may be lawfully reproved by his inferiors, and even by laymen.” HRSCV5 704.4

The papacy grew alarmed. Courtenay, son of the Earl of Devonshire, an imperious but grave priest, and full of zeal for what he believed to be the truth, had recently been appointed to the see of London. In parliament he had resisted Wickliffe’s patron, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III, and head of the house of that name. The bishop, observing that the doctrines of the reformer were spreading among the people, both high and low, charged him with heresy, and summoned him to appear before the convocation assembled in St Paul’s Cathedral. HRSCV5 704.5

On the 19th February 1377, an immense crowd, heated with fanaticism, thronged the approached to the church and filled its aisles, while the citizens favorable to the Reform remained concealed in their houses. Wickliffe moved forward, preceded by Lord Percy, marshal of England, and supported by the Duke of Lancaster, who defended him from purely political motives. He was followed by four bachelors of divinity, his counsel, and passed through the hostile multitude, who looked upon Lancaster as the enemy of their liberties, and upon himself as the enemy of the church. “Let not the sight of these bishops make you shrink a hair’s breadth in your profession of faith,” said the prince to the doctor. “They are unlearned; and as for this concourse of people, fear nothing, we are here to defend you.” When the reformer had crossed the threshold of the cathedral, the crowd within appeared like a solid wall; and, notwithstanding the efforts of the earl-marshal, Wickliffe and Lancaster could not advance. The people swayed to and fro, hands were raised in violence, and loud hootings re-echoed through the building. At length Percy made an opening in the dense multitude, and Wickliffe passed on. HRSCV5 704.6

The haughty Courtenay, who had been commissioned by the archbishop to preside over the assembly, watched these strange movements with anxiety, and beheld with displeasure the learned doctor accompanied by the two most powerful men in England. He said nothing to the Duke of Lancaster, who at that time administered the kingdom, but turning towards Percy observed sharply: “If I had known, my lord, that you claimed to be master in this church, I would have taken measures to prevent your entrance.” Lancaster coldly rejoined: “He shall keep such mastery here, though you say nay.” Percy now turned to Wickliffe, who had remained standing and said: “Sit down and rest yourself,” At this Courtenay gave way to his anger, and exclaimed in a loud tone: “He must not sit down; criminals stand before their judges.” Lancaster, indignant that a learned doctor of England should be refused a favor to which his age alone entitled him (for he was between fifty and sixty) made answer to the bishop: “My lord, you are very arrogant; take care or I may bring down your pride, and not yours only, but that of all the prelacy in England.”—“Do me all the harm you can,” was Courtenay’s haughty reply. The prince rejoined with some emotion: “You are insolent, my lord. You think, no doubt, you can trust on your family but your relations will have trouble enough to protect themselves.” To this the bishop nobly replied: “My confidence is not in my parents nor in any man; but only in God, in whom I trust, and by whose assistance I will be bold to speak the truth.” Lancaster, who saw hypocrisy only in these words, turned to one of his attendants, and whispered in his ear, but so loud as to be heard by the bystanders: “I would rather pluck the bishop by the hair of his head out of his chair, than take this at his hands.” Every impartial reader must confess that the prelate spoke with greater dignity than the prince. Lancaster had hardly uttered these imprudent words before the bishop’s partisan fell upon him and Percy, and even upon Wickliffe, who alone had remained calm. The two noblemen resisted, their friends and servants defended them, the uproar became extreme, and there was no hope of restoring tranquility. The two lords escaped with difficulty, and the assembly broke up in great confusion. HRSCV5 705.1

On the following day the earl-marshal having called upon parliament to apprehend the disturbers of the public peace, the clerical party, uniting with the enemies of Lancaster, filled the streets with their clamor; and while the duke and the earl escaped by the Thames, the mob collected before Percy’s house broke down the doors, searched every chamber, and thrust their swords into every dark corner. When they found that he had escaped, the rioters, imagining that he was concealed in Lancaster’s palace, rushed to the Savoy, at that time the most magnificent building in the kingdom. They killed a priest who endeavoured to stay them, tore down the ducal arms, and hung them on the gallows like those of a traitor. They would have gone still farther if the bishop had not very opportunely reminded them that they were in Lent. As for Wickliffe, he was dismissed with an injunction against preaching his doctrines. HRSCV5 705.2

But this decision of the priests was not ratified by the people of England. Public opinion declared in favor of Wickliffe. “If he is guilty,” said they, “why is he not punished? If he is innocent, why is he ordered to be silent? If he is the weakest in power, he is the strongest in truth!” And so indeed he was, and never had he spoken with such energy. He openly attacked the pretended apostolical chair, and declared that the two antipopes who sat in Rome and Avignon together mad one antichrist. Being now in opposition to the pope, Wickliffe was soon to confess that Christ alone was king of the church; and that it is not possible for a man to be excommunicated, unless first and principally he be excommunicated by himself. HRSCV5 705.3

Rome could not close her ears. Wickliffe’s enemies sent thither nineteen propositions which they ascribed to him, and in the month of June 1377, just as Richard II, son of the Black Prince, a child eleven years old, was ascending the throne, three letters from Gregory XI, addressed to the king, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the university of Oxford, denounced Wickliffe as a heretic, and called upon them to proceed against him as against a common thief. The archbishop issued the citation: the crown and the university were silent. HRSCV5 705.4

On the appointed day, Wickliffe, unaccompanied by either Lancaster or Percy, proceeded to the archiepiscopal chapel at Lambeth. “Men expected he should be devoured,” says an historian; “being brought into the lion’s den.” But the burgesses had taken the prince’s place. The assault of Rome had aroused the friends of liberty and truth in England. “The pope’s briefs,” said they, “ought to have no effect in the realm without the king’s consent. Every man is master in his own house.” HRSCV5 705.5

The archbishop had scarcely opened the sitting, when Sir Louis Clifford entered the chapel, and forbade the court, on the part of the queen-mother, to proceed against the reformer. The bishops were struck with a panic-fear; “they bent their heads,” says a Roman-catholic historian, “like a reed before the wind.” Wickliffe retired after handing in a protest. “In the first place,” said he, “I resolve with my whole heart, and by the grace of God, to be a sincere Christian; and, while my life shall last, to profess and defend the law of Christ so far as I have power.” Wickliffe’s enemies attacked this protest, and one of them eagerly maintained that whatever the pope ordered should be looked upon as right. “What!” answered the reformer; “the pope may then exclude from the canon of the Scriptures and book that displeases him, and altar the Bible at pleasure?” Wickliffe thought that Rome, unsettling the grounds of infallibility, had transferred it from the Scriptures to the pope, and was desirous of restoring it to its true place, and re-establishing authority in the church on a truly divine foundation. HRSCV5 705.6

A great change was now taking place in the reformer. Busying himself less about the kingdom of England, he occupied himself more about the kingdom of Christ. In him the political phasis was followed by the religious. To carry the glad tidings of the gospel into the remotest hamlets, was now the great idea which possessed Wickliffe. If begging friars (said he) stroll over the country, preaching the legends of saints and the history of the Trojan war, we must do for God’s glory what they do to fill their wallets, and form a vast itinerant evangelization to convert souls to Jesus Christ. Turning to the most pious of his disciples, he said to them: “Go and preach, it is the sublimest work; but imitate not the priests whom we see after the sermon sitting in the almhouses, or at the gaming-table, or wasting their time in hunting. After your sermon is ended, do you visit the sick, the aged, the poor, the blind, and the lame, and succour them according to your ability.” Such was the new practical theology which Wickliffe inaugurated—it was that of Christ himself. HRSCV5 705.7

The “poor priests,” as they were called, set off barefoot, a staff in their hands, clothed in a coarse robe, living on alms, and satisfied with the plainest food. They stopped in the fields near some village, in the churchyards, in the market-places of the towns, and sometimes in the churches even. The people, among whom they were favorites, thronged around them, as the men of Northumbria had done at Aidan’s preaching. They spoke with a popular eloquence that entirely won over those who listened to them. Of these missionaries none was more beloved than John Ashton. He might be seen wandering over the country in every direction, or seated at some cottage hearth, or alone in some retired crossway, preaching to an attentive crowd. Missions of this kind have constantly revived in England at the great epochs of the church. HRSCV5 706.1

The “poor priests” were not content with mere polemics: they preached the great mystery of godliness. “An angel could have made no propitiation for man,” one day exclaimed their master Wickliffe; “for the nature which has sinned is not that of the angels. The mediator must needs be a man; but every man being indebted to God for everything that he is able to do, this man must needs have infinite merit, and be at the same time God.” HRSCV5 706.2

The clergy became alarmed, and a law was passed commanding every king’s officer to commit the preachers and their followers to prison. In consequence of this, as soon as the humble missionary began to preach, the monks set themselves in motion. They watched him from the windows of their cells, at the street-corners, or from behind a hedge, and then hastened off to procure assistance. But when the constables approached, a body of stout bold men stood forth, with arms in their hands, who surrounded the preacher, and zealously protected him against the attacks of the clergy. Carnal weapons were thus mingled with the preachings of the word of peace. The poor priests returned to their master: Wickliffe comforted them, advised with them, and then they departed once more. Every day this evangelization reached some new spot, and the light was thus penetrating into every quarter of England, when the reformer was suddenly stopped in his work. HRSCV5 706.3

Wickliffe was at Oxford in the year 1379, busied in the discharge of his duties as professor of divinity, when he fell dangerously ill. His was not a strong constitution; and work, age, and, above all, persecution had weakened him. Great was the joy in the monasteries; but for that joy to be complete, the heretic must recant. Every effort was made to bring this about in his last moments. HRSCV5 706.4

The four regents, who represented the four religious orders, accompanied by four aldermen, hastened to the bedside of the dying man, hoping to frighten him by threatening him with the vengeance of Heaven. They found him calm and serene. “You have death on your lips,” said they; “be touched by your faults, and retract in our presence all that you have said to our injury.” Wickliffe remained silent, and the monks flattered themselves with an easy victory. But the nearer the reformer approached eternity, the greater was his horror of monkery. The consolation he had found in Jesus Christ had given him fresh energy. He begged his servant to raise him on his couch. Then, feeble and pale, and scarcely able to support himself, he turned towards the friars, who were waiting for his recantation, and opening his livid lips, and fixing on them a piercing look, he said with emphasis: “I shall not die, but live; and again declare the evil deeds of the friars.” We might almost picture to ourselves the spirit of Elijah threatening the priests of Baal. The regents and their companions looked at each other with astonishment. They left the room in confusion, and the reformer recovered to put the finishing touch to the most important of his works against the monks and against the pope. HRSCV5 706.5