to whom Richard's last parliament delegated their whole power, there is not the name of one ecclesiastic to be found; a neglect which is almost without example, while the Catholic religion subsisted in England.* The aversion entertained against the established church soon found principles and tenets and reasonings, by which it could justify and support itself. John Wickliffe, a secular priest, educated at Oxford, began in the latter end of Edward III. to spread the doctrine of reformation by his discourses, sermons, and writings; and he made many disciples among men of all ranks and stations. He seems to have been a man of parts and learning; and has the honour of being the first person in Europe, that publicly called in question those principles, which had universally passed for certain and undisputed during so many ages. Wickliffe himself, as. well as his disciples, who received the name of Wickliffites, or Lollards, was distinguished by a great austerity of life and manners; a circumstance common to almost all those who dogmatize in any new way; both because men, who draw to them the attention of the public, and expose themselves to the odium of great multitudes, are obliged to be very guarded in their conduct, and because few, who have a strong propensity to pleasure or business, will enter upon so difficult and laborious an undertaking. The doctrines of Wickliffe, being derived from his search into the Scriptures and into The following passage in Cotton's Abridgment, p. 196, shews a strange prejudice against the church and churchmen: The commons afterward coming into the parliament, and making their protestation, shewed, that for want of good redress about the king's person, in his household, in all his courts, touching maintainers in every county, and purveyors, the commons were daily pilled, and nothing defended against the enemy, and that it should shortly deprive the king, and undo the state. Wherefore, in the same government they entirely require redress. Whereupon the king appointed sundry bishops, lords, and nobles, to sit in privy-council about these matters; who, since that they must begin at the head, and go at the request of the commons, they, in the presence of the king, charged his confessor not to come into the court but upon the four principal festivals. We should little expect that a popish privy-council, in order to preserve the king's morals, should order his confessor to be kept at a distance from him. This incident happened in the minority of Richard. As the popes had for a long time resided at Avignon, and the majority of the sacred college were Frenchmen, this circumstance naturally increased the aversion of the nation to the papal power; but the prejudice against the English clergy cannot be accounted for from that cause ecclesiastical antiquity, were nearly the same with those which were propagated by the reformers in the sixteenth century; he only carried some of them farther than was done by the more sober part of these reformers. He denied the doctrine of the real presence, the supremacy of the church of Rome, the merit of monastic vows; he maintained, that the Scriptures were the sole rule of faith; that the church was dependent on the state, and should be reformed by it; that the clergy ought to possess no estates; that the begging friars were a nuisance, and ought not to be supported; that the numerous ceremonies of the church were hurtful to true piety; he asserted, that oaths were unlawful, that dominion was founded in grace, that every thing was subject to fate and destiny, and that all men were preordained either to eternal salvation or reprobation." From the whole of his doctrines, Wickliffe appears to have been strongly tinctured with enthusiasm, and to have been thereby the better qualified to oppose a church, whose chief characteristic is superstition. The propagation of these principles gave great alarm to the clergy; and a bull was issued by pope Gregory XI. for taking Wickliffe into custody, and examining into the scope of his opinions. Courteney, bishop of London, cited him before his tribunal; but the reformer had now acquired powerful protectors, who screened him from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The duke of Lancaster, who then governed the kingdom, encouraged the principles of Wickliffe; and he made no scruple, as well as lord Piercy, the mareschal, to appear openly in court with him, in order to give him countenance upon his trial; he even insisted that Wickliffe should sit in the bishop's presence, while his principles were examined: Courteney exclaimed against the insult; the Londoners, y Walsingham, p. 191. 208. 283, 284. Spelman. Concil. vol. 2. p. 630. Knygh ton, P. 2657. 7 Harpsfield, p. 668. 673, 674. Waldens. tom. 1. lib. 3. art. 1. cap. 8. a Spelm. Conc. vol. 2. p. 621. Walsingham, p. 201-203. thinking their prelate affronted, attacked the duke and mareschal, who escaped from their hands with some difficulty. And the populace, soon after, broke into the houses of both these noblemen, threatened their persons, and plundered their goods. The bishop of London had the merit of appeasing their fury and resent ment. The duke of Lancaster, however, still continued his protection to Wickliffe during the minority of Richard; and the principles of that reformer had so far propagated themselves, that, when the pope sent to Oxford a new bull against these doctrines, the university deliberated for some time, whether they should receive the bull; and they never took any vigorous measures in consequence of the papal orders. Even the populace of London were at length brought to entertain favourable sentiments of this reformer. When he was cited before a synod at Lambeth, they broke into the assembly, and so overawed the prelates, who found both the people and the court against them, that they dismissed him without any farther censure. C The clergy, we may well believe, were more wanting in power than in inclination to punish this new heresy, which struck at all their credit, possessions, and authority. But there was hitherto no law in England, by which the secular arm was authorized to support orthodoxy; and the ecclesiastics endeavoured to supply the defect by an extraordinary and unwarrantable artifice. In the year 1381, there was an act passed, requiring sheriffs to apprehend the preachers of heresy and their abettors; but this statute had been surreptitiously obtained by the clergy, and had the formality of an enrolment without the consent of the commons. In the subsequent session the lower house complained of the fraud; affirmed, that they had no intention to bind themselves b Harpsfield in Hist. Wickl. p. 683. c Wood's Ant. Oxon. lib. 1. p. 191, &c. Walsing. p. 201. to the prelates farther than their ancestors had done before them; and required that the pretended statute should be repealed; which was done accordingly. But it is remarkable that, notwithstanding this vigilance of the commons, the clergy had so much art and influence that the repeal was suppressed; and the act, which never had any legal authority, remains to this day upon the statutebook; though the clergy still thought proper to keep it in reserve, and not proceed to the immediate execution of it. But, besides this defect of power in the church, which saved Wickliffe, that reformer himself, notwithstanding his enthusiasm, seems not to have been actuated by the spirit of martyrdom; and, in all subsequent trials before the prelates, he so explained away his doctrine by tortured meanings, as to render it quite innocent and inoffensive. Most of his followers imitated his cautious disposition, and saved themselves either by recantations or explanations. He died of a palsy, in the year 1385, at his rectory of Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester; and the clergy, mortified that he should have escapedtheir vengeance, took care, besides assuring the people of his eternal damnation, to represent his last distemper as a visible judgment of heaven upon him for his multiplied heresies and impieties." The proselytes, however, of Wickliffe's opinions still increased in England." Some monkish writers represent one half of the kingdom as infected by those principles; they were carried over to Bohemia by some youth of that nation, who studied at Oxford; but though the age seemed strongly disposed to receive them, affairs were not yet fully ripe for this great revolution; and the finishing blow to ecclesiastical power was reserved to a period of more curiosity, literature, and inclination for novelties. d Cotton's Abridgment, p. 285. e 5 Rich. II. cap. 5. f Walsing. p. 206. Knyghton, p. 2655, 2656. Walsingham, p. 312. Ypod. Neust. p. 337. h Knyghton, p. 2663. Meanwhile the English parliament continued to check the clergy and the court of Rome, by more sober and more legal expedients. They enacted anew the statute of provisors, and affixed higher penalties to the transgression of it, which, in some instances, was even made capital. The court of Rome had fallen upon a new device, which increased their authority over the prelates; the pope, who found that the expedient of arbitrarily depriving them was violent and liable to opposition, attained the same end, by transferring such of them as were obnoxious to poorer sees, and even to nominal sees, in partibus infidelium. It was thus that the archbishop of York, and the bishops of Durham and Chichester, the king's ministers, had been treated after the prevalence of Gloucester's faction: the bishop of Carlisle met with the same fate after the accession of Henry IV. For the pope always joined with the prevailing powers when they did not thwart his pretensions. The parliament, in the reign of Richard, enacted a law against this abuse; and the king made a general remonstrance to the court of Rome against all those usurpations which he calls horrible excesses of that court.* It was usual for the church, that they might elude the mortmain act, to make their votaries leave lands in trust to certain persons, under whose name the clergy enjoyed the benefit of the bequest: the parliament also stopped the progress of this abuse.' In the seventeenth of the king, the commons prayed, that remedy might be had against such religious persons as cause their villains to marry free women inheritable, whereby the estate comes to those religious hands by collusion." This was a new device of the clergy. The papacy was, at this time, somewhat weakened by a schism, which lasted during forty years, and gave great scandal to the devoted partisans of the holy see. i 13 Rich. II. cap. 3. 16 Rich. II. cap. 4. k Rymer, vol. 7. p. 672. After m Cotton, p. 355. |