IV. CHAP. tred of all those, who were engaged both by zeal and interest in the continuance of these evils and corruptions. Several of the Doctors therefore of the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, especially of the latter, which at this time was very remarkable for supposed orthodoxy, opposed our Bishop in their sermons, lectures, and determinations. The following persons are particularly named. Hist. et An- 1. Gilbert Worthington. 2. William Littefield. 3. Peter tiq. Oxon. Beverly P, alias Hyrford, of the diocese of Lincoln. 4. William Myllyngton, a Yorkshireman, Master of Clare Hall and Provost of King's College in Cambridge, who in a sermon he preached at St. Paul's, the next course after our Bishop, is said to have openly declared, that the kingdom of England would never suffer those, who patronized or favoured our Bishop, to prosper. 5. Dr. Hugh Damlet, Master of Pembroke Hall, who is said to have pretended to prove our Bishop guilty of heresy out of his own writings. These were all Cambridge Doctors. 6. Thomas Eborall or Eyburhall, who succeeded the Bishop in the mastership of Whittington College, &c. 7. John Burbach. 8. 9 John Bury, an Augustine heremite monk, and John Milverton, all Oxford men; besides the Doctors of the Friars Mendicant, who, it seems, could not relish the Bishop's finding fault with their preaching, and instead of it recom • The preamble of King Henry VI.'s patent for the erection of King's College there, which his father designed to have built at Oxford, intimates as much. Ad errorum et heresium extirpationem, qui quasi totum resper"guntur in orbem, et solennium regnorum ac Universitatum pacem pertur"bant, regnumque nostrum Anglie in aliquibus ejus suppositis violarunt. "Quorum ab inventionibus Universitas nostra predicta immaculatam se conti66 nue observavit." E Collect. D. Tho. Baker, Coll. S. Johannis Cantab. P This man abjured Dr. Wiclif's opinions, or those which were condemned as his, in plena congregatione coram reverendo viro magistro Eudone de la Zouche, LL.D. ejusdem Universitatis Cancellario, necnon coram venerabili cetu magistrorum regentium et non regentium-Feb. 22, A. D. 1412. Idem. So that he must be pretty old, when he opposed our Bishop. 9 See before. This man, Leland tells us, preached frequently at London, and particularly at St. Paul's, against the intolerable ambition and avarice of the Bishops. De Scriptor. Britan. p. 465. mending the preaching the sacred truths of holy Scrip- CHAP. ture: and several students of the University of Oxford. 15. Whether the Bishop ever wrote any reply to these his opposers, is very uncertain. In the imperfect account which we have of his Lordship's writings, there is nothing which has the appearance of any defence of himself, and the positions maintained by him; unless the tracts entitled, The Defender, The Follower of it, The Declaratory, and his letter to William Godharde, the Franciscan or begging Friar, were of this nature. However, it was not long before a more effectual course was taken to stop the mouth, and silence the arguments of our Bishop. 16. It has been observed before, that the Duke of York, taking advantage of the death of the Duke of Gloucester, and the general discontent and uneasiness on that account, and of the losses abroad and mismanagements at home, began secretly to engage his friends of the nobility and gentry, &c. and to declare to them his title and pretensions to the crown. This he now began to prosecute more effectually, by coming out of Ireland, and with the help of his friends raising a great army in the marches of Wales; though still, to conceal his true design, the intent of all this armament was given out to be the public wealth of the realm, and great profit of the commons, by redressing and reforming the public grievances, and removing the evil and disaffected counsellors, that were said to be about the King. 17. Amidst these domestic divisions and civil commotions, Gascoigne tells us, that our Bishop was about the feast of St. Martin's, A. D. 1457, by the King's command, expelled the House of Lords at London, and forbid the King's presence by the Archbishop of Canterbury; and that so much were all the temporal lords set against our Bishop, (for elsewhere he observes that the Bishops favoured him,) that they refused to enter on any business, so • A. D. 1452, in quadragesima surrexit Richardus Dux Eboraci pro reformatione regni Anglie, ut dixit idem Dux. Gascoigne, Dict. Theol. MS. IV. CHAP. long as his Lordship continued in the house. Which disIV. grace of the Bishop, he says, was imputed to his having lost his principal support, the Duke of Suffolk, and his two powerful friends at court, the Bishops Mullins and Ayscough. In this great council, which Gascoignet intimates was summoned by the King on our Bishop's account, several great Doctors of Divinity being there present, demanded of the Archbishop of Canterbury Bishop Pecock's works, that they might have them to examine, and that accordingly the Archbishop permitted them to have them. This demand was opposed by the Bishop, who desired and petitioned, that he might not be judged by their judgment, but by the judgment of his peers, or such as were equal to him in scholastic disputation. The Bishop likewise told the Archbishop, that he would bring before him all his books which he had made three years before that day, and for those books would be answerable; but as for the other books, which before that time had been published and dispersed, he could not answer for them, because those books were not corrected by him. Accordingly afterwards nine of our Bishop's books were brought before the Archbishop, which were found to be cancelled and rased in several places, and written anew by the Bishop. After the producing of these before his Grace, &c. the Bishop, we are told, went out of the King's council-chamber at Westminster. 18. The reasons why the lords temporal were so much set against our Bishop, we are told by the same writer, were, 1. That he wrote such profound matters in English, as were more likely to hurt the readers and hearers of them, than to do them good; for instance, that the law of nature is to be preferred above the written law, and even the sacred one; that a man is to adhere to his own reason; that the soul of Christ did not descend into hell; Iste Pecock Episcopus, A. D. 1457, in sabbato infra octavas sanctissimi Martini Episcopi et Confessoris citatus et monitus per Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem, Thomam Bourcher. Dict. Theol. MS. IV. and that the Apostles did not make our common Creed, CHAP. &c. 2. That the Bishop had written a letter to Sir Thomas Cannynges, the Mayor of London, which letter the A. D. 1456. Mayor sent to the King, before whom and his lords it was read, and in it were found evidences, or conjectures, or probable persuasions, or suspicions of the changing or disturbance of the faith or religion, and of an insurrection in the kingdom, to the great disturbance of the people, and the scandal of the great lords of the kingdom, whom he represented in his letter as adhering to him and his English books. 3. That he had made a new and tedious creed of his own in English, and had changed our common Creed, which the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ had set forth, having denied several articles of it, both by word of mouth, and by his writings. Dict. Theol. 19. The great Doctors likewise were of opinion, that Gascoigne, the books published by the Bishop, written in English and Ms. Latin, deserved to be kept from the reading and hearing of all men, for these following reasons. 1. That in this book of Faith, he asserted and wrote, that this saying of St. Gregory, Faith hath no merit which is proved by human reason, is false; and that St. Gregory contradicts himself. 2. That in the same book he says, that the subtile Doctor was deceived in saying, that Christ's descent into hell is an article of faith, because it is placed in the Creed; and that in St. Augustine's time this article was not in the Creed, and therefore it is not true, that the Apostles put it there. 3. That in a letter of the Bishop's directed to Godard, a Doctor of the Order of the Friars Minorites or Franciscans, he called the modern preachers pulpit-bawlers. 4. That his Lordship preached at London at Paul's Cross, that Bishops paying to the Pope of Rome, before their admission by the Pope to be Bishops, 5000 marks, or a greater sum, do not sin on this account, nor do give any thing to the Pope by this payment, but only tender to him what is his own; as a bailiff does, when he accounts with his lord. 5. That he wrote, that no one is obliged to believe the determination of holy Church, but L CHAP. that there is a catholic Church. 6. That he affirmed, that IV. the goods of Churchmen, and the riches of Bishops, are not the goods of the poor; but are as much their property, as are the temporal estates of those who have them by inheritance. Such, it seems, were the Bishop's crimes, that so highly exasperated the King and his Lords, and so many of the inferior Clergy, and set them so much against him, as never to leave off prosecuting his Lordship, till they had got him deprived of his bishopric. 20. But whatever provocation these opinions of the Bishop might give the Clergy thus to treat his Lordship, it seems as if the King and his nobles were offended with him on another account, viz. his speaking so freely of the King and the war with France, as he had done in his Repressour, &c. a book published by his Lordship about seven years before. Here the Bishop observed, that this war had then been continued thirty-four years, and had occasioned much murder of blood and of souls on both the English and French side; on which occasion his Lordship thus expressed himself: "Wolde God, that the King of "Ynglond wolde sette so miche bisynes for to conquere “and reforme his londe of Ynglond from this seid wickid "scole, [the Wiclifists] and fro othere defautis, as miche "as he dooth about the conquest of his londe of Nor"mandi and of Fraunce; and peraventure he schulde then "have mo thanke and reward at his last comyng hoom "to the King of blisse, and more noble flavour of digne "fame among alle the princis of the world, and the wor"thi peeris of heven, then he schal have bi miche of his "labour and cost doon about the worldli conquest of "Fraunce." It is not improbable that the Bishop's enemies, who were glad of any opportunity of doing him an injury, might take advantage of these expressions of his, and represent his Lordship as intending by them to reflect on the King and his council, as not well affected to the Church, no wise zealous for its rights and privileges, and much more mindful of this world than of that which is to come. |