Oxford and Its Story

by Cecil Headlam

When these doctrines were condemned, Wycliffe does not appear to have been present, nor was any action at all taken against him personally. It is supposed that his popularity at Oxford rendered him too formidable a person to attack. He was left at peace and the storm fell upon his disciples. The attack was made on “certain children of perdition,” who had publicly taught the condemned doctrines, and “who went about the country preaching to the people, without proper authority.” All such preachers were to be visited with the greater excommunication.

As Oxford, however, was the centre of the movement a separate mandate was sent thither.

The Archbishop sent down a commissary, Peter Stokes, a Carmelite friar, to Oxford, to prohibit the teaching of incorrect doctrines, but avoiding any mention of the teacher’s name. The University authorities were by no means pleased at this invasion, so they held it, of their ancient privileges. The Chancellor Rygge had just appointed Nicholas Hereford, a devoted follower of Wycliffe, to preach before the University; he now appointed a no less loyal follower, Philip Repyngdon to the same office. His sermon was an outspoken defence of the Lollards. Stokes reported that he dared not publish the Archbishop’s mandate, that he went about in the fear of his life; for scholars with arms concealed beneath their gowns accompanied the preachers and it appeared that not the Chancellor only, but both the Proctors were Wycliffites, or at least preferred to support the Wycliffites to abating one jot of what they considered the privileges of the University. And for once the Mayor was of the same opinion as the rulers of the University. Still, when the Chancellor was summoned before the Archbishop in London, he did not venture to disobey, and promptly cleared himself of any suspicion of heresy. The council met again at the Blackfriars, and Rygge submissively took his seat in it. On his bended knees he apologised for his disobedience to the Archbishop’s orders, and only obtained pardon through the influence of William of Wykeham. Short work was made of the Oxford Wycliffites; they were generally, and four of them by name, suspended from all academical functions. Rygge returned to Oxford, with a letter from Courtenay which repeated the condemnation of the four preachers, adding to their names the name of Wycliffe himself. The latter was likened by the Archbishop to a serpent which emits noxious poison. But the Chancellor protested he dared not execute this mandate, and a royal warrant had to be issued to compel him. Meanwhile he showed his real feeling in the matter by suspending a prominent opponent of the Wycliffites who had called them by the offensive name of Lollards (“idle babblers”). But the council in London went on to overpower the party by stronger measures.[20] Wycliffe had apparently retired before the storm burst upon Oxford. John of Gaunt was appealed to by the preachers named. But the great Duke of Lancaster had no desire to incur the charge of encouraging heresy. He pronounced the opinions of Hereford and Repyngdon on the nature of the eucharist utterly detestable. The last hope of Lollardism was gone. Wycliffe himself retired unmolested to Lutterworth, where he died and was buried. “Admirable,” says Fuller “that a hare so often hunted with so many packs of dogs should die at last quietly sitting in his form.” Just as he owed his influence as a Reformer to the skill and fame as a schoolman which he had acquired at Oxford, so now his immunity was due to his reputation as the greatest scholastic doctor in the “second school of the Church.”

The statute “De haeretico Comburendo” did its work quickly in stamping out Lollardy in the country. The tares were weeded out. In Oxford alone the tradition of Wycliffe died hard. A remarkable testimonial was issued in October 1406 by the Chancellor and Masters, sealed with the University seal. Some have thought it a forgery, and at the best it probably only represented, as Maxwell Lyte suggests, the verdict of a minority of the Masters snatched in the Long Vacation. But it is in any case of considerable significance. It extols the character of John Wycliffe, and his exemplary performances as a son of the University; it extols his truly Catholic zeal against all who blasphemed Christ’s religion by voluntary begging, and asserts that he was neither convicted of heretical pravity during his life, nor exhumed and burned after death. He had no equal, it maintains, in the University as a writer on logic, philosophy, theology or ethics.

Here then, Archbishop Arundel (1407) an Oriel man, who with his father had built for that College her first chapel, found it necessary to take strong steps. He held a provincial council at Oxford and ordered that all books written in Wycliffe’s time should pass through the censorship, first of the University of Oxford or Cambridge, and secondly of the Archbishop himself, before they might be used in the schools. The establishment of such a censorship was equivalent to a fatal muzzling of genius. If it silenced the Wycliffite teaching, it silenced also the enunciation of any original opinion or truth. Two years later Arundel risked a serious quarrel with the University in order to secure the appointment of a committee to make a list of heresies and errors to be found in Wycliffe’s writings. He announced his intention of holding a visitation of the University with that object. He met with violent opposition. The opponents of the Archbishop were not all enthusiastic supporters of Wycliffe’s views. Not all masters and scholars were moved by pure zeal either for freedom of speculation or for evangelical truth. The local patriotism of the north countryman reinforced the religious zeal of the Lollard. The chronic antipathy of the secular scholars to the friars, of the realists to the nominalists, of the artists to the higher faculties, and the academic pride of the loyal Oxonians—these were all motives which fought for Wycliffe and his doctrines. Least tangible but not least powerful among them was the last, for when civil or ecclesiastical authority endeavoured to assert itself over corporate privileges in the Middle Ages, a very hornet’s nest of local patriotism and personal resentment was quickly roused.

The Oxford masters were impatient of all interference ecclesiastical as well as civil. They had thrown off the yoke of the Bishop of Lincoln and the Archdeacon of Oxford. And, with a view to asserting their independence of the Primate, they had succeeded in obtaining a bull from Boniface IX. in which he specifically confirmed the sole jurisdiction of the Chancellor over all members of the University whatever, Priests and Monks and Friars included. The University, however, was compelled to renounce the bull, and to submit to the visitation of the Archbishop. But the submission was not made without much disturbance and bitterness of feeling. The Lollards, the younger scholars and the northerners, with their lawless allies the Irish, were in favour of active resistance.

The behaviour of three Fellows of Oriel will show how the University was divided against itself. These men, so runs the complaint against them, “are notorious fomenters of discord.”

“They lead a band of ruffians by night, who beat, wound, and spoil men and cause murder. They haunt taverns day and night, and do not enter college before ten or eleven or twelve o’clock, and even scale the walls to the disturbance of quiet students, and bring in armed strangers to spend the night. Thomas Wilton came in over the wall at ten and knocked at the Provost’s chamber, and woke up and abused him as a liar, and challenged him to get up and come out to fight him. Against the Provost’s express orders, on the vigil of S. Peter, these three had gone out of college, broken the Chancellor’s door and killed a student of law. The Chancellor could neither sleep in his house by night nor walk in the High Street by day for fear of these men.”

The arrival of the Archbishop at Oxford then, to hold a visitation at S. Mary’s was a signal for an outbreak. S. Mary’s was barricaded and a band of scholars armed with bows, swords and bucklers awaited the Primate. Notwithstanding the interdict laid on the Church, John Birch of Oriel, one of the Proctors, took the keys, opened the doors, had the bell rung as usual, and even celebrated High Mass there. S. Mary’s, it will be remembered, belonged to Oriel. Hence, perhaps, the active resistance of these Oriel Fellows and of the Dean of Oriel, John Rote, who asked “why should we be punished by an interdict on our church for other people’s faults?” And he elegantly added, “The Devil go with the Archbishop and break his neck.” The controversy was at last referred to the king. The Chancellors and Proctors resigned their office. The younger students who had opposed the Archbishop were soundly whipped, much to the delight of Henry IV. The bull of exemption was declared invalid; the University acknowledged itself subject to the See of Canterbury, thanks to the mediation of the Prince of Wales, mad-cap Harry, and the Archbishop Arundel made a handsome present of books to the public library of Oxford.

The committee desired by Arundel was eventually constituted. Two hundred and sixty-seven propositions were condemned and the obnoxious books solemnly burnt at Carfax. Not long after, a copy of the list of condemned articles was ordered to be preserved in the public libraries, and oaths against their maintenance were enjoined upon all members of the University on graduation.