Historic Bubbles

by Frederic Leake

Cotemporary with Philip IV. was Edward I. of England. The two were pretty evenly matched. Edward was probably the better soldier; but in his negotiations with Philip, the advantage remained to the latter. Edward married for his second wife Philip’s sister; and Edward’s son married Philip’s daughter. It was this last marriage that caused the hundred years war.

Edward’s grandfather king John, one of the basest of monarchs, had been compelled by his barons, to accept the Great Charter and solemnly to swear to observe it. He appealed to the pope Innocent III. to release him from that oath, and the pontiff consented on condition that John should cede to him in fee the kingdom of England and receive it back in tenancy as a fief of the Holy See, subject to an annual tribute of money as token of vassalage. The bargain was consummated: John was empowered to violate his oath, and his Holiness became Lord paramount of England. He received the tribute in silver and gold during the life of John and during the long reign of his son Henry III. the father of Edward. But when he, Edward, came to the throne he resolved not to be outdone by his incomparable brother-in-law, and refused to continue the tribute. The pope, Boniface VIII., did not follow up the claim with his usual tenacity. Perhaps because he already had his hands full with Philip; and perhaps because there supervened between him and Edward a negotiation of a different character. Edward at the head of an army, was pursuing his claim to the crown of Scotland. The Scotch appealed to the pope giving him a correct history of the transactions between the two kingdoms, by which the independence of Scotland was fully recognised. Boniface ordered Edward to withdraw his troops, alleging that Scotland belonged to him, Boniface—a new pretence little to the taste of the Scotch themselves. Edward denied the Scotch version, and told the pope that the English monarchy was founded by Brutus the Trojan in the time of the prophet Samuel, and that Scotland was subjugated and annexed by his Edward’s ancestor king Arthur, a prince for whose existence there was the same authority then as now, namely the rhymes of the nursery. Boniface was struck with the antiquity of the English monarchy and the deeds of the valorous Arthur, and he changed sides: he commanded the Scotch no longer to resist his beloved son in the Lord, king Edward.

Some years later we find Edward brought by his subjects to the verge of dethronement for his tyranny, and forced to ratify anew the Great Charter and swear to observe it; and then applying to Clement V. the French pope, Philip’s pope, first pope of the Captivity, for a dispensation from his oath. Great as Edward is made to appear to us in English histories, it is clear he was not the man to redeem his kingdom from the thraldom into which his grandsire had sold it. It was the paralysis of the political power of the Church effected by Philip IV., which gave scope to the innovations of Wiclif and led towards the emancipation of England.

We pass over the reign of Edward’s worthless son, and come to that of his grandson in the early part of whose reign Wiclif was born. The day of his birth is not known. The third Edward came honestly by his qualities moral and immoral. He was the grandson not only of Edward I. but of the terrible Philip. He was not an Englishman—the English blood in his veins was just a two hundred and fifty-sixth part. He was a French Spaniard with a taint of the Moor. He ground his subjects to powder by unprecedented taxation. He put the crown itself in pawn and left it there eight years. But he had inherited the unfailing sagacity of his maternal grandsire, and his people never brought him to terms by threatening to dethrone him.

If he himself did not turn upon the Church and rend her like Philip, he was ready to see others do it. For aught he cared, Wiclif and the other neologists of the day, might have gone over to the faith of his Saracenic ancestors, and translated into English the Koran instead of the Bible. Nor were his subjects much more true to the hierarchy: loyalty to the pope was no longer the vogue. Now-a-days not one Roman Catholic in a thousand knows that the see of Rome was ever anywhere else than in Rome: the Church has been remiss in disseminating information on that point; but at that time every Englishman not idiotic, knew that the pope was a Frenchman seated down on the Rhone; that the cardinals were French; that it was a Frenchman in London who received the tribute of king John when he could get it; that in fine the Church was a French industry which every honest Briton was bound to look upon with distrust.

In the previous century begging had been proclaimed as a means of grace, and this new road to heaven was eagerly seized upon by the religious orders. Even men of rank and wealth turned Franciscan or Dominican and worked out their own salvation by standing barefoot, a rope around the waist, at the corners of the streets, holding out a box for the contributions of the devout. The widow’s mite entitled her only to the formal and general prayers of the convent; but those who would make a handsome gift, were presented with a document on vellum called a letter of fraternity which gained for them special masses for the success of their schemes in this world, and for the tempering of purgatorial fires in the next. This traffic was profitable enough to attract a brisk competition among the different orders, for the monopoly; and each succeeding pontiff granted it to those who by their faith or works—chiefly the latter—had risen highest in his esteem.

England swarmed with these sturdy beggars, and this gave handle to Wiclif’s attacks not only upon them but upon monks in general. He himself was a secular priest, that is a priest belonging to no monastic order; and Roman Catholic writers aver that Wiclif’s hostility to the monks arose from party spirit; and even protestant historians do not wholly exculpate him in that regard. We know that feelings quite mundane went for something occasionally in the measures of Luther and of Calvin; and it is not improbable that Wiclif had a touch of human nature as well as they. He had been made warden of Canterbury in the place of a monk named Woodhall. The archbishop from whom Wiclif had received this appointment died, and his successor dismissed him and reinstated the monk. Wiclif appealed to the pope at Avignon, who decided against him, saying that none but monks were entitled to such preferment. Wiclif sounded the charge. He denied the pope’s infallibility; he denied his right to excommunicate except for crime; his right to extend absolution except to the penitent; his right to any temporal power, especially his claim to be Lord paramount of England by the cession of king John. He admitted that the pontiff was Christ’s vicar on earth so far as he conformed to Christ’s precept and example and no farther. As for the monks, not only their begging but some other of their short-comings more questionable were the subject of his invective; and to show them what they ought to be and to do he sent forth his poor priests as he called them, who clad in monkish garb, went into the streets and highways, not to beg but to preach the gospel and to read it to the people in English in the translation he was already making.

I have sketched the events which prepared the way for Wiclif, and it is proof of how well they had worked together for him that this opposition to the Church instead of losing for him the favor of the king, gained it. The tribute of John was in arrears, and pope Urban summoned Edward to appear before him at Avignon as his vassal, and give an account of himself. Edward was not disposed to make so long a journey for so little profit; but he agreed to send commissioners to meet those of his Holiness, at Bruges in Flanders. Wiclif had the honor of being appointed on this commission. A compromise was the result. Wiclif was rewarded for the skill he had shown as a diplomat, by being made rector of Lutterworth, and in that incumbency he spent the rest of his days.

William of Wykeham bishop of Winchester was a prelate of learning, talent and excellence. He deplored as earnestly as Wiclif the ecclesiastical abuses which reigned, and the objectionable ways of the monks. He was of a broad spirit: nice theological points never troubled him. He recked as little as Wiclif whether the Frenchman Grimoard, Urban V. was infallible or not, or whether he was entitled to the tribute of king John so long as he did not get it.[18]

But he idolised the Church and to maintain her dignity, her prerogative and even her wealth was what he lived for. Both these men were in advance of their age: the one by indifference to the prevailing superstitions, the other by a desire to blot them out. They ought have been friends; but one was a high churchman, the other a low churchman.