In the early portion of his life, the throne was occupied by "the greatest of the Plantagenets;" in his middle life, by one of the weakest; and the latter portion witnessed that change of dynasty which resulted in the Wars of the Roses, sweeping off vast numbers of the Norman lords, and leaving England more Saxon than it had been since the Conquest. In the century preceding his birth the feudal barons had been struggling with John and Henry III. against oppressive monarchial prerogative; had wrested from John the Magna Charta; and under the leading of Simon de Montfort, had in the latter reign summoned the first representative Parliament. And now the mass of the people—who had remained serfs, mere chattels, who could be bought and sold like cattle—rose under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw to assert their rights, proclaiming that all men were by nature equally free, and demanding the abolition of serfdom, the abrogation of unjust and oppressive laws, open markets, etc., adopting as their motto, —
"When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Their demands eventuated in certain concessions; but it was not until the Stuarts, by their exaggerated notions of kingly prerogative, had precipitated rebellion, that the liberties of England were established on a sure foundation by the victories of Cromwell. It was the period, too, of the commencement of the struggle with Rome for liberty of conscience. Never had England sunk so low in degradation as in 1213, when John, after boldly defying the Pope, found himself compelled to lay his crown at the feet of Pandulph. But now, "the morning star of the Reformation" was, by voice and pen, awakening the people to a consciousness of their slavery to a foreign priest, proclaiming that the Scriptures were the only rule of faith, and asserting the right of private judgment. Under the vigorous rule of the third Edward, the authority of the Pope in the realm was materially curbed, and enactments made declaring John's submission illegal, lacking, as it did, the assent of the representatives of the people, and making it penal to publish bulls, or any other Papal instruments, in the kingdom without the consent of Parliament.
Nevertheless the Lollards were looked upon as heretics by the authorities of the Church, and in 1377, Wyclif was cited to appear before the Primate and Bishop Courtnay in St. Paul's Cathedral. He went thither accompanied by his patrons, John of Gaunt and the Earl Marshal (Lord Henry Percy), when the latter, in consideration of the age and feebleness of the venerable reformer, desired him to be seated, "which," says Foxe, "eftsoons cast the Bishop of London into a furious chafe," which resulted in an altercation, the abrupt breaking up of the assembly, and the rush of the London mob, with whom the Duke of Lancaster was not then popular, to his palace of the Savoy, where they murdered a priest, but were dispersed by the Lord Mayor.
After the murder of Archbishop Sudbury and the elevation of Courtnay to the primacy, he called a synod together at the House of the Preaching Friars, London, at which the new bishop (Braybrooke) attended. Soon after their assembling, a shock of an earthquake occurred, which alarmed the ecclesiastics, but Courtnay adroitly turned it to account, saying that earthquakes were but the expulsion of noxious vapours from the earth, and it was a sign that Heaven looked with approval on their efforts to expel noxious doctrines from the Church, and the meeting very speedily pronounced fourteen of Wyclif's tenets erroneous or heretical.
This was, however, but the seed-time of religious liberty; the seeds, nevertheless, in spite of opposition, fructified under Henry VIII. and his daughter Elizabeth, grew apace under the Commonwealth, and the harvest was reaped after the expulsion of the second James.
Intellectually, too, Braybrooke was the contemporary of the transition from ignorance to learning. Chaucer, in his Canterbury Pilgrims, and Gower in his Confessio Amantis, were laying the foundation of our modern language and literature; and Faust, Gutenberg, and Schœffer were establishing their printing presses in Germany, to be introduced into England by Caxton in the next century, to aid in the diffusion of knowledge, and in the liberation of the people from political and spiritual thraldom.