“live a rightful life in their own persons, both in respect to God and man, keeping the commandments of God, doing the works of mercy, ruling well their five senses, and doing reason, and equity, and good conscience to all men,”—
we merely give here his concluding words:—
“And thus each man in the three states ought to life, to save himself, and to help others; and thus should life, rest, peace, and love, be among Christian men, and they be saved, and heathen men soon converted, and God magnified greatly in all nations and sects that now despise Him and His law, because of the false living of wicked Christian men.”
These are not the sentiments or utterances of a man in fellowship with John Ball, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, or any other such demagogues, rebels, or sowers of sedition.
The truth, as stated by Milman,[28] is, that this spasm or “outburst” of “thralled discontent” was but a violent symptom of the evils which it was the aim and design of Wycliffe to uproot and remove, by disseminating and inculcating everywhere the principles and precepts of the Gospel. Writing in defence of the “poor priests” or evangelists whom he had trained and sent out, Wycliffe says:—
“These poor priests destroien most, by God‘s law, rebelty of servants agenst lords, and charge servants to be sujet, though lords be tyrants. For St Peter teacheth us, Be ye servants suget to lords in all manner of dread, not only to good lords, and bonoure, but also to tyrants, or such as drawen from God’s school. For, as St. Paul sieth, each man oweth to be suget to higher potestates, that is, to men of high power, for there is no power but of God, and so he that agen stondeth power, stondeth agenst the ordinance of God, but they that agenstond engetten to themselves damnation. And therefore Paul biddeth that we be suget to princes by need, and not only for wrath but also for conscience, and therefore we paien tributes to princes, for they ben ministers of God.” But “some men that ben out of charity slandren ‘poor priests’ with this error, that servants or tenants may lawfully withhold rent and service fro their lords, when lords be openly wicked in their living;” and “they maken these false lesings upon ‘poor priests’ to make lords to hate them, and not to meyntane truth of God’s law that they teachen openly for worship of God, and profit of the realm, and stabling the King’s power in destroying of sin.”[29]
Among the victims of the rage of the rabble in the Wat Tyler insurrection was Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. “He was,” says Godwin, “a man admirably wise and well spoken.” But “though he were very wise, learned, eloquent, liberal, merciful and for his age and place reverend, yet might it not deliver him from the rage of this beast with many heads—the multitude—than which being, once incensed, there is no brute beast more cruel, more outrageous, more unreasonable.”[30]
William Courtenay, Bishop of London, succeeded Sudbury as Archbishop of Canterbury. Courtenay, a high-tempered, haughty, and resolute man, lost no time in bringing the powers of his new and high position to bear against the doctrines and adherents of Wycliffe. His pall from Rome having been delivered to him at Croydon on the 6th of May 1382, he summoned a synod to meet in the Grey Friars (mendicants) in London, on the 17th of May, to deliberate and determine on the measures to be taken for the suppression of certain stranger and dangerous opinions “widely prevalent among the nobility and commons of the realm.” During the sittings of this synod a great and terrible earthquake shook the place of meeting and the whole city. Many of the high dignitaries and learned doctors assembled, interpreting this event as a protest from heaven against the proceedings of the council, would fain have adjourned the meeting and its business. But the Archbishop, with ready wit, interpreting the omen to suit his own purpose, said, “the earth was throwing off its noxious vapors, that the Church might appear in her perfect purity,” With these words Courtenay allayed the fears of the more timid members of the synod, and the business went forward. Of four and twenty articles extracted from Wycliffe’s writings, ten were condemned as heretical, and the other fourteen were judged erroneous. It is unnecessary to say that among the articles condemned as heretical were the doctrines of Wycliffe concerning the Eucharist, and more particularly his denial of transubstantiation. Among the condemned tenets there are some which Wycliffe never held or affirmed in the sense put upon them by the “Earthquake Council.” Some of the determinations of this synod were so framed as to imply or insinuate that Wycliffe was implicated in the insurrection of the previous year, and that he was an enemy to temporal as well as to the ecclesiastical authority—in other words, that he was a traitor as well as heretic. An imposing procession, and a sermon by a Carmelite friar, served to give solemnity and publicity, pomp and circumstance, to the decrees of the synod.
Dr. Peter Stokes, a Carmelite preacher, furnished with the Archbishop’s mandate and other artillery, was sent to bombard Oxford or to take it by storm. But neither the scholars nor the Chancellor (Rigge) were disposed to surrender the university without a struggle in defence of its rights and liberties. The reception given to Dr. Stokes was not at all satisfactory or assuring to the mind of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who indignantly gave expression to his sorrow and his anger in the words: “Is, then, the University of Oxford such a fautor of heresy that Catholic truths cannot be asserted within her walls?” Assuming to himself the ominous title of “Inquisitor of heretical pravity within his whole province of Canterbury,” he proceeded to deal with Oxford as if it were nothing more than one of the outlying parishes of his episcopal province. The chancellor and several members of the university were summoned to appear before him and to purge themselves of the suspicion of heresy. But Chancellors like Rigge, although courteous, are not readily compliant with what seems to invade the privileges and prerogatives of their office. If Chancellor Rigge, after his return to Oxford from London, gave formal effect to the injunctions of the Archbishop, by intimating to Nicolas Hereford and Philip Repington that he was under the necessity of suspending them from all their functions as members of the university, he promptly resented the insolence of Henry Cromp, who in a public lecture had applied the epithet “Lollards” to those who maintained the views of Wycliffe, by suspending him from all university functions.[31] Against this sentence Cromp sought and found refuge in an appeal to Courtenay and to the Privy Council. Hereford, Repington, and John Aston were summoned to appear before the Archbishop. Aston was declared to be a teacher of heresy, and he afterwards recanted. Repington also recanted after a time, and was promoted to great honors in the Church. Hereford, having gone to Rome to plead his case before the Pope, was there imprisoned; but it would seem that some time afterwards he managed to escape from prison, for in 1387 he is mentioned as the leading itinerant preacher of the Lollards. Thus within a few months after Courtenay entered on the discharge of the functions of his high office, he had greatly intimidated the adherents and fellow-laborers of Wycliffe in the university. But opinion rooted in conviction is not easily suppressed. While the more prominent representatives of Wycliffe’s adherents were either driven out of the country or coerced into submission, and to the recantation of opinions which they had held and taught, Wycliffe himself stood firm and erect amidst the tempest that raged around. As if in calm defiance of the Archbishop and his commissaries, he indited a petition to the King and the Parliament, in which he craves their assent to the main articles contained in his writings, and proved by authority—the Word of God—and reason to be the Christian faith; he prays that all persons now bound by vows of religion may have liberty to accept and follow the more perfect law of Christ; that tithes be bestowed according to their proper use, for the maintenance of the poor; that Christ’s own doctrine concerning the Eucharist be publicly taught; that neither the King nor the kingdom obey any See or prelate further than their obedience be grounded on Scripture; that no money be sent out of the realm to the Court of Rome or of Avignon, unless proved by Scripture to be due; that no Cardinal or foreigner hold preferment in England; that if a bishop or curate be notoriously guilty of contempt of God, the King should confiscate his temporalities; that no bishop or curate should be enslaved to secular office; and that no one should be imprisoned on account of excommunication.[32]
This is Wycliffe’s petition of right to the King and to the Parliament of England. We know nothing exactly like this document in the history of the past five hundred years. In one or two of the claims set forth in it, the document which bears to it the greatest resemblance is an anonymous petition addressed to King James in 1609, being “An Humble Supplication for Toleration and Liberty to enjoy and observe the Ordinances of Christ Jesus, in the administration of His Churches in lieu of human Constitutions.” But compared with Wycliffe’s petition, that other is narrow and restricted in its range. This of Wycliffe is, like his work, for all time. In it he seems to have gathered up the principles that governed his life, and to have expressed them so that this document may be regarded as a summary of principles, a sort of Enchiridion for the use of the statesmen and people of England.