John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
COURTNEAY'S TRIUMPH.
PON Wyclif and his friends the effects of the Peasants' Revolt could not fail to be very disastrous. The King's Council was not satisfied with the vengeance which it had executed throughout the disturbed districts, with violating the young King's pledges, annulling the manumissions and indemnities granted to the serfs, and attempting to rivet their chains more securely than ever. It determined to curb the spirit of Wyclif and his Poor Priests, believing or feigning to believe that they were in part responsible for the outbreak. In most of these measures it required the assistance of Parliament, and it might have been thought that reaction in the country, added to the influence of the King's uncles and principal officers, would have ensured the election of a series of Parliaments more than ready to acquiesce in legislation of a reactionary character. But it was not so. The Lords were amenable, and in some particulars they took the lead in a policy of vengeance or panic; but when in 1382 the bishops and barons voted that Wyclif's Priests should be silenced and suppressed, the Commons disagreed with the ordinance, which never became a statute. Three years later another House of Commons rose to the heroic level of voting the appropriation of the Church endowments to secular uses. The Lords promptly refused their co-operation; but the action of the more representative House showed that some at least of the new doctrines were firmly rooted in English soil.
Courtenay became Primate of England after the death of Sudbury, and a few days later he was created Chancellor. He preached to the two Houses in English; and if by any chance he thought it timely to enlarge upon the virtues of fidelity and good faith, it may easily be imagined that the Lords and Commons would listen to him at that moment with very little patience, for the mood of forgiveness was not upon them. Parliament met, and Courtenay preached his sermon, on the 9th of November, 1381; nine days later he resigned the great seal. It is at any rate not improbable that he did this through lack of stomach for the work of undoing all the King's pledges—voluntary and spontaneous, as well as forced—and of sanctioning the continued severities of Tressilian and the other justiciaries. According to one account, an actual petition of Parliament for anew Chancellor compelled Courtenay's retirement. It was not until the following January, on the marriage of the King to Anne of Bohemia, that the beheadings and burnings and disembowellings ceased, and the seven thousand victims were held to have paid the debt of revolt.
But it was necessary that Wyclif also should suffer for the suspicions which had fallen upon him. He was accused of having contributed to bring about the disorders, and there would naturally be a prejudice against him in the minds of some who had hitherto favoured his cause. In the spring of 1382 Courtenay was directed by Parliament to inquire into the doctrines of the Rector of Lutterworth, on the express ground that he and his preachers had disturbed the peace of the realm. It is doubtful how far this mandate proceeded from a majority in both Houses; and, considering that the Commons soon afterwards refused to agree to the suppression of the Poor Priests when this had been proposed by the bishops and barons, it seems unlikely that the popular representatives should have ordered the proceedings against Wyclif in a message which so entirely prejudged his case. We can easily imagine what arguments the primate would employ to convince the Lords of the wisdom and necessity of a prosecution. When John Ball had been condemned to death Courtenay had obtained for him a respite of two days, during which he had wrestled with the "mad priest "for his soul; and he may have been able to assure his colleagues in perfect good faith that he had traced out all the ramifications of the doctrine which began in the schools and the Latin treatise, and ended in revolt against the government and the assassination of the chief ministers of the Crown.
However this may have been, Courtenay lost no time in proceeding once more against the redoubtable Oxford professor, and with a better assurance of success than on either of the former occasions when he had set the machinery of the Church in motion. He had no longer much to fear, if anything, from John of Gaunt, who had cooled very considerably towards Wyclif and his friends, even before the terrible scare which the peasants had given him a year ago. Poor Sudbury, too, the mild and irresolute, had gone to his account, and there was no power in the land which was able, or disposed, to interfere with the exercise of his authority.
As soon as the session was over he summoned a Synod of the English Church to meet him, on the 21st of May, in the priory of the Dominicans in Holborn ("apud Prcedicatores ". There were present in this assembly ten bishops, including Courtenay himself, Robert of London, William of Winchester, John of Lincoln, Thomas of Exeter, John of Durham, John of Hereford, Ralph of Salisbury, Thomas of Rochester, and William Botellesham of Nantes—the latter being an old friar. The doctors of theology in addition to these were four Carmelites—Glamvile and Dysse of Cambridge, Lovey and Kynyngham of Oxford; three Dominicans—Sywarde and Langeley of Oxford, and Parys of Cambridge; four Augustinians—Ascheburn and Bankin of Oxford, Hormenton of Cambridge, and Waldeby of Toulouse; four Franciscans—Karlelle and Bernevvell of Oxford, Folvyle and Frysby of Cambridge; and the Benedictine monk John Wells of Ramsey. There were also eleven doctors of law, two bachelors of law, and seven bachelors of theology, including Bloxham, custos of Merton, Humbleton and two other Dominicans, two Carmelites, and a Franciscan.
This was not the full number summoned by Courtenay. Rygge, the Chancellor of Oxford, was not present, nor did Wyclif himself put in an appearance, being very possibly out of health. Dr. James asserts in his Apology that Wyclif "voluntarily absented himself, because he knew that the bishops had plotted his death by the way, devising the means and encouraging men thereunto." This is not at all likely, though the suspicion may have been entertained. It is more than probable that the Reformer's friends dissuaded him from going to London, through fear that his death might follow on his condemnation. It would be impossible, in the light of subsequent events, to admit that such fears were groundless. Or it may have been that Wyclif had good cause to know that he would at least be arrested if he left Oxford in 1382. Parliament as well as the bishops was now against him, and for the moment Oxford was perhaps the only place in the country where he could be free from the danger of arrest. In his absence the Synod discussed the conclusions which had been attributed to him, and condemned ten of them as distinct heresies and fourteen more as erroneous.
Whilst the discussion was proceeding, the hall in which the Council sat was shaken by an earthquake. It may well be supposed that Wyclif's friends—if there were any present, which seems doubtful—would claim this portent as a sign from Heaven in his favour; and even the most orthodox of the clergy must have been startled and perturbed. One cannot but admire the splendid courage of Courtenay, who instantly turned the shock to good account; for, he said, as the earth expelled its ill humours with so much vehemence and convulsion, they ought to take it as a happy omen for the expulsion of ill humours from the Church of Christ.
The Synod was then adjourned until the 12th of June, at the same time and place; and in the meantime the Primate took measures to make an impression on the obstinate spirits at Oxford, who under Chancellor Rygge still remained loyal to their friend. On the 28th of May Courtenay sent his missive to Peter Stokys, a friar of the Carmelite Order, and a "professor of the sacred page." The prelates of the Church, he said, owed it to the lambs to warn them against wolves in sheep's clothing. There were certain "sons of eternal damnation" who, "under a cloak of great sanctity," claimed authority to preach in spite of prohibition a number of heretical, erroneous, and false conclusions, already condemned by the Church, and contrary to decisions of the ecclesiastical authorities, "which threaten to overturn the Church and the peace of the nation." These men are not afraid to assert and publicly teach the errors in question, "not only in the churches but also in the open squares and other unconsecrated places within our province of Canterbury." Therefore the Archbishop had called together a number of doctors of theology and professors of the canon and civil law, with other clerics of repute, that they might give an opinion thereon. By them it was found and declared that of the said conclusions some were heretical, whilst others were erroneous and contrary to decisions of the Church.
The Archbishop therefore commands Friar Peter to warn and inhibit any who preach or defend such doctrine, of whatever state or condition they may be, in the University of Oxford, in the schools or outside, in public or in private, and any who shall listen to those who preach it, or shall favour or consort with them in public or in private. They are to be fled from and avoided like a snake emitting deadly poison, under penalty of the greater excommunication.
To this missive the Primate added a list of the heresies and errors which had been condemned by the Synod of Blackfriars—namely, ten heresies and fourteen erroneous conclusions. The heresies are as follows:
"1. That the material substances of bread and wine continue after consecration in the sacrament of the altar.
"2. The bread and wine do not remain in the same sacrament sine subjecto (as accidents without substance).
"3. Christ is not in the sacrament of the altar identically, truly, and really in his proper corporeal personality.
"4. If a bishop or a priest is in mortal sin, he does not ordain, consecrate, or baptize.
"5. If a man is in a fit condition of soul, external confession is superfluous and even invalid for him.
"6. There is no authority in the Gospel for declaring that Christ ordained the mass.
"7. God is constrained to give place to the devil.
"8. If the Pope is a reprobate and wicked man, and consequently a member of the devil, he has no power over Christ's faithful people assigned to him by anyone, unless it be by Caesar (that is, temporal).
"9. After Urban VI. no one else ought to be elected as Pope, but we ought to live in the manner of the Greeks, under our own laws.
"10. It is contrary to Holy Scripture for ecclesiastics to hold temporal possessions."
At the same time that he wrote to Peter Stokys, the Archbishop sent a letter to Chancellor Rygge, expressing his surprise at the favour which had been shown by him to Master Nicholas Hereford—who had just been appointed to preach before the University—exhorting him thenceforth to amend his ways, lest he should himself appear to be one of the heretical sect, and it should be "our duty thereon to exercise our authority against you." And the Chancellor is enjoined to assist Stokys in giving publicity to the Archbishop's denunciation.
Courtenay was grimly in earnest: but he had some trouble yet before he could make his will prevail. After receiving his letter, Dr. Rygge appointed Repyngdon, another Wycliffite, to preach before the University. It is evident that he was only interpreting the spirit of Oxford, so far as the academic element was concerned. The Lollards, as they now began to be generally called, were in favour; the University men would not hear them ill spoken of, and applauded those who did them honour. Rygge gave Stokys no active assistance, and the Carmelite wrote to Courtenay saying that he dare not carry out his behests for fear of death. The defiance was open and aggressive. Not only did Repyngdon call the men who had been condemned by Courtenay holy priests, and contrast their morality with the abuses which were rife amongst the wealthier clergy, but when Stokys came into the schools and prepared to inhibit him in the name of the Archbishop, the scholars drew their arms and threatened his life. Then he hurried back to London, leaving the Wycliffites masters of the field. Courtenay, naturally enraged at this resistance to his authority, sent such an urgent summons to the Chancellor, calling upon him to attend the adjourned meeting of the Synod on June 12th, that Rygge did not venture to disobey.
By way of celebrating the long-desired condemnation of the teaching of Wyclif—which was completed at the first sitting of the Synod—and possibly at the same time commemorating the irruption of the peasants and the murder of Sudbury, the bishops and clergy determined upon a grand open-air procession on Whitsunday. The people of London were already keen for a pageant of any kind, and they gathered together in crowds to see the priests and devout laymen marching barefoot through the city and suburbs, chaunting the litany and penitential psalms. After the procession John Kynyngham, the Carmelite Friar (who is said to have been John of Gaunt's confessor, though he certainly had no sympathy with the Duke's admiration for Wyclif—against whose Latin treatise De Esse he had argued long and drily twenty years ago), preached a sermon before his brethren of the Synod, and publicly repeated their condemnation of the Oxford heresies. He pointed the moral of the great act of expiation which had just been performed for the violated sanctity of the mass; and, if the reports of his friends are to be believed, he effected at least one noteworthy conversion. A certain Cornelius Clonne, an old soldier and a Lollard, was turned from the error of his ways; and so strongly was he affected by the exposure of Wyclif's blasphemies that on the following day, whilst attending mass in the church of the Black Friars, he saw with his own eyes . . . Perhaps there is no need to repeat exactly what he saw; but it was a conclusive argument against both Wyclif and the orthodox clergy; for, if it was not material bread and wine, it was just as little the accidents of the consecrated host without a subject.
On the 12th of June the Synod met again in Holborn; and there were present, in addition to many of those who had met in May, Robert Rygge, Laundreyn and Brygtwell, Peter Stokys and Henry Crompe, Radeclyff, Sutbraye, the monk of St. Alban's, Bromyerde, a Black friar from Cambridge, with two other doctors of law and two bachelors of theology. Stokys would now be able to repeat the story of his treatment at Oxford; but it was not until the next meeting that Crompe was in a position to relate how he had been suspended by the masters for speaking of Wyclif and his followers as heretics. The most striking feature of this second sitting was the humble submission of the Chancellor, who is said to have gone on his knees to the Archbishop, and accepted the discipline of Holy Church. His forgiveness was made conditional on his assisting to extirpate the condemned doctrine from the University; but when the Primate gave him the proclamation, which denounced Hereford, Repyngdon, John Aston, and Laurence Bedenham, suspending them from their functions, he protested that it would cost him his life to enforce it.
"Then," said Courtenay, "your University is an open fautor of heretics, if it suffers not the truth to be proclaimed within its limits."
Rygge went back to Oxford, and doubtless made his friends acquainted with the decision of the Archbishop; but he certainly took no action against them. He had, it seems most probable, been elected this year as the champion of the Wycliffite party, and could not have retained the chancellorship if he had turned round on his supporters.
Courtenay meanwhile had brought other influences to bear upon the Lollards. Parliament (at any rate the Lords and the King's Council) gave him the assistance which they had promised. The Duke of Lancaster made the Wycliffites understand that they would receive no further help from him; and in all probability Wyclif himself was ill at this moment. Bedenham is not mentioned as having appeared before the Synod, but the other three who had been suspended now thought it prudent, or were constrained, to answer the citation of the Primate.
The third sitting had been fixed for June 14th. Hereford, Aston, and Repyngdon put in an appearance, but refused to make the recantation which Courtenay demanded. He gave them a short respite, and appointed a fourth meeting for June 20th. In the interval Aston—himself one of the Poor Priests against whom the tide had turned so strongly—drew up a manifesto for his friends outside, in which he boldly re-stated his conclusions. The result was that when the Synod met again he was formally condemned as a heretic. But once more the haughty prelate—four years after the memorable trial at Lambeth was interrupted by an incursion of Londoners, who had been moved by Aston's appeal, and could not restrain themselves when they heard that he had been condemned. They might indeed have been headed by the same worthy draper, John of Northampton, who came to the help of Wyclif in the Archbishop's chapel, for he was still a warm sympathiser with the Lollards, and had not yet risen to the dignity of the mayoralty. Courtenay gave Hereford and Repyngdon another eight days in which to make submission, afterwards postponing the date to the 1st of July; and, as he had no mind to be interfered with in the discharge of his duty by the obstreperous citizens, he changed the place of meeting on this occasion to Canterbury. There were six new doctors at the fifth and final sitting of the Synod, including William Berton, who had already pronounced against Wyclif at Oxford.
Neither Hereford nor Repyngdon put in an appearance at Canterbury, and they were both condemned in their absence. From the final record of the Synod it appeared that Courtenay had collected seventy-three signatures to the formal condemnation of Wyclif's conclusions.
One of the most entertaining of the songs, Latin or English, bearing upon the events of this period, which have been preserved in the Cotton manuscripts, and printed by Mr. Wright in the Rolls Series, deals with the Council of 1382. It refers to the plague, the Peasants' Revolt, and the earthquake, as well as to sundry characters in the drama of Wyclifs life with whom the reader is already acquainted. It may perhaps be a pardonable licence to quote three or four of the more pertinent stanzas of this Wycliffite poem.
"Armacam quern cælo Dominus coronavit,
Discordes tantomodo fratres adunavit ;
Sed magno miraculo Wyclif coruscavit,
Cum fratres et monachos simul collocavit.
With an O and an I, consortes effecti,
Quovis adversario dicunt, sunt protecti.
"Tunc primus determinans est Johannes Wellis,
Istos viros reprobans cum verbis tencllis,
Multum conversatus est ventis et procellis;
Hinc in ejus facie patet color fellis.
With an O and an I, in scholis non prodest,
Imago faciei monstrat qualis hie est."Hic promisit in scholis quod vellet probare
Wyclif et Herford simul dictis repugnare;
Sed cum hic nescierat plus argumentare,
Nichol solvens omnia jussit Bayard stare.
With an O and an I, Wellis replicabat;
Sed postquam Nichol solverat, tunc Johannes stabat.
Tunc accessit alius, Stokis nominatus,
Rufus naturaliter, et veste dealbatus,
Omnibus impatiens, et nimis elatus,
Et contra veridicos dirigens conatus.
With an O and an I, sub tam rubra pelle
Animus non habitat nisi unctus felle."
The entry made in the Archbishop's register by Courtenay's direction, relating to the condemnation of Wyclif in 1382, is printed by Wilkins in his Councils of Great Britain. It is of course set forth in Latin, and is to the following effect.
"Whereas it was matter of common repute amongst the nobles and the people of England that certain heretical conclusions, and some which were erroneous, and contrary to decisions of the Church, which aim at overthrowing the entire Church, and our province of Canterbury, and the peace of the realm, had been generally, commonly, and publicly professed in various places within our said province; we, William, by Divine permission Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and legate of the Apostolic See, having taken cognisance of these matters, and being minded to exercise the functions of our office, called together certain venerable brethren, our suffragans and others, and many doctors of the sacred page, of the canon and civil law, and bachelors, all of whom we believed to be the most reputed and able of the realm, and most devout in maintaining the Catholic faith, whose names are included below. And on the 7th day of May, A. D. 1382, in a chamber within the confines of the priory of the Preaching Friars of London, under our presidency, when our aforesaid brethren had been called together and were in personal attendance, the conclusions already mentioned, the tenor of which is given below, were openly stated and read in a clear and distinct voice; and we charged our aforesaid brethren, and the doctors and bachelors, by the faith whereby they were bound to our Lord Jesus Christ, and as they expected to answer at the day of judgment before the Supreme Judge, that they all and each should declare to us their opinion concerning the said conclusions.
"And finally, when a discussion had been held thereon, on the 21st day of the same month, our said brethren with the doctors and bachelors appearing before us in the same chamber, and the said conclusions having been read out a second time and plainly expounded, when we and all who were present had expressed our opinion, it was declared—that of the said conclusions some were heretical, and others erroneous, and contrary to the decisions of the Church, as more clearly appears below. And whereas we have discovered, on sufficient information, that the said conclusions have been taught in many places within our province as aforementioned, and that particular persons have held and taught some of them, and that they have been strongly and notoriously suspected of heresy, we have taken the following proceedings both general and particular."
Long entries follow in the same register, detailing the inquiries held by Courtenay at the other sittings, as already recorded. But as they give us little or nothing in the shape of question and answer, and baldly recite the opinions and acts of the Archbishop himself, they are hardly worth the space which their transcription would occupy.
Courtenay had struck a shrewd blow at what he naturally considered a pestilent and fatal heresy; and perhaps there was not another bishop on the bench who would have done it half so thoroughly. But if he flattered himself that his end was gained when Wyclif had been declared a heretic, and his principal supporters had been excommunicated, he would soon be undeceived on that point. The probability is that he knew the strength of Lollardy too well to suppose that it had been absolutely crushed by his Synod, or that either pope or bishop or monk would be strong enough to stem and to turn the advancing tide of rationalism in matters of doctrine. None the less did he fight a strong and resolute battle for the faith as he conceived it. He fought, moreover, so far as one can see, fairly and aboveboard, taking no mean advantage, giving plenty of notice and warning, as ready to remove his censures as to impose them, whenever a rebel against the authority of the Church submitted himself to her maternal discipline. No one could be more unyielding, more stern and arbitrary in the face of defiant opposition. No one, if his acts have been read aright, could be more magnanimous in victory.
In Wyclif, if in Wyclif only, he found a will and a resolution to match his own. Wyclif never yielded to him nor to Parliament, nor to King, nor to Pope. There is one thing stronger than 'the strongest authority that was ever set up, and that is the spirit of revolt against wrong based upon an overwhelming conviction of truth. Wyclif had such a conviction, and nothing on earth could shake him.
"Justum ac tenacem propositi virum
... Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinæ."
And assuredly Wyclif had suffered and was yet to suffer more than enough to convulse a stronger man. His life had been a perpetual struggle, and within the last seven or eight years he was never free from keen antagonism. The friars and monks had poured the vials of their wrath upon him. One Pope had launched five bulls against him, and another was already being urged to summon him to Rome. The Primate and nine bishops had solemnly denounced him as a heretic. The Chancellor of his beloved University had condemned him in the open schools, and forbidden him to teach what he believed to be true. He had passed through dark clouds of suspicion; the mother and the uncle of the King had ceased to defend him; Parliament, which used to ask for and follow his advice, had arraigned him as a disturber of the public peace. His most formidable enemy, at the head of the English Church, had smitten his friends, hip and thigh, until they were either dispersed or beginning to fail in the hour of persecution; and now the hand of God was upon him, and he must have felt in 1382 that his days on earth were numbered. "All thy storms have gone over me," he might have said; "I am feeble and sore smitten; mine enemies close me in on every side." Who could have wondered if he had faltered in the end of his life, if he had shown one moment's weakness, or compromised himself by one impatient word? But he did nothing of this kind. He stands out to the last, amid the storm and stress of persecution, as firm as the cliff in Teesdale from which he took his name.
Wyclif addressed an independent petition to Parliament, on May 6, 1382, urging the authorities of the realm to support the simple faith of Christ, independently of the errors by which it has been overlaid. As to the form of this petition there is not a little uncertainty, for whilst some manuscripts have preserved a long "Complainte to King and Parliament" in English, consisting of four main clauses amply expounded, Walsingham briefly recapitulates seven points, which do not correspond with the English document. Walsingham's "seven interpretations" are as follows:
1. Neither the King nor the nation ought to yield to any external see or prelate. 2. The money of the realm ought not to be sent out of the country, to Rome, to Avignon, or elsewhere. 3. Neither cardinal nor any other mart ought to take the revenue of a church or prebend in England unless he duly resides there. 4. The King and his realm are bound to overthrow those who betray the realm. 5. The Commons of the realm ought not to be burdened by unaccustomed taxes, until the patrimony which has been given to the clergy has been exhausted. 6. If any bishop or beneficed curate has notoriously fallen into contempt of God, the King not only may but is bound to take away his temporal goods [entrusted to him by the Church]. 7. The King ought not to set a bishop or a curate in any secular office. There is evidently not much in these propositions, unless it be in the fifth, which would make them particularly appropriate as coming from Wyclif at that crisis; and they had all been maintained, and in great measure admitted, by King, Parliament, and people, several years before. But the "Complainte" is a dignified and carefully considered paper, and might well have been presented to "our most noble and most worthi King Richard, kyng both of Englond and of Fraunce, and to the noble Duk of Lancastre, and to othere grete men of the rewme, bothe to seculers and men of holi Churche, that ben gaderid in the Parlement." The first point in this petition is that the rule of Christ is perfect and sufficient, without any other; that the clean religion of Christ was followed by the apostles, but it has been overlaid by monks and friars. If their rules agree with that of Christ, they should be known by Christ's name, not by that of Francis or Dominic. Therefore it is petitioned "that alle persones of what kynne privat sectis, or singuler religioun, maad of sinful men, may freely, withouten eny lettinge or bodily peyne, leve that privat reule or neue religion founded of sinful men, and stably holde the reule of Jesus Crist." The second demand is that all who have denied the power of the King to deal with the temporalities of the Church should be condemned. The third is that tithes and offerings should be taken away or withheld from clergy of immoral life.
"Ah, Lord God," Wyclif writes on this point, "is it reason to constrain the poor people to provide a worldly priest, however unworthy of life and of knowledge, in pomp and pride, covetise and envy, gluttony and drunkenness and lechery, in simony and heresy, with fat horse and jolly and gay saddles, and bridles ringing by the roadside, and himself with costly clothes and pelure, and to suffer their wives and children, and their poor neighbours, to perish for hunger, thirst, cold, and other mischiefs of the world? Ah, Lord Jesus Christ! since within few years men paid their tithes and offerings at their own will free, to good men and able, for the worship of God and the profit of Holy Church fighting on earth, must a worldly priest destroy this holy and approved custom, constraining men to abandon this freedom, and turning tithes and offerings into wicked uses!"
The fourth point in the petition—and it was probably for this in chief that Wyclif wrote and presented—it raises the special question of the sacrament, on which the Reformer had but recently declared himself, and which his enemies had magnified into the rankest and most unforgiveable of all his heresies. Let us return once more to Wyclif's simple, rough, and nervous English. He prays "that Christis techinge and bileve of the sacrament of his owne body, that is pleynly taught by Crist and his apostelis in gospellis and pistillis, may be taught opinly in chirchis to Cristen puple, and the contrarie teching and fals bileve, brought up by cursed ypocritis and heretikis and worldly prestis, unkunnynge in Goddis lawe, distried . . . Dampne we this cursed heresie of Anticrist and his ypocritis and worldly prestis, seiynge that this sacrament is neither bred ne Cristis body, but accidentis withouten suget, and therunder is Cristis body. For this is not taught in holy writt."
Once again after his condemnation by the Synod of Blackfriars he came face to face with Courtenay—if we are to accept on this point the evidence of one or two contemporaries who are not invariably correct in dealing with the successive stages of his career. The resistance of Oxford to Courtenay's authority was not at an end when the decision of the seventy-three doctors had been made public; but Parliament or the King's Council armed the Primate with new powers, including that of imprisonment, and he went up to his old University in the middle of November in order to drive the nail home. On the 18th he held a Conference at St. Frideswide's, being attended by the Bishops of Lincoln, Norwich, London, Salisbury, Hereford, and Winchester.[1] Knyghton tells us that Wyclif answered in person before this Conference; and he adds a document which he seems to regard as a withdrawal or submission on the part of the delinquent. It is clearly nothing of the kind. Wyclif merely repeats the general admission which he had made several times already concerning the spiritual identity of the consecrated host with the body of Christ; and he ends substantially as follows:
"You must admit how great a difference there is between us who believe that this sacrament is actual and natural bread, and the heretics who tell us that it is an accident without a subject. For before the enemy and father of lies was loosed (in the first thousand years of Christendom), this 'gabbing' was never devised. And how great a difference there is between us who believe that this sacrament is true bread in its kind, but sacramentally God's body, and the heretics who believe and tell us that this sacrament can in no way be God's body. For I am bold to say that, if this were truth, Christ and his saints were heretics, and the greater part of holy church at this moment believes in heresy. And herefor devout men suppose that this Council of Friars at London was with earth-din. For they put a heresy on Christ and the saints in heaven: wherefore the earth trembled, failing man's voice to answer for God, as it did in time of his passion, when he was condemned to bodily death.
"Christ and his mother (who destroyed all heresies in the ground) keep his Church in the true faith of this sacrament, and lead the King and his Government to require of her clerks and all her possessioners, under penalty of losing their temporalities, 
ST. FRIDESWIDE'S SHRINE.
IN THE LATIN CHAPEL, CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, OXFORD.
that they teach truly the nature of the sacrament, and of all the Orders of Friars, under penalty of losing their privileges, that they do the same. For I am sure of the third part of the clergy, who maintain these positions here defined, that they will defend them at the cost of their lives."
If this confident reassertion and retort was in reality uttered by Wyclif in person before Courtenay, Wykeham, Gilbert, and the rest, we can easily imagine how it would trouble them, and perhaps exasperate them. Whether he did or did not see the bishops at this time depends very much upon the date of his first stroke of paralysis. One account, which comes to us at second or third hand, and which shall be quoted by and by, says that he had a minor stroke about two years before the major stroke which carried him off at the end of 1384. By the minor stroke it seems that he was partly disabled, and it may well be that movement was difficult for him in the year of the Synod, and that, in point of fact, those who wanted to see him had to come to the side of his couch or his study chair. Already in 1379, as we have seen, he had been seriously ill, and is described as calling on his attendants to raise him up in bed, and put him face forward before the aggressive friars. But then, at all events, he seems to have recovered both in body and in mental vigour. For the last two years of his life he was manifestly disabled; but this is precisely the period during which his active mind and hand were most productive. At any rate the period following his great conversion or perversion on the subject of the sacrament, the four or five years following his first illness, found him constantly engaged in what turned out to be the main and most durable occupations of his life.
Meanwhile he was compelled to leave Oxford, and his brilliant university career of nearly half a century was brought to an end. He ceased to reside, probably ceased even to visit, ceased to lecture and determine, and contented himself with a quiet existence in his Lutterworth rectory. Courtenay's powers were sufficiently extensive to impose this retirement upon Wyclif, even if he had been unwilling to give up his Oxford work; and the Primate was not likely to be satisfied with anything less. Moreover, some of the men on whom the discipline of the Church had fallen were no longer able to stand by Wyclif 's side; and, though there was still plenty of fight left in him, he would have found his position in the University untenable if he had persisted in defying the Primate. With a hostile Chancellor, with Rygge almost despairing of the cause, with Hereford, Aston, Repyngdon, and Bedenham either excommunicated, or submissive, or sedulously keeping out of the way, and with regulars and seculars combining against him, there was nothing for it but to bid farewell to the home in which his heart had become familiar, and to the focus of light and zeal which his own hand had done so much to maintain.
Oxford could ill afford to lose him. The last of the Schoolmen was gone, the dignity of the old scholastic learning had suffered a rude reverse, and the first sparks of the new enlightenment might seem to 
WESTMACOTT'S MONUMENT OF WYCLIF AT LUTTERWORTH.
have been extinguished. Wyclif's presence had been so large, his influence over the thought of the University had been so commanding, that he had broken the narrower groove in which his own life began, whilst the groove which he made for others had been broken by the Church. After Wyclif, no scholar could be a Schoolman; and the new founts of scholarship, such as the spirit of inquiry, the hardihood of logic, the candour of an open mind, were in some sense under a ban. All studies and all books except those prescribed by special statutes were henceforth forbidden. Everything written by Wyclif, or by any of those who were alleged to have been his followers, was confiscated and destroyed. The golden age of Oxford had come to an end.
- ↑ Wykeham had just established his college for boys, and the walls of New College were steadily rising.