himself ready to assist the archbishop, but took no action till the sermon was over. The sermon was a strong defence of Wycliffe's doctrine. Repington declared that temporal lords ought to be mentioned before the spiritual in the form of bidding prayer, and excited the people ‘to insurrection and to the spoiling of churches,’ says the friar Walden. After the sermon, the chancellor waited for the preacher at the door of the church: they went home together laughing, ‘and great joy was caused among the lollards at such a sermon’ (Fasc. Ziz. p. 300). The excitement and alarm were such that the chancellor had secured a guard of a hundred armed men from the mayor, while twenty men with weapons under their gowns escorted the preacher (ib. pp. 299–301). On a subsequent disputation in the schools between Stokes and Repington it was also reported that the partisans of Wycliffe had taken a similar precaution (ib. p. 302). Stokes, who had gone to St. Frideswyde with the intention of publishing the mandate, was afraid to leave the church, and wrote to the archbishop that he had not been able to fulfil his mission for terror of his life (ib. pp. 301–2). The next day he again formally handed the original letters under the archbishop's seal in full congregation to the chancellor, who dutifully professed his readiness to comply if the university after due deliberation approved, but did nothing. The chancellor and proctors were immediately summoned to Lambeth (ib. p. 302). They were directed to appear before the tribunal already described on 12 June, and were then accused and convicted of being ‘fautors’ of the Wycliffite heresies. One of the articles of charge is significant as illustrating the attitude probably of many of Wycliffe's supporters, who really thought as he did, but were always quite prepared to make formal submission to the authority of the church. When an ardent Wycliffite had declared in the schools that there was no idolatry like the sacrament of the altar, the chancellor had contented himself with the protest, ‘Now you are speaking as a philosopher.’ It is also interesting to note the formal statement that not only the chancellor and proctors, but the majority of the regents in arts (i.e. the masters actually teaching at Oxford), were ‘not amicable or benevolent to those who determined against Nicholas Hereford and Philip Repington, but were most hostile to them, though before they were friends. Therefore it appears that they held the same as Nicholas and Philip’ (ib. p. 308). On the other hand we are told that now all the regents in theology (who had supported Wycliffe in 1377) ‘determined against’ his doctrine (Eulog. Hist. iii. 351).
The accused officials ended by subscribing the condemnation; the chancellor begged pardon on his knees, and was forgiven on the intercession of the aged and always moderate William of Wykeham (ib. p. 308). He was thereupon handed a fresh and more strenuous mandate, requiring him not to allow the condemned tenets to be taught in the university, and to suspend from preaching and from all academical acts Wycliffe, Hereford, Repington, Aston, and Lawrence Bedeman [q. v.] until they had purged their innocence before him. Another mandate required him to publish the condemnation in St. Mary's Church and in the schools, and to make an inquisition through the halls of the university for the supporters of these doctrines, and to force them to purgation. The chancellor pleaded that he dare not for fear of his life publish such a document. ‘Then,’ replied Courtenay, ‘is the university a fautor of heretics if she will not allow orthodox truths to be published’ (ib. p. 311). And the accusation was certainly no more than the truth. However, the chancellor now went back to Oxford with a royal injunction to carry out the archbishop's commands. He proceeded to suspend Hereford and Repington both from preaching and lecturing; and a royal writ required the chancellor and proctors, with the assistance of the doctors of theology, to make a general inquisition throughout the university for heretics and for all books by Wycliffe or Hereford (Fasc. Ziz. p. 312). But the archbishop's threats did not prevent him suspending a violent anti-Wycliffite partisan, the Cistercian Henry Crump [q. v.], himself, however, a heretic in another direction, as a disturber of the peace of the university (ib. pp. 311–12, 344). This incident led to the citation of the chancellor and proctors before the king in council, by whom they were compelled to remove the suspension (ib. p. 314). All the more prominent of Wycliffe's followers were sooner or later forced into some kind of retractation, and it is a proof of the astonishing hold which Wycliffe had acquired over large sections of the English people that he escaped any form of personal condemnation. It is not even clear that the archbishop's command to suspend him from all academical acts was ever carried out. He had apparently left Oxford of his own accord, and retired to Lutterworth. There he occupied himself with preaching to his rural congregation the sermons which have come down to us, in making or completing his translation of the Bible, and in composing
