towards the supremacy of the State in the externals of religion.
Outline of the History of the Lollards.-The troubled days of Richard II at the close of the fourteenth cen- tury had encouraged the spread of Lollardy, and the accession of the House of Lancaster in 1399 was fol- lowed by an attempt to reform and restore constitu- tional authority in Church and State. It was a task which proved in the long run beyond the strength of the dynasty, yet something was done to remedy the worst disorders of the previous reign. In order to put down religious opposition the State came, in 1401, to the support of the Church by the Act "De Hæretico Comburendo", i. e. on the burning of heretics. This Act recited in its preamble that it was directed against a certain new sect "who thought damnably of the sacra- ments and usurped the office of preaching". It em- powered the bishops to arrest, imprison, and examine offenders and to hand over to the secular authorities such as had relapsed or refused to abjure. The con- demned were to be burnt "in an high place" before the people. This Act was probably due to the authorita- tive Archbishop Arundel, but it was merely the appli- cation to England of the common law of Christendom. Its passing was immediately followed by the burning of the first victim, William Sawtrey, a London priest. He had previously abjured but had relapsed, and he now refused to declare his belief in transubstantiation or to recognize the authority of the Church.
No fresh execution occurred till 1410, and the Act was mercifully carried out by the bishops. Great pains were taken to sift the evidence when a man de- nied his heresy; the relapsed were nearly always al- lowed the benefit of a fresli abjuration, and as a matter of fact the burnings were few and the recantations many. Eleven heretics were recorded to have been burnt from 1401 to the accession of Henry VII in 1485. Others, it is true, were executed as traitors for being implicated in overt acts of rebellion. Yet the activity of the Lollards during the first thirty years of the fifteenth century was great and their influence spread into parts of the country which had at first been unaffected. Thus the eastern counties became, and were long to remain, an important Lollard centre. Meanwhile the ecclesiastical authorities continued the work of repression. In 1407 a synod at Oxford under Arundel's presidency passed a number of constitutions to regulate preaching, the translation and use of the Scriptures, and the theological education at schools and the university. A body of Oxford censors con- demned in 1410 no less than 267 propositions collected out of Wyclif's writings, and finally the Council of Constance, in 1415, solemnly declared him to have been a heretic. These different measures seem to have been successful at least as far as the clergy were con- cerned, and Lollardy came to be more and more a lay movement, often connected with political discontent.
Its leader during the reign of Henry V was Sir John Oldcastle, commonly known as Lord Cobham, from his marriage to a Cobham heiress. His Lollardy had long been notorious, but his position and wealth pro- tected him and he was not proceeded against till 1413. After many delays he was arrested, tried, and sen- tenced as a heretic, but he escaped from the Tower and organized a rising outside London early in 1414. The young king suppressed the movement in person, but Oldcastle again escaped. He remained in hiding but seems to have inspired a number of sporadic disturb ances, especially during Henry's absence in France. He was finally captured on the west border, con- demned by Parliament, and executed in 1417. His personality and activity made a great impression on his contemporaries and his poorer followers put a fanatic trust in him. He certainly produced an exaggerated opinion of the numbers and ubiquity of the Lollards, for Thomas of Walden, who wrote about this time, expected that they would get the upper hand and be in a position to persecute the Catholics. This unquiet condition lasted during the earlier part of the reign of Henry VI. There were many recanta- tions though few executions, and in 1429 Convocation lamented that heresy was on the increase throughout the southern province. In 1413 there was even a small rising of heretics at Abingdon. Yet from this date Lollardy began to decline and when, about 1445, Richard Pecock wrote his unfortunate "Repressor of overmuch blaming the Clergy", they were far less of a menace to Church or State than they had been in Wal- den's day. They diminished in numbers and import- ance, but the records of the bishops' courts show that they still survived in their old centres, London, Coven- try, Leicester, and the eastern counties. They were mostly small artisans. William Wych, a priest, was indeed executed, in 1440, but he was an old man and belonged to the first generation of Lollards. The increase in the number of citations for heresy under Henry VII was probably due more to the re- newed activity of the bishops in a time of peace than to a revival of Lollardy. There was such a re- vival, however, under Henry VIII, for two heretics were burnt on one day, in 1511, and ten years later there were many prosecutions in the home counties and some executions. But though Lollardy thus re- mained alive, "conquered but not extinguished", as Erasmus expressed it in 1523, until the New Learning was brought into the country from Germany, it was a movement which for at least half a century had exer- cised little or no influence on English thought. The days of its popularity were long passed and even its martyrdoms attracted but little attention. The little stream of English heresy cannot be said to have added much to the Protestant flood which rolled in from the Continent. It did, however, bear witness to the existence of a spirit of discontent, and may have pre- pared the ground for religious revolt near London and in the eastern counties, though there is no evidence that any of the more prominent early reformers were Lollards before they were Protestants.
The authorities for the life and teaching of Wyclif will be found at the close of his biography; many of the English tracts and sermons attributed to him in The Select English Works of John Wycliffe, ed. by ARNOLD (Oxford, 1869-71), and in The English Works of John Wycliffe hitherto unprinted ed. by MATTHEW, in Early English Text Society Publications (1880) were certainly written by his followers, but their authors can- not be identified. The Fasciculus Zizaniorum, ed. by SHIRLEY, in Rolla Series, collected by THOMAS OF WALDEN contains a num- ber of important documents; much information about the Lol- lards will be found in the chronicles of the time, especially in THOMAS OF WALSINGHAM, Chronicon Anglia in Rolls Series, and in the continuator of KNIGHTONS' Chronicon in Rolls Series FOXE, Book of Martyrs includes the records of a number of Lollard trials, but it must naturally be used with the greatest caution. Of modern works LECHLER, Johann von Wiclif (2 vols., Leipzig, 1873), contains what is probably the most complete account of the movement, while GAIRDNER, Lollardy and the Reformation in England (2 vols., London, 1908) is an admirable study of its character and aims. Briefer sketches will be found in POOLE, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform in Epochs of Church History Series (London, 1889), and in Cam- bridge History of English Literature, vol. II. TREVELYAN, England in the Age of Wycliffe (London, 1897) is well written and useful, but it is marked by a frank hostility towards and by a good deal of ignorance of medieval and Catholic ideas and practices. See also ZIMMERMANN in Kirchenlexicon, s. v. Lol- larden: BONET-MAURY, Les précurseurs de la Réforme (Paris, 1904); SUMMERS, Lollards of the Chiltern Hills (London, 1906). F. F. URQUHART.
Loman, SAINT, Bishop of Trim in Ireland, nephew of St. Patrick, was remarkable as being the first placed over an Irish see by the Apostle of Ireland. This was in the year 433. St. Loman had converted both Fort- chern, the Prince of Trim (grandson of Laeghaire, King of Meath), and his father Foidilmid, and was given Trim for an episcopal see. Some say that he was a bishop before he came to Ireland, but this seems unlikely, as he would not accept a gift of Trim unless St. Patrick came to ratify it, and it is expressly stated in the "Tripartite Life", as also by Tirechan, that he was only a simple priest, but consecrated by
