which the Papal exchequer fed itself on English blood. But at this crisis the anti-Roman policy was arrested in its course by another movement, which turned the current of suspicion, and frightened back the nation to conservatism.
While the Crown and the Parliament had been engaged with the Pope, the undulations of the dispute had penetrated down among the body of the people, and an agitation had been commenced of an analogous kind against the spiritual authorities at home. The Parliament had lamented that the duties of the religious houses were left unfulfilled, in consequence of the extortions of their superiors abroad. The people, who were equally convinced of the neglect of duty, adopted an interpretation of the phenomenon less favourable to the clergy, and attributed it to the temptations of worldliness, and the self-indulgence generated by enormous wealth.
1360.This form of discontent found its exponent in John Wycliffe, the great forerunner of the Reformation, whose austere figure stands out above the crowd of notables in English history, with an outline not unlike that of another forerunner of a greater change.
The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. Lewis, on the authority of Leland,[1] says that he was born near Richmond, in Yorkshire. Fuller, though with some hesitation, prefers Durham.[2] He emerges into distinct- ↑ Lewis, Life of Wycliffe.
- ↑ If such scientia media might be allowed to man, which is beneath certainty and above conjecture, such should I call our persuasion that he was born in Durham.—Fuller's Worthies, vol. i. p. 479.
