ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY and the Lollard preachers had not been real and intimate, the secular arm would have been lifted but languidly in defence of the Church. The work and influence of John Wycliffe at Lutterworth give a special interest to the history of Lollardy in Leicestershire; and yet exceedingly little is known of his sayings and doings from the time of his retirement therein 1382 till his death in 1385. The romance of the movement in this county circles about men of a very different stamp : Philip Repingdon, the clever young canon of Leicester Abbey, whose story belongs properly to the chronicles of his own house ; William Swynderby, hermit and itinerant preacher ; and William Smyth his companion. Before the official condem- nation of Repingdon and his friends at Oxford, William Swynderby had been preaching the new doctrines for some time in the neighbourhood of Leicester. It is very unfortunate that we have no account of him except that given by hostile critics, who are minded to put all his motives and actions in the worst possible light. Knighton and the author of the Fasciculi describe him as a man unworthy of any respect ; but if this were so it would be hard to understand the wonderful influence which he apparently acquired in a few years. 00 It seems indeed that he was a man of very restless disposi- tion, who found it hard to continue long in any settled way of life. His first essays in preaching were directed against the follies and excesses of women, but finding this line of reform an uncomfortable one, 91 he turned diatribes against the general luxury and covetousness of the times. After a while he became a hermit in the woods of the duke of Lancaster, who supported him as long as he cared to stay there. Then he betook himself to Leicester Abbey, where the canons received him gladly, on account of his reputation for holiness. 9 " It may well be that he was sincerely troubled by the excesses into which the love of luxury and ease had led both clergy and laity at this time, and felt, as did many who were perfectly orthodox in their beliefs, that reform ought to begin from the house of God. Nor was he at all singular in his subsequent passage from discontent with the moral failings of churchmen to criticism of the received doctrines of the Church. His stay at the abbey was apparently not a very long one ; Knighton does not explain on which side the deeper disappointment lay. At any rate his next step was to join William Smyth and Richard Waytestathe in the chapel of St. John Baptist at the town's end. 93 Smyth, who took his name from his calling, is said to have turned his thoughts to religion on account of a disappointment in love. He had taught himself to read and write, 94 and was living an ascetic life at this time with Waytestathe, who was in holy orders, for a companion ; they had turned the old chapel into a school where Lollard doctrines were taught. These were of the ordinary type : denial of tran- substantiation, refusal of all veneration to images and relics, and protest against the wealth of the higher clergy. Knighton tells a story of how they put one of their tenets into practice by turning an image of St. Katherine into fuel 90 There is a legacy to William de Swynderby, chaplain of St. John's Hospital, as late as 1382, in the will of an apparently quite orthodox gentleman, who made bequests to two or three gilds and altars in Leicester. Gibbons, Early Lincoln Wills, 31. 91 Cbron. H. Knighton (Rolls Ser.), ii, 189-90. The ladies retaliated with stones. "Ibid. "Ibid. 182. 94 This account of Knighton is corroborated by the register of Archbishop Courtney, who describes Smyth as Rieratus, while his companions in penance were URterati. Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 211. 365
