Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/230

 young foreigner. This appears from a passage in the unprinted third book of ‘De Civili Dominio.’ In January 1373 Wycliffe, spoken of as a canon (not yet a prebendary) of Lincoln, is licensed by the pope to keep the Westbury prebend even after he should have obtained possession of a prebend at Lincoln (Cal. Papal Letters, ed. Bliss and Twemlow, iv. 193, a reference kindly communicated before publication by Mr. Twemlow). The same document supplies a date hitherto much wanted in Wycliffe's career, showing that he had only just become a doctor of theology. He must have taken that degree in 1372.

Soon afterwards he resigned the living of Ludgershall upon receiving that of Lutterworth in Leicestershire on the presentation of the crown during a minority (Rot. Pat. 48 Edw. III, pt. i. m. 23).

At the Bruges conference (1374) Wycliffe was brought into personal contact—possibly not for the first time—with the Duke of Lancaster. The Oxford doctor's objections to the secularity of the clergy and his exaltation of the rights of secular lords exactly suited the personal and selfish designs of the duke upon the political influence of churchmen and the wealth of the church. A year later (1376) the Good parliament renewed the attack on the one hand upon papal reservations, provisions, and exactions; on the other, upon Alice Perrers [q. v.] and the tools of Lancastrian misgovernment. On the dissolution of that parliament, however, the duke resumed all his former influence [see art. ], and in 1377 he was able to get together a parliament in which only about a dozen members of the Good parliament were returned; he succeeded in procuring the reversal of its acts against Alice Perrers, Lord Latimer, and Richard Lyons; while Wykeham was forced (it is said) to the humiliation of buying the intercession of the king's mistress for his restoration. Besides these overt acts, the Lancastrian party was vaguely suspected of more far-reaching designs against the wealth and power of the clergy. What part Wycliffe took in all these proceedings we cannot say in detail, but the St. Albans chronicler reports that he had now ‘for many years’ been engaged in teaching his opinions about the relations between the temporal and the spiritual power (‘barking against the church’), and in preaching against them both in the city of London, probably at Paul's Cross, and elsewhere, ‘running about from church to church’ (Chron. Angl. pp. 115–117). The chronicler adds that his opinions were much applauded by the Duke of Lancaster and Henry, lord Percy. The first prosecution of Wycliffe for heresy was the reply of the English hierarchy to the Lancastrian attack upon Wykeham, and to the actual or threatened anti-ecclesiastical policy of the duke.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury [q. v.], was not at all eager to meddle with Wycliffe; for an attack on Wycliffe meant an attack upon the Duke of Lancaster. At last, however, he was goaded into activity by the bishops, and Wycliffe was summoned to appear before the archbishop and his suffragans. He appeared on 19 Feb. in St. Paul's Cathedral, escorted by Lord Percy, earl marshal of England, and other powerful supporters. The crowd in the church was so great that the accused and his friends found it difficult to make their way to the Lady-chapel, where the court was sitting. The earl marshal, accompanied, of course, by a numerous retinue, made a passage for him by force. The bishop of London, William Courtenay [q. v.], protested against this assumption of authority within the walls of his cathedral, and declared that had he but known the earl was going to act like that he would have had him excluded from the church. The earl ‘stormed’ and declared that he would be master there, whether the bishop willed or no. What followed may be told in the old and rather loose translation of the ‘Chronicon Angliæ’ (Archæologia, xxii. 258): ‘When they were come into our Ladye's Chapel, the duke and barons, with the archbishop and bishopps, syttinge downe, the foresayd John also was sent in by Syr Henrye Percye to sytt down, for because, sayed he, he haythe much to answeare he haith neade of a better seate. On the other syde, the byshopp of London denied the sayme, affyrmynge yt to be agaynst reason that he sholde sytt there, and also contrary to the law for him to sytt, whoe there was cited to answere before his ordinarye; and therfor [rather ‘but for’] the tyme of hys answearynge, or so longe as any thynge sholde be deposed agynste hym, or hys cause sholde be handled, he ought to stande. Hereupon very contumelyous wordes did ryse betwene Syr Henrye Percye and the bishopp, and the whoole multitude began to be troubled. And then the duke began to reprehende the bishopp, and the bishopp to turne then on the duke agayne. The duke was ashamed that he colde not in this stryfe prevaile, and then began with frowarde threatenynges to deale with the bishopp, swearyng that he wolde pull downe both the pryde of hym and of all the bishopps in Englande, and added, “Thou trustest (sayed he) in thy parents, whoe can profytt the nothynge, for they shall have enough to doo