Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/141

 His energy never failed him, and his confidence was inexhaustible and inflexible.

Even before he threw himself into politics—before he became chaplain to the King and made the acquaintance of John of Gaunt, who was some twenty years his junior—Wyclif seems to have been as widely known as a man could be in those days, with no higher title to fame than that he was a learned Oxford doctor, a bold and vigorous preacher, and an upholder of the poor. He was fast winning his way to the hearts of his countrymen, and creating that deep impression on the men of his day, friends and enemies alike, which was to make his mark for all time.

Of Wyclif's characteristic opinions on matters of Church and State, there will be more to be said hereafter. Meanwhile his ideas had been moulded and his conclusions were being shaped by a series of events as striking as any which have occurred within the limits of our history as a nation.

Still fresh and vivid in the fourteenth century must have been the impression stamped upon the minds of Englishmen by the marvellous developments of the Church of Rome during the past hundred years. The encroachments of the Papacy from the time when Innocent III. had laid England under tribute would seem almost as recent and familiar to Wyclif in his teens as the records of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny are to the men of the present generation. When he began to take an interest in contemporary events, the successor of Innocent and Boniface was not at Rome but at Avignon, figuring