Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/144

 discontent of the common people with their condition and prospects.

Facts like these are wont to temper the metal of the strongest minds, to urge on the best men to higher aims, and to touch their spirits to finer issues. If the fourteenth century was critical and luminous beyond comparison with those on either side of it, was it not in some measure because the men of that day had been thus keenly tempered and finely touched?

It is only in a particular and limited sense that Wyclif can be properly spoken of as a politician. Certainly he took a deep interest in the politics of his time, looking to them for results which, in his opinion, would be highly advantageous to the cause of true religion. He may or may not have been an active intriguer with John of Gaunt, and with John's intended brother-in-law, the Earl of Pembroke. The probability is that the Duke had a young man's enthusiasm for the famous Oxford preacher, who might well have been his tutor (as Burley of Merton was tutor to the Prince of Wales), and that he asked his advice on sundry questions touching the rights and status of the clergy. They must have had many feelings in common, so far as the relations of State and Church were concerned, and Wyclif could not but admire the spirit and pluck of the Duke, so long as they were honestly directed to humble the pride of haughty ecclesiastics.

We do not know at what precise date John Wyclif was appointed one of the king's chaplains. He speaks of himself in 1366 as "peculiaris regis clericus