Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/155

 of certain opinions in his academic treatise, De Esse Intelligibili Creaturæ. Kynyngham was somewhat impar congressus; he seems to have been mild of mood and speech, gentle and self-depreciatory; but that he should have attacked the strongest of his contemporaries, and stuck to the attack for nearly twenty years, showed at any rate that he found controversy a congenial pursuit.

It was a great crisis in the life of Wyclif. A high compliment had been paid him, not merely in making him a king's chaplain, but also in looking to him to plead the cause of the nation against the Pope. Already it was clear he had attracted the notice of all who were tired of the dominion of Rome, and was recognised as peculiarly well equipped for this act of championship. His friend, the King's son, was at the head of a strong party of complaisant earls and barons. The King was weak and pliable in the hands of the young Duke, and, though the Prince of Wales was by no means of one mind with his intriguing brother, he would scarcely be a fatal obstacle in the way of an equitable reform of the Church. The popular hostility to Rome, coupled as it was with an intense dislike of the foreign workmen in London and the manufacturing centres, was sufficiently strong to encourage the hope that the fourteenth century might see the last of the Rome-scot, and of papal intervention in England. But it may be questioned whether the Reformers did not unwittingly exaggerate the strength or the extent of