Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/160

 and the corrupt Court was a sponge that never ceased to absorb public funds—over and above the loans which Edward continued to contract with the Florentine money-lenders—yet the Commons were doubtless relieved by such solid contributions from the Church. It was vain for the clergy to resist, so long as they had the nation united against them.

A Benedictine monk preached a sermon before the University of Oxford, protesting against the harshness of these demands, and repeating arguments for exemption which few would have gainsaid if the acquisitiveness of the Church had never passed the bounds of moderation. Wyclif took occasion to reply to this sermon; and in doing so he gives us what is probably (as Dr. Shirley says) the first published report of a speech delivered in the House of Lords.

"I heard," he says, "certain religious possessionem in a Parliament in London make the same demand (of exemption), and one of the lords answered by means of a fable. 'Once on a time,' said he, 'the birds were gathered together, and amongst them was the owl, bare of plumage. Making himself out to be half dead and frozen, he shiveringly begged feathers from the other birds. And they, moved to pity, gave him feathers all round, until he had been decked in some ugly guise with the plumes of his fellow bipeds.'" Then a hawk suddenly appeared in the distance, and threw this assembly of fowls into a panic, and they all demanded their feathers again. "'And when he refused them, every