Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/166

 they were doing God service by reducing the plethora from which religion so manifestly suffered in England. The other movement was one of national defence against a foreign invader, a contest having for its object the extrusion of an audacious tyranny which had been set up by aliens in the civil as well as in the spiritual domain, and one in which the strongest champions of the national Church might and did take an active part. There could be no doubt that the fight with Rome was more widely popular, or at any rate stirred up less of domestic discord, than that which converted nearly every regular and secular clergyman in the country into a centre of loquacious disaffection.

Things would probably have gone better with John of Gaunt and his friends if they had pressed the cause against Rome some years earlier. It was natural that the disasters and discredit which fell upon the country during the last few years of the reign of Edward III. should practically destroy our chance of prevailing in conference over the papal representatives. Our virtual defeat at Bruges was in a measure the outcome of our defeat in Aquitaine, at Rochelle, and at Portsmouth. Beaten on land and at sea, by Frenchmen and Spaniards, dishonoured at home by the King's inglorious old age, and so divided in counsels that no man, prince or duke or councillor, could act with sufficient authority and promptitude in the true interests of the country, we were evidently not in a position to speak at Avignon as we could have spoken five or ten years before.