Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/168

 It was hardly Wyclifs fault that he could not deliver an effective message of this kind, or that, having delivered his message, he found it explained away by his colleagues, or allowed to fall to the ground for want of enforcement by the Government at home. Somewhere perhaps in the archives of the Vatican there is a record of the Conference at Bruges, in the shape of a report from the nuncios. If it could be published it would doubtless provide us with an interesting account of the arguments used on both sides, and the efforts made to arrive at an understanding. No such account has hitherto made its appearance, and we can only conclude from other indications that Wyclif spoke out freely, that Rome was more and more embittered against him from that time forward, that he greatly regretted the lame and impotent conclusion of the Conference, and that after he returned from Bruges his attitude towards Rome was more distinctly hostile.

The question of provisions was of course the most natural line of attack for anyone who wished to make an assault upon the papal assumptions. In the reign of Edward III. the English Church had in fact become a sort of Roman preserve. Not content with occasionally overriding local elections or royal nominations to bishoprics, abbacies, and benefices of every kind, the popes claimed and exercised a power to provide for vacancies before they occurred. Chapters, conventual bodies, or others in whom the right of presentation was generally vested, found themselves not unfrequently confronted with a new superior or beneficiary—very possibly an alien, who by