Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/187

 overlyeth her child in her sleeping, it is homicide and deadly sin." And a bishop who had confessed his queen, and shrived her of such a sin—especially a high-minded bishop like William of Wykeham—would be most unlikely to repeat the story in order to serve his private ends.

Though the Good Parliament had had so short an existence, and its work was overruled as soon as it had been dissolved, there can be no question of its importance as a landmark of constitutional history. It is important also from our immediate point of view; for one cannot but be startled to find a man like Wyclif, irreproachable in his moral character, whose every act reveals a roused and wakeful conscience, engaged in public affairs on the side of a man so incongruous, unsympathetic, and unpopular, as John of Gaunt. Nothing, indeed, could testify more eloquently to the high character and spotless reputation of Wyclif than the fact that his political association with Lancaster, and indirectly with Alice Perrers and the peculators of the royal household, did not cover his name with a cloud of suspicion and obloquy. The very worst that has been said of him, apart from his heretical opinions, is the accusation that he became a heretic from selfish and vindictive motives; and we shall see that there is no reasonable ground whatever on which a charge of this kind could be based.

It is true that he suffered severely by meddling with political affairs, as many a man of spiritual fervour and lofty enthusiasm, committing his bark to that treacherous sea, has suffered since his time.