Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/189



CHAPTER VIII.

WYCLIF AND THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

ROM the death of Bradwardine onwards, the line of English primates—Islip, Langham, Whittlesey, Sudbury, Courtenay—became more and more closely associated with the political movements of the day, as indeed could not well have been avoided in that critical epoch of the Christian Church.

Bradwardine was a Schoolman and a student, as well as a man of affairs. His friends must have had fairly good hope, on his nomination by the King in 1349, that his term of office would be marked by more than ordinary independence and vigour. He had distinguished himself at Oxford by the part which he took in opposing the extravagant claims of an Italian archdeacon, Cardinal de Mora, who, 141