Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/190

 not content with sending a deputy to make as much money as possible out of the post, coolly assumed authority over the university. Something has already been said of Bradwardine's liberal opinions, and it is not surprising that he should have been out of favour at Avignon. At Edward's request, Clement VI. had backed his nomination by a bull of provision, and he pettishly declared that, if the English King asked him to make a bishop out of a jackass, he could not refuse. This was soon after the battle of Crécy and the taking of Calais, when Edward was practically supreme in France as well as in England. The new Archbishop was entertained by Clement at a banquet, on the day of his consecration, and one of the cardinals thought it a good jest to send a donkey into the banqueting hall, with a man on his back who prayed that the quadruped might be made Archbishop of Canterbury. The insult was resented even by the Pope, and it was certainly not calculated to improve the relations between the English Primate and the Papal Court. But the plague cut short a most promising career, before Bradwardine had had an opportunity of showing his mettle as a ruler of men.

Simon Islip, who had been one of the King's secretaries—a fairly safe channel of ecclesiastical promotion in those days,—was a "doctor of decretals," that is to say, of the canon law, and a man of inexhaustible energy. He was appointed by Clement in the same manner as his two predecessors, by a bull couched in terms which probably did something to hasten the passing of the statute of Provisors—"per