Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/197

 the Primacy. The King seized his temporalities, and sent a congé d'élire to Canterbury, with a recommendation to elect William Whittlesey, a nephew of Simon Islip, who held the position for the next six years without making much of a mark on his generation. Of Simon Sudbury, who succeeded him (1375-1381) it would not be altogether correct to say the same thing; but, so far as he came directly into touch with Wyclif, he is overshadowed by the stronger personality of Courtenay. It will suffice to speak of his primacy hereafter, in connection with the proceedings which were taken against Wyclif on the charge of heresy.

William Courtenay was the fourth son of Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had married Margaret Bohun, granddaughter of Edward I. He was thus allied in blood both to the Prince and to the Princess of Wales; and, when his parents destined their boy to the secular priesthood, no doubt they anticipated, or knew that they could guarantee, his rapid rise to the highest ecclesiastical dignities. According to Dean Hook, in his Lives of the Archbishops, Courtenay was actuated more by partisanship than by principle. At all events he was before everything the political prelate, ambitious and haughty, a natural leader of men, stepping at once to the front rank of English churchmen, and claiming to be recognised as a champion of the national Church. At the age of twenty-five (in 1367) he was made Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and did good service in resisting the claim of the Bishop of Lincoln to appoint to that office.