Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/200

 of Canterbury in 1375, the young Bishop of Hereford was promoted to London, and in the following year he was appointed a member of the committee of Lords who were associated with the leaders of the Commons during the term of the Good Parliament. From this time forward he was in sharp antagonism with the Duke of Lancaster, and through him (apart from any question of orthodoxy) with John Wyclif.

It was impossible that two strongly aggressive natures like those of Lancaster and Courtenay should be thrown together in public life without coming sooner or later into conflict; and their quarrel was doubtless none the less bitter because both of them had Plantagenet blood in their veins. In his political action and sympathies Courtenay was probably, to the best of his judgment, patriotic and loyal to the core. At Oxford, as we have seen, he fought splendidly for his university, and with special gusto against the friars who owned allegiance to Rome. As an ecclesiastic he fought still more splendidly for the English Church against the two tyrannies (as he could not but think them) which threatened to crush out her life. No cause could have a stronger, a more determined and undaunted champion; and it is evident that in dignity and courtesy he can well bear comparison with John of Gaunt in his excitable youth. Two examples of his force of character recorded by his biographers—one telling as much against him as the other tells to his credit—may be repeated here because they show how his disagreement with the Duke was aggravated at a critical moment, and because