Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/208

 Convocation in 1377. He would learn how that splendid champion of the Church, William Courtenay, rising in dignity amongst his peers, and even rebuking the weaker Primate to his face, had made a scathing speech against the formidable Duke, and had refused in the name of the Church to grant a single penny for the King's necessities until the wrongs of the disgraced Wykeham should be redressed. Here evidently was a man who dared to withstand the outrageous John of Gaunt; and the same month of February was not to pass away without giving Gregory another proof that the tide was beginning to turn in England, and that the star of Courtenay was in the ascendant. The Pope had himself been Archdeacon of Canterbury, and may have known something of English feeling—though the facts do not go far to warrant such a conclusion.

It is necessary to keep the order of events precisely fixed in our minds, for confusion has arisen amongst some of the earlier biographers of Wyclif in respect of the proceedings taken against him by Courtenay. Wyclif was cited by Courtenay to appear before him at St. Paul's—or perhaps before Convocation—in February, 1377, at the time when the annual parliament of the clergy was assembled in London. Clearly this had nothing to do with Gregory's bulls, which were not signed until the following May. The citation need not have been issued many days before it was returnable, on the 19th of February, but it may well have been conceived and prepared weeks or months before. It was Courtenay's act, and apparently Courtenay's alone; for the citation was to