Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/245

 neither shirking nor fining down, but treating every charge as a text for new exposition. Had it been arranged (by others, of course, than Courtenay) that he should have his say, completely and deliberately, and that then this abortive farce of the Pope's jurisdiction in England should be brought to an end? The Council, or at all events the Princess of Wales, had resolved that there should be no definite action upon Gregory's bulls; and on the previous evening, according to some accounts, but at any rate before the conclusion of the hearing, one Lewis Clifford brought them word from the King's mother that they were not to pass judgment on Wyclif. The reference of the St. Alban's chronicle to these proceedings is so quaint, and the indignation of the writer is so natural in an orthodox monk of his day, that a few sentences may be quoted here.

"It would be better to say nothing than to speak of the indifferent and slothful manner in which the two Bishops performed the task entrusted to them. . . . On the arrival of the day (instante die) appointed for the examination of that apostate, through fear of a reed shaken by the wind, they made their words softer than oil, to the public loss of their own dignity and to the damage of the universal Church. The men who had sworn that they would not obey the very barons and princes of the kingdom until they had punished the excesses of the heresiarch himself, according to the commands of the Pope, were paralysed with terror at the sight of some fellow from the court of the Princess Joan, who was neither a knight of good standing nor a