Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/317

 young King was by no means so easy as it had been to govern in the name of his doting father. Be the reason what it may, he had begun to conciliate and flatter the prelates, without in any way regaining thereby the popularity which he had lost amongst the masses of Englishmen. So far had he gone back upon his old policy that, nine years after the exclusion of the clergy from the. higher offices, less than three years after he had undone the work of the Good Parliament, and stripped Wykeham of his temporalities, we find him contriving the nomination of Archbishop Sudbury as Chancellor—apparently in order to make him and the Church in part responsible for the obnoxious poll-tax.

However little sympathy Wyclif might have had with the oppressed labourers and serfs—and we know that his sympathies for them were keen—he would certainly be revolted by this double retrogression. He could not but recognise that he was passing out of touch with the King's uncle; and it may well have happened that this knowledge strengthened and confirmed his independence.

So, when the Duke came down to Oxford (if indeed he came in person) and bade him suppress his conscience, and leave what he considered the idolatry of the mass unchallenged, he positively declined to fall in with the suggestion. Not only so, but he thought it necessary to make his position in the matter still more plain. This he did by means of a Confession, addressed apparently ad suos Oxonienses, and dated on the feast of Saints Gordian and Epimachus (May 10th), in the year 1381.