Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/333

 priests" or to support the pomp of Rome. He steadfastly refused to be a pluralist; and even if he supplied his necessities from the proceeds of his benefices at Fillingham, Ludgarshall, and Lutterworth—which is doubtful—we may be sure that he spent all the remainder upon his parishioners. He could not have preached the doctrine of poverty as he did whilst lavishing on himself what he did not need for his sustenance. If he had been inconsistent on that one point, above all others, his enemies would have made England ring with it, and the books of the friars, which denounce him so fiercely on the score of his heresy, would have abounded in gibes and sneers at his hypocrisy.

The fact that Wyclif was King's chaplain, and occupied a position as lecturer or professor of divinity at Oxford, at the same time that he held a living in the Church, is nothing to the contrary of what has been stated above. The ordinary pluralist took his two or more benefices, his two or more prebends simultaneously, as favours or rewards, though he was rarely capable of performing all the corresponding duties, and was generally content to hold sinecure orifices. Wyclifs chaplaincy and lectureship, however they may have been paid, could not be enjoyed without the full performance of stipulated work. Clearly the absence of a country rector for part of the year in London, and another part of the year at Oxford, especially in those days of slow travelling, must have interfered to some extent with his parish duties; but we know that Wyclif maintained assistants on whom he could rely, men whom