Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/372

 of a series of Parliaments more than ready to acquiesce in legislation of a reactionary character. But it was not so. The Lords were amenable, and in some particulars they took the lead in a policy of vengeance or panic; but when in 1382 the bishops and barons voted that Wyclif's Priests should be silenced and suppressed, the Commons disagreed with the ordinance, which never became a statute. Three years later another House of Commons rose to the heroic level of voting the appropriation of the Church endowments to secular uses. The Lords promptly refused their co-operation; but the action of the more representative House showed that some at least of the new doctrines were firmly rooted in English soil.

Courtenay became Primate of England after the death of Sudbury, and a few days later he was created Chancellor. He preached to the two Houses in English; and if by any chance he thought it timely to enlarge upon the virtues of fidelity and good faith, it may easily be imagined that the Lords and Commons would listen to him at that moment with very little patience, for the mood of forgiveness was not upon them. Parliament met, and Courtenay preached his sermon, on the 9th of November, 1381; nine days later he resigned the great seal. It is at any rate not improbable that he did this through lack of stomach for the work of undoing all the King's pledges—voluntary and spontaneous, as well as forced—and of sanctioning the continued severities of Tressilian and the other justiciaries. According to one account, an actual petition of Parliament