Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/381

 story of his treatment at Oxford; but it was not until the next meeting that Crompe was in a position to relate how he had been suspended by the masters for speaking of Wyclif and his followers as heretics. The most striking feature of this second sitting was the humble submission of the Chancellor, who is said to have gone on his knees to the Archbishop, and accepted the discipline of Holy Church. His forgiveness was made conditional on his assisting to extirpate the condemned doctrine from the University; but when the Primate gave him the proclamation, which denounced Hereford, Repyngdon, John Aston, and Laurence Bedenham, suspending them from their functions, he protested that it would cost him his life to enforce it.

"Then," said Courtenay, "your University is an open fautor of heretics, if it suffers not the truth to be proclaimed within its limits."

Rygge went back to Oxford, and doubtless made his friends acquainted with the decision of the Archbishop; but he certainly took no action against them. He had, it seems most probable, been elected this year as the champion of the Wycliffite party, and could not have retained the chancellorship if he had turned round on his supporters.

Courtenay meanwhile had brought other influences to bear upon the Lollards. Parliament (at any rate the Lords and the King's Council) gave him the assistance which they had promised. The Duke of Lancaster made the Wycliffites understand that they would receive no further help from him; and in all probability Wyclif himself was ill at this moment.