Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/383

 fifth and final sitting of the Synod, including William Berton, who had already pronounced against Wyclif at Oxford.

Neither Hereford nor Repyngdon put in an appearance at Canterbury, and they were both condemned in their absence. From the final record of the Synod it appeared that Courtenay had collected seventy-three signatures to the formal condemnation of Wyclif's conclusions.

One of the most entertaining of the songs, Latin or English, bearing upon the events of this period, which have been preserved in the Cotton manuscripts, and printed by Mr. Wright in the Rolls Series, deals with the Council of 1382. It refers to the plague, the Peasants' Revolt, and the earthquake, as well as to sundry characters in the drama of Wyclifs life with whom the reader is already acquainted. It may perhaps be a pardonable licence to quote three or four of the more pertinent stanzas of this Wycliffite poem.

"Armacam quern cælo Dominus coronavit, Discordes tantomodo fratres adunavit ; Sed magno miraculo Wyclif coruscavit, Cum fratres et monachos simul collocavit. With an O and an I, consortes effecti, Quovis adversario dicunt, sunt protecti.

"Tunc primus determinans est Johannes Wellis, Istos viros reprobans cum verbis tencllis, Multum conversatus est ventis et procellis; Hinc in ejus facie patet color fellis. With an O and an I, in scholis non prodest, Imago faciei monstrat qualis hie est.