Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/388

 the head of the English Church, had smitten his friends, hip and thigh, until they were either dispersed or beginning to fail in the hour of persecution; and now the hand of God was upon him, and he must have felt in 1382 that his days on earth were numbered. "All thy storms have gone over me," he might have said; "I am feeble and sore smitten; mine enemies close me in on every side." Who could have wondered if he had faltered in the end of his life, if he had shown one moment's weakness, or compromised himself by one impatient word? But he did nothing of this kind. He stands out to the last, amid the storm and stress of persecution, as firm as the cliff in Teesdale from which he took his name.

Wyclif addressed an independent petition to Parliament, on May 6, 1382, urging the authorities of the realm to support the simple faith of Christ, independently of the errors by which it has been overlaid. As to the form of this petition there is not a little uncertainty, for whilst some manuscripts have preserved a long "Complainte to King and Parliament" in English, consisting of four main clauses amply expounded, Walsingham briefly recapitulates seven points, which do not correspond with the English document. Walsingham's "seven interpretations" are as follows:

1. Neither the King nor the nation ought to yield to any external see or prelate. 2. The money of the realm ought not to be sent out of the country, to Rome, to Avignon, or elsewhere. 3. Neither cardinal nor any other mart ought to take the revenue of a church or prebend in England unless he duly resides