Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/408

 are too many for the tongue to tell. For, however much they waste the goods of men, so much and yet more do they bring hurt upon the nations, as in this last expedition that Englishmen made into Flanders, when they despoiled our realm of men and money, more than the friars have taken for themselves. And Englishmen did not for a moment doubt their bringing this expedition to pass, by their preaching, collecting, and personal exertions. Even the friars who seem to be blameless in this matter could not escape giving their assent; for one manner of consent is when a man keeps silence, and does not speak up. And if friars are slipping out of it now, and saying that they never held with it, they are only resorting to their old craft of gabbing."

The sharp and spirited criticism which the old Rector of Lutterworth had directed for some time against the schismatics and their partisans must have shrewdly touched those to whom it particularly applied. The English friars, who had not for a moment ceased to rail and write against Wyclif, took the tracts of the impenitent heretic very much to heart, and the disgraceful failure of the Flanders crusade would doubtless exasperate their bitter animosity. They seem now to have sent fresh allegations of heresy to Rome, and Urban replied, after no long delay, by citing Wyclif to appear before his court.

If Urban knew the crippled state in which the English doctor had been living for more than a year, this summons to Rome was hardly less than barbarous. Though the Pope may not have known