Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/72

 borders of the Church, yet not strictly a part of the Church organism, this Order occupied a comparatively independent position in regard to the ecclesiastical and the secular authorities, in alliance with Rome but not absolutely subject to her, often opposing its interests to those of Church, Crown, and People, powerful as a friend or as an enemy, yet "dead in law," and crippled by statutory disabilities.

With the accumulation of wealth and privileges, it was inevitable that abuses and corruptions should find their way into the monasteries, and that an intense jealousy should be aroused against these privileged communities, both amongst the secular clergy and amongst the people at large. The unquestioned annals of the time show that there was ample ground for the protests raised on all hands against the immunities as well as the morals of the monks. Very possibly, indeed, there has been too much generalisation from particular instances, and a too wholesale condemnation of houses which in many cases were homes of unaffected piety and distinguished learning. The Carthusians and Bernardines maintained to the last a special repute for learning and virtue. The abounding charity of the monastic bodies has never been denied, and that something less than justice has been done to their average and relative morality is at once a natural supposition and capable of proof.

There is no need of exaggeration in order to justify the portraits drawn by Langland and Chaucer, by Wyclif and his Oxford sympathisers, by the Poor Priests and the song-writers of the Lollard