The renewal in 1369 of serious fighting . . . found England exhausted and disillusioned. . . . The arguments for reform set forth by a distinguished Oxford scholar named Wyclif attracted attention .Wyclif was indignant at the corruption of the Church, and saw in its proud hierarchy and absolute claims a distortion of the true principles of Christianity. He declared that dominion over men�s souls had never been delegated to mortals. The King, as the Vicar of God in tings temporal was as much bound by his office to curb the material lavishness of the clergy as the clergy to direct the spiritual life of the King. Though Pope and King was each in his sphere supreme, every Christian held not �in chief� of them, but rather of God. The final appeal was to heaven, not to Rome.
Wyclif�s doctrine could not remain the speculation of a harmless schoolman. Its application to the existing facts of Church and State opened deep rifts. It involved reducing the powers of the Church temporal in order to purify the Church spiritual. John of Gaunt was interested in the first, Wyclif in the second. The Church was opposed to both. Gaunt and Wyclif in the beginning each hoped to use the other for his special aim. They entered into alliance. Gaunt busied himself in packing the new parliament, and Wyclif lent moral support by running about from church to church preaching against abuses. But counter-forces were also aroused. Wyclif�s hopes of Church reform were soon involved in class and party prejudices, and Gaunt by his alliance with the revolutionary theologian consolidated the vested interest of the Episcopate against himself. Thus both suffered from their union. The bishops, recognizing in Wyclif Gaunt�s most dangerous
supported, arraigned him on charges of heresy at St. Paul�s. Gaunt, coming to his aid, encountered the hostility of the London mob. The ill-matched partnership fell to pieces and Wyclif ceased to count in high politics.
It was at this same point that his enduring influence began. He resolved to appeal to the people. Church abuses and his own reforming doctrines had attracted many young students around him. He organized his followers into bands of poor preachers, who . . . spread the doctrines of poverty and holiness for the clergy throughout the countryside. He wrote English tracts, of which the most famous was The Wicket, which were passed from hand to hand. Finally, with his students he took the tremendous step of having the Bible translated into English.
. . . But the new vision opened to rich and poor alike profoundly disturbed the decaying society to which it was vouchsafed. . . .
( pages 284-5 )
In the charged, sullen atmosphere of the England of the 1380�s Wyclif�s doctrines gathered wide momentum. But faced by social revolution, English society was in no mood for Church reform. All subversive doctrines fell under censure, and although Wyclif was not directly responsible or accused of seditious preaching the result was disastrous to his cause. The landed classes gave silent assent to the ultimate suppression of the preacher by the Church. This descended swiftly and effectively. Wyclif�s old opponent, Courtenay, had become Archbishop after Sudbury�s murder. He found Wyclif�s friends in control of Oxford. He acted with speed. The doctrines of the reformer were officially condemned. The bishops were instructed to arrest all unlicensed preachers, and the Archbishop himself rapidly became the head of a system of Church discipline ; and this, with the active support of the State in Lancastrian days, eventually enabled the Church to recover from the attack of the laity. In 1382 Courtenay descended upon Oxford and held a convocation in the chapter house of what is now Christ Church. The chief Lollards were sharply summoned to recant. The Chancellor�s protest of university privilege was brushed aside. Hard censure fell upon Wyclif�s followers. They blenched and bowed. Wyclif found himself alone. His attack on Church doctrine a distinct from Church privilege had lost him the support of Gaunt. His popular preachers and the beginnings of English Bible-reading could not build a solid party against the dominant social forces.
Wyclif, who died in 1384, had appealed to the conscience of his age. Baffled, though not silenced, in England, his inspiration stirred a distant and little-known land, and thence disturbed Europe. Students from Prague had come to Oxford, and carried his doctrines, and indeed the manuscripts of his writings, to Bohemia. From this sprang the movement by which the fame of John Huss eclipsed that of his English master and evoked the enduring national consciousness of the Czech people.
By his frontal attack on the Church�s absolute authority over m4en in this world, by his implication of the supremacy of the individual conscience, and by his challenge to 4ecclesiastical dogma Wyclif had called down upon himself the thunderbolts of repression. . . .
. . . �Wyclif�, wrote Milton in Areopagitica �was a man who wanted, to render his learning consummate, nothing but his living in a happier age.�
( pages 295-6 )