This bold and admirable production appears to have made the kind of impression on the parliament which it was designed to produce. In a petition to the king, the members of the
[Homily, MS. Bib. Reg. British Museum.]
CONCERNING THE LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. Ixxxv commons set forth the provisions of the spurious statute which had been recently obtained by the primate, and which, to effect the imprisonment of the new preachers and their abettors, until obedient to the church, had made every sheriff in the kingdom the mere instrument of his diocesan, requiring him to root out by the sword, the errors which neither the persuasions nor the terrors of the hierarchy had been sufficient to destroy. But, inasmuch as this pretended law was never agreed to nor granted by the commons, but whatsoever was moved therein was moved without their assent,” the prayer of the whole parliament is, that the said statute be disannulled.” The petitioners further declare it to be “in no wise their meaning, that either themselves, or such “as shall succeed them, shall be farther bound to the prelates than were their ancestors in former times.”
But in those times, to procure the enactment or repeal of statutes, was a work of less difficulty than to bring the proceedings of the government into strict conformity with the decisions of parliament. Hence the custom so prevalent in the earlier history of our constitution, of confirming anew even its most acknowledged principles. It is not too much to say, that to this bad faith, the policy of the court of Rome, in the use made of its dispensing powers, greatly contributed.
In his letters, Richard had been made to threaten exclusion from the university, imprisonment, and confiscation, against all who should hold the doctrine of Wycliffe, or should in any way favour its abettors. And though the monarch subsequently declared himself pleased with the repeal of the statute on which those instructions had been founded, the violent measures which that piece of fabrication had been devised to sanction, were still pursued, and with onfy too much success.
It was, as we have remarked, on the nineteenth of November, that the parliament and the convocation assembled at Oxford. The primate, in addressing the clergy as there convened, informed them that their first business was to grant a subsidy to the crown, and that their next object must be to apply some remedy to certain disorders which had too long disgraced the university,
[Fox, Acts and Monuments, i. 576. Lingard, Hist. Eng. iv. 269.]
Ixxxvi FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS and the effects of which were extending to the community at large, in the diffusion amongst them of many dangerous and false opinions. Wycliffe was summoned to appear before this assembly. There were circumstances, however, which seemed greatly to narrow the ground of impeachment taken up against him at this juncture. By this time the Reformer had given full expression to his obnoxious opinions in his different writings, and he had reiterated most of them in the address which he presented to the parliament now sitting.
But the meditated encroachment of the prelates had excited in the said parliament, certain feelings of suspicion and resentment, which it was deemed prudent not to augment by any course of proceeding which might become the occasion of farther umbrage. On this account, it would seem, the convocation determined to restrict their prosecution of Wycliffe to a matter of doctrine, passing over the more questionable matters of polity and discipline. The article selected was that of the eucharist. The doctrine of Wycliffe on that subject was known to be directly contrary to the doctrine of transubstantiation. The Duke of Lancaster is said to have advised the Reformer to submit in all doctrinal matters to the judgment of his order. This conduct on the part of the duke was highly praised by the clergy, but its only effect on Wycliffe was to call forth new evidence of his firmness and integrity. To have denied his doctrine on the eucharist, or simply to have abstained from teaching it, would have been to continue sheltered from the resentment of the clergy, by the favour of the nobleman of whose power they still stood in much wholesome apprehension. To proceed in opposing the received doctrine on that sacrament, notwithstanding the counsel of the duke, was to front the unrestrained malice of his enemies. The latter course, however, was his choice. We also learn, and from a writer who has shown himself not a little solicitous to fasten the reproach of equivocation upon the name of Wyclitfe, not only that the Reformer proved to be as little influenced by the advice of the duke as by the command of the archbishop, but that in his public defence on this sacrament, “like an obstinate heretic, he refuted all the doctors of the second millenary.""