III.

All these translators were necessarily wanting in originality (less, however, than they need have been), and all these orators spoke for the most part in French. In their hands, English prose could not be perfected to a very high degree. It progressed, however, owing to them, but owing much more to an important personage, who made common English his fighting weapon, John Wyclif, to whom the title of "Father of English prose" rightfully belongs, now that Mandeville has dissolved in smoke. Wyclif, Langland, and Chaucer are the three great figures of English literature in the Middle Ages.

Wyclif belonged to the rich and respected family of the Wyclifs, lords of the manor of Wyclif, in Yorkshire.[703] He was born about 1320, and devoted himself early to a scientific and religious calling. He studied at Oxford, where he soon attracted notice, being one of those men of character who occupy from the beginning of their lives, without seeking for it, but being, as it seems, born to it, a place apart, amid the limp multitude of men. The turn of his mind, the originality of his views, the firmness of his will, his learning, raised him above others; he was one of those concerning whom it is at once said they are "some one;" and several times in the course of his existence he saw the University, the king, the country even, turn to him when "some one" was needed.

He was hardly thirty-five when, the college of Balliol at Oxford having lost its master, he was elected to the post. In 1366 Parliament ruled that the Pope's claim to the tribute promised by King John should no longer be recognised, and Wyclif was asked to draw up a pamphlet justifying the decision.[704] In 1374 a diplomatic mission was entrusted to him, and he went to Bruges, with several other "ambassatores," to negotiate with the Pope's representatives.[705] He then had the title of doctor of divinity.

Various provincial livings were successively bestowed upon him: that of Fillingham in 1361; that of Ludgarshall in 1368; that of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, in 1374, which he kept till his death. He divided his time between his duties as rector, his studies, his lectures at Oxford, and his life in London, where he made several different stays, and preached some of his sermons.

These quiet occupations were interrupted from time to time owing to the storms raised by his writings. But so great was his fame, and so eminent his personality, that he escaped the terrible consequences that heresy then involved. He had at first alarmed religious authority by his political theories on the relations of Church and State, next on the reformation of the Church itself; finally he created excessive scandal by attacking dogmas and by discussing the sacraments. Summoned the first time to answer in respect of his doctrines, he appeared in St. Paul's, in 1377, attended by the strange patrons that a common animosity against the high dignitaries of the Church had gained for him; John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Lord Henry Percy accompanied him. The duke, little troubled by scruples, loudly declared, in the middle of the church, that he would drag the bishop out of the cathedral by the hair of his head. These words were followed by an indescribable tumult. Indignant at this insult, the people of the City drove the duke from the church, pursued him through the town, and laid siege to the house of John of Ypres, a rich merchant with whom he had gone to sup. Luckily for the prince, the house opened on the Thames. He rose in haste, knocking his legs against the table, and, without stopping to drink the cordial offered him, slipped into a boat and fled, as fast as oars could carry him, to his sister-in-law's, the Princess of Wales, at Kennington.[706] The summoning of Wyclif thus had no result.

But the Pope, in the same year, launched against the English theologian bulls pointing out eighteen erroneous propositions contained in his writings, and enjoining that the culprit should be put in prison if he refused to retract. The University of Oxford, being already a power at that time, proud of its privileges, jealous in maintaining solidarity between its members, imbued with those ideas of opposition to the Pope which were increasing in England, considered the decree as an excessive exercise of authority. It examined the propositions, and declared them to be orthodox, though capable of wrong interpretations, on which account Wyclif should go to London and explain himself.[707]

He is found, therefore, in London in the beginning of 1378; the bishops are assembled in the still existing chapel of Lambeth Palace. But by one of those singularities that allow us to realise how the limits of the various powers were far from being clearly defined, it happened that the bishops had received positive orders not to condemn Wyclif. The prohibition proceeded from a woman, the Princess of Wales, widow of the Black Prince. The prelates, however, were spared the trouble of choosing between the Pope and the lady; for the second time Wyclif was saved by a riot; a crowd favourable to his ideas invaded the palace, and no sentence could be given. Any other would have appeared the more guilty; he only lived the more respected. He was then at the height of his popularity; a new public statement that he had just issued in favour of the king against the Pope had confirmed his reputation as advocate and defender of the kingdom of England.[708]

He resumed, therefore, in peace his work of destruction, and began to attack dogmas. Besides his writings and his speeches, he used, in order to popularise his doctrines, his "simple priests," or "poor priests," who, without being formed into a religious order, imitated the wandering life of the friars, but not their mendicity, and strove to attain the ideal which the friars had fallen short of. They went about preaching from village to village, and the civil authority was alarmed by the political and religious theories expounded to the people by these wanderers, who journeyed "from county to county, and from town to town, in certain habits under dissimulation of great holiness, without license of our Holy Father the Pope, or of the ordinary of the diocese."[709] Wyclif justified these unlicensed preachings by the example of St. Paul, who, after his conversion, "preechide fast, and axide noo leve of Petir herto, for he hadde leve of Jesus Crist."[710]

From this time forth Wyclif began to circulate on the sacraments, and especially on the Eucharist, opinions that Oxford even was unable to tolerate; the University condemned them. Conformably to his own theory, which tended, as did that of the Commons, towards a royal supremacy, Wyclif appealed not to the Pope but to the king, and in the meantime refused to submit. This was carrying boldness very far. John of Gaunt separates from his _protege_; Courtenay, bishop of London, calls together a Council which condemns Wyclif and his adherents (1382); the followers are pursued, and retract or exile themselves; but Wyclif continues to live in perfect quiet. Settled at Lutterworth, from whence he now rarely stirred, he wrote more than ever, with a more and more caustic and daring pen. The papal schism, which had begun in 1378, had cast discredit on the Holy See; Wyclif's work was made the easier by it. At last Urban VI., the Pope whom England recognised, summoned him to appear in his presence, but an attack of paralysis came on, and Wyclif died in his parish on the last day of the year 1384. "Organum diabolicum, hostis Ecclesiae, confusio vulgi, haereticorum idolum, hypocritarum speculum, schismatis incentor, odii seminator, mendacii fabricator"[711]: such is the funeral oration inscribed in his annals, at this date, by Thomas Walsingham, monk of St. Albans. By order of the Council of Constance, his ashes were afterwards thrown to the winds, and the family of the Wyclifs of Wyclif, firmly attached to the old faith, erased him from their genealogical tree. When the Reformation came, the family remained Catholic, and this adherence to the Roman religion seems to have been the cause of its decay: "The last of the Wyclifs was a poor gardener, who dined every Sunday at Thorpe Hall, as the guest of Sir Marmaduke Tunstall, on the strength of his reputed descent."[712]