chapter 11._

"The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. ... He emerges into distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity. ... He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance; with bare feet and russet mantle. As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did; and gradually, under his captaincy, these 'poor priests' as they were called--vowed to poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no benefice ... spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of relics and of indulgences, but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, ... and they refused to recognize the authority of the bishops, or their right to silence them. If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield. But the 'poor priests' had other doctrines. ... His [Wycliffe's] theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led him to the near confines of Anabaptism." The rebellion of Wat Tyler, which occurred in 1381, cast odium upon all such opinions. "So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for the conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the 'poor priests.' ... They were left unmolested for the next twenty years. ... On the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down all parties who had shared in the late disturbances."

_J. A. Froude, History of England,