John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
WYCLIF AND THE NATIONAL CHURCH.
ROM the death of Bradwardine onwards, the line of English primates—Islip, Langham, Whittlesey, Sudbury, Courtenay—became more and more closely associated with the political movements of the day, as indeed could not well have been avoided in that critical epoch of the Christian Church.
Bradwardine was a Schoolman and a student, as well as a man of affairs. His friends must have had fairly good hope, on his nomination by the King in 1349, that his term of office would be marked by more than ordinary independence and vigour. He had distinguished himself at Oxford by the part which he took in opposing the extravagant claims of an Italian archdeacon, Cardinal de Mora, who, not content with sending a deputy to make as much money as possible out of the post, coolly assumed authority over the university. Something has already been said of Bradwardine's liberal opinions, and it is not surprising that he should have been out of favour at Avignon. At Edward's request, Clement VI. had backed his nomination by a bull of provision, and he pettishly declared that, if the English King asked him to make a bishop out of a jackass, he could not refuse. This was soon after the battle of Crécy and the taking of Calais, when Edward was practically supreme in France as well as in England. The new Archbishop was entertained by Clement at a banquet, on the day of his consecration, and one of the cardinals thought it a good jest to send a donkey into the banqueting hall, with a man on his back who prayed that the quadruped might be made Archbishop of Canterbury. The insult was resented even by the Pope, and it was certainly not calculated to improve the relations between the English Primate and the Papal Court. But the plague cut short a most promising career, before Bradwardine had had an opportunity of showing his mettle as a ruler of men.
Simon Islip, who had been one of the King's secretaries—a fairly safe channel of ecclesiastical promotion in those days,—was a "doctor of decretals," that is to say, of the canon law, and a man of inexhaustible energy. He was appointed by Clement in the same manner as his two predecessors, by a bull couched in terms which probably did something to hasten the passing of the statute of Provisors—"per provisionem apostolicam, spreta electione facta de eo" The Pope snapped his fingers at the election by the chapter, but he took care to nominate the same man whom they had elected, and whom the King had recommended, in the case of Islip as well as in that of Bradwardine.
If Clement's bull was arrogantly worded, Edward had himself to thank, for he had actually begged the Pope to override the first election of Bradwardine by a bull of provision. And it may be pointed out by way of parenthesis that if papal provisions had not been profitable to the Crown in more ways than one, and if the Crown had not varied its protests against them by occasionally turning them to account, they might have been abolished out of hand. It suited the King, moreover, to keep in reserve this check upon the power of the English clergy, and we may somewhat question the anxiety of Edward and his friends to dispense altogether with the advantage of a timely resort to Rome. The statute of Provisors was passed by Parliament in the second year of Islip's primacy, and it was followed two years later by the statute of Præmunire. It has already been mentioned that neither statute was immediately effective; provisions and reservations went on, to the scandal of all good churchmen, for generations to come.
Islip came to Canterbury at a critical moment. The ever memorable visitation of the plague in 1349 and the following years—a visitation by which (we are asked to believe) as many as one quarter of the human race was cut off within four years: one half of the population of England in little over a year: one hundred thousand in London alone—produced new outbursts of religious enthusiasm, and contributed largely to the moral and intellectual development of the fourteenth century. The Black Death was the benefactor of society which it dissolved, and of humanity which it decimated. The plague of boils on man, the deadly murrain amongst cattle, the bloody spectacles of the Flagellants—all were on the side of free thought and the free expression of thought, for all encouraged counsels of perfection. There was enough already to set in motion the slowly grinding mills of God, from which even the fourteenth century began to witness the production of a new learning and a reformed religion. None of the older Schoolmen whose minds had restlessly stirred themselves in sleep—no timid student of Marsiglio and Ockham, plunged into a musing fit by reading those daring tomes, about the time when John Wyclif was conning his grammar at Oxford—could have dreamed that the mighty Church of Pius and Boniface would so accumulate its blunders and crimes at Avignon as to play the whole game into the hands of the heretics, and to render the disruption of Christendom finally inevitable. And surely one of the worst crimes of the Papacy throughout this blundering century was to exact, as Clement did, the jubilee pilgrimage to Rome in the midst of the most horrible pestilence on record, in order that he might win his expected sacks of gold at the cost of something like a million human lives. The Franciscans alone reckoned as many as thirty thousand deaths in consequence of this enforced pilgrimage.
Making every deduction for exaggeration and miscounting, it is plain that a very large number of the priests, as well as of their congregations, died of the successive plagues which visited England in the fourteenth century. Amongst other evils which resulted from the wholesale mortality, hundreds of parishes were robbed of spiritual guidance, or deserted by their pastors when they were in special need of help. Hence the passage in Langland's Vision, written perhaps after the second plague (1361):
"Parsons and parish priests
Plaineth to their bishops
That their parish hath been poor
Since the pestilence,
And asketh leave and license
At London to dwell,
And sing for simony—
For silver is sweet."
The Archbishop did his best to cope with this evil, and to convince the priests that it was part of their duty to suffer with their people. He also took the sensible course of ordaining many poor survivors of the plague who had lost their family and friends, their heart and hope, sending them into the deserted parishes. And that they might have a rule of life beforehand, and know what their new vocation meant, he "did ordain that more should not be given to priests for their yearly stipend than three pounds six shillings and eightpence, which"—Stow laconically adds—"caused many of them to steal."
Three pounds six-and-eightpence! Multiply the sum by ten, to get a rough comparison with what that would mean in our own days, and it would seem that Islip's poor priests were not even passing rich on forty pounds a year.
It is a question how far these humble missioners put into Wyclif's head the idea of his russet priests. At any rate it was in the same field that he was subsequently moved to labour.
Islip gave many signs of his ability as an administrator; and the manner in which he dealt with the Flagellants is worth mentioning on this ground alone. For a time these curious products of physical suffering and spiritual elation convulsed the minds of many devoted men, in England as well as on the continent. The history of these fanatics is very much the same as that of irregular religious demonstrations in all ages. There were the same ecstasies, the same ability to endure pain, the same conviction that endurance would be accounted to them for righteousness, the same aggressive bearing, which excited indignation and persecution. Persecution, too, had its usual effect in fostering what it tried to exterminate. Only phlegmatic England, of all the western nations of Europe, escaped lightly from this epidemic of purely human origin. It was condemned in a bull from the Pope, who called on the different monarchs to take measures for its repression. To this message Edward paid no attention, and the Archbishop as little as possible. So far as England was concerned, the Flagellants may be said to have been tolerated out of existence.
Some of the last acts of Islip's life—the foundation of Canterbury Hall at Oxford, the exclusion of the monks at the end of 1365, and the appointment of one John Wyclif, a secular priest, as Warden—have generally been connected with the biography of the Reformer, with which they have probably nothing to do. It seems to have been the Vicar of Mayfield, not the Rector of Fillingham, who was Warden of Canterbury Hall in 1365, was removed by Archbishop Langham, appealed unsuccessfully to the Pope, and lost his case in the King's Court in 1372. The considerations which identify the warden with Wyclif of Mayfield are in themselves almost strong enough to be conclusive; but, when we remember what Wyclif the Reformer was doing between 1365 and 1372, it is difficult to imagine that the old Master of Balliol was occupied during seven years in fighting for this additional honour and emolument.[1]
Simon Langham, who succeeded Islip in 1366, was a Benedictine monk, who had been successively prior, abbot, treasurer, Bishop of Ely, and chancellor in what we may call for convenience the ministries of 1363-1366, when Wykeham was Keeper of the Seal. He was naturally a wealthy man, and had had time to forget any strong prejudices which he may have formed in favour of the Pope or the Orders in his younger days. If it had been possible for the Pope to override his election, he would probably have done so, for Langham had been a Minister of the Crown when the statutes of Provisorsand Praemunire were passed, and Chancellor when Wyclif was called upon to argue against the payment of tribute to Rome.
It is not surprising that the old monk should have shown scant favour to the friars; but his action in regard to Canterbury Hall shows that at any rate he had not ceased to believe in the virtues and merits of the Benedictines. He has been described as a pugnacious prelate. A well-known reference to him by Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, is worth quoting again, if only as an illustration of the perplexities which have beset everyone who ventured too lightly amongst the details of Wyclif's career. Campbell tells us that "among those with whom (Langham) quarrelled at Canterbury was the famous John Wyclif, then a student at the college there erected by Islip, his predecessor. The ardent youth being unjustly expelled, and finding no redress for the wrong he suffered, turned his mind to Church usurpations, and prepared the way for the Reformation which blessed an after age."
Langham made his peace with Rome, and received the cardinal's hat in 1368. He ought to have known that his acceptance of this honour would at once make him a suspect with the English Court, if not with the English Church. At any rate it lost him the Primacy. The King seized his temporalities, and sent a congé d'élire to Canterbury, with a recommendation to elect William Whittlesey, a nephew of Simon Islip, who held the position for the next six years without making much of a mark on his generation. Of Simon Sudbury, who succeeded him (1375-1381) it would not be altogether correct to say the same thing; but, so far as he came directly into touch with Wyclif, he is overshadowed by the stronger personality of Courtenay. It will suffice to speak of his primacy hereafter, in connection with the proceedings which were taken against Wyclif on the charge of heresy.
William Courtenay was the fourth son of Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon, who had married Margaret Bohun, granddaughter of Edward I. He was thus allied in blood both to the Prince and to the Princess of Wales; and, when his parents destined their boy to the secular priesthood, no doubt they anticipated, or knew that they could guarantee, his rapid rise to the highest ecclesiastical dignities. According to Dean Hook, in his Lives of the Archbishops, Courtenay was actuated more by partisanship than by principle. At all events he was before everything the political prelate, ambitious and haughty, a natural leader of men, stepping at once to the front rank of English churchmen, and claiming to be recognised as a champion of the national Church. At the age of twenty-five (in 1367) he was made Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and did good service in resisting the claim of the Bishop of Lincoln to appoint to that office. From the family records it appears that he was one of the earlier Knights of the Garter.
The future malleus hæreticorum was already at Oxford the hammer of recalcitrant friars. Before his election to the chancellorship the friars had given the university a great deal of trouble, claiming to be outside its authority, not only for themselves but even for the students whom they sheltered in their houses. The same difficulty arose at Cambridge; and both the friars and the universities carried their quarrel to the Archbishop and to the King—to the former, apparently, before he had resigned his chancellorship of the kingdom into the hands of Wykeham. As a result it was ordered in the King's name that henceforth no scholar should be received into the houses of any of the four mendicant Orders—Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, or Augustinians—under the age of eighteen; that the friars should not produce any new bull from the Pope, or take advantage of any old one, in their controversies with the universities; and that any future difference between the parties should be decided in the King's Court, without further appeal to Rome—which, indeed, would be an offence against the statute of Præmunire.
Wyclif and Courtenay were associated in this dispute against the Orders, which left rankling memories in the minds of all concerned. It was natural that Courtenay's election should have been stoutly resisted by the friars, who were by no means prepared to obey the monition which had been addressed to them. They even went so far as to cite the head of the University to appear before the Pope; but Wykeham and Langham took prompt action, and secured the quashing of the citation.
At twenty-seven Courtenay became Bishop of Hereford, a bull being obtained from Rome to cover the irregularity in point of age. He soon made his name known in Convocation, where in 1373 he protested vigorously against the heavy taxation of the Church both by the State and by the Pope. The latter had made a levy of a hundred thousand florins on the English clergy, and it must be admitted that the double burden was too heavy to be borne. Courtenay stiffened the resolution of his colleagues by "rising in anger and loudly declaring that neither he nor any of the clergy in his diocese would give anything until the King found a remedy for the evils from which the Church suffered." John of Gaunt wanted nothing better at the moment than such a declaration; and it was soon after this incident that the mission to Avignon was despatched. Convocation agreed to pay one-tenth to the King on condition that "the intolerable yoke of the Pope" should be lifted from their necks; and it was then that Bishop Gilbert and his colleagues were nominated. The easement of the Church in respect of papal exactions must in fairness be set off against the unsatisfactory results of the mission and subsequent Conference in the matter of reservations and provisions.
Courtenay's consecration as bishop had coincided with the exclusion of ecclesiastics from the higher political offices. When Sudbury was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1375, the young Bishop of Hereford was promoted to London, and in the following year he was appointed a member of the committee of Lords who were associated with the leaders of the Commons during the term of the Good Parliament. From this time forward he was in sharp antagonism with the Duke of Lancaster, and through him (apart from any question of orthodoxy) with John Wyclif.
It was impossible that two strongly aggressive natures like those of Lancaster and Courtenay should be thrown together in public life without coming sooner or later into conflict; and their quarrel was doubtless none the less bitter because both of them had Plantagenet blood in their veins. In his political action and sympathies Courtenay was probably, to the best of his judgment, patriotic and loyal to the core. At Oxford, as we have seen, he fought splendidly for his university, and with special gusto against the friars who owned allegiance to Rome. As an ecclesiastic he fought still more splendidly for the English Church against the two tyrannies (as he could not but think them) which threatened to crush out her life. No cause could have a stronger, a more determined and undaunted champion; and it is evident that in dignity and courtesy he can well bear comparison with John of Gaunt in his excitable youth. Two examples of his force of character recorded by his biographers—one telling as much against him as the other tells to his credit—may be repeated here because they show how his disagreement with the Duke was aggravated at a critical moment, and because they are not without a bearing on the subsequent events of Wyclif's life.
Towards the close of the year 1376, Gregory XI., who had a quarrel with the people of Florence, conceived the idea of bringing them to their senses by excommunicating all Florentines without distinction wherever they might be found. He issued a bull to this effect, and declaring those against whom he had launched the thunders of heaven incapable of possessing any property. Now the introduction of this bull into England was a violation of recent statutes, and equally illegal was the conduct of Courtenay in taking it to Paul's Cross and commending it to the turbulent citizens. The citizens of London were already inflamed against all the foreigners in England, whether Italian priests, German Esterlings, Dutch weavers, or Florentine merchants and money-lenders. They wanted no stronger inducement than that which their Bishop had given them; they sacked the houses of the Florentines, and in the riot which ensued they were not very careful to establish beforehand the nationality of their victims. The city authorities—it may well have been that Richard Whittington was amongst them—had to suppress the riot; and they would probably be in sympathy with the Florentine merchants, as the Court and the royal Council undoubtedly were.
It was just at this juncture that Lancaster had recovered his influence in the Council. He was supreme for the moment, and he let the Bishop know it. Courtenay had subjected himself to the penalties of Præmunire by acting on the Pope's bull; but he was too highly placed to be proceeded against according to the strict letter of the law. He was, however, compelled to eat his words, and he sent a deputy to Paul's Cross to announce that his action in the matter had been misunderstood.
The other incident, which occurred soon afterwards, at the meeting of Convocation in February, 1377, presents the fiery prelate in a more amiable light. The Crown had omitted to send a writ to the Bishop of Winchester. Courtenay protested indignantly against the treatment of Wykeham—who had served the King long and faithfully in many capacities—and induced Convocation to refuse to consider the demand for a subsidy until the Bishop should receive his summons and take his seat. It was a Roland for Lancaster's Oliver. The Duke was obliged to give way, and Wykeham was re-instated. The monk of St. Alban's already quoted says that the Bishop secured his pardon by appealing to and bribing Alice Perrers. But the monks were often prejudiced against ecclesiastics, and this story is evidently superfluous, if not incredible.
Clearly, then, there was no love lost between the Duke and his cousin.
It is worthy of mention that Wyclif himself was in some measure hostile to William of Wykeham, if not actually in accord with Lancaster on this point. Speaking in one of his sermons against the meddling of ecclesiastics in matters of State, he complained that "benefices, instead of being bestowed on poor clerks, are heaped on a kitchen clerk, or one wise in building castles, or in worldly business." Now Wykeham, before he received his mitre, had been surveyor of works and architect at Windsor, and secretary to the King, in addition to holding sundry pieces of preferment in the Church. Wyclif, as a declared enemy to pluralists, and to ecclesiastics who grew wealthy by dividing the trust-funds of the Church, would have been inconsistent if he had not blamed Wykeham amongst the rest—or amongst the very first. But there is no other evidence of serious or personal animosity between these two men, whom their countrymen for ample reasons have so long agreed to honour.
Nevertheless, there is one kind of honour for churchmen who refuse their share in the trust-funds, preferring a life of apostolic poverty in order that they may preach the gospel by example as well as by precept, and another kind of honour for such as take what comes to them, perhaps restoring the bulk of it in their own time and manner. Wykeham was a magnificent founder and benefactor, to whom students of all succeeding ages have been largely indebted. Yet Stow, on the authority of Walsingham, says that in 1365, when he was made Archdeacon of Lincoln and Keeper of the Seal, Wykeham was already Provost of Wells, incumbent of a benefice in Devonshire, and the holder of no fewer than twelve prebends. In the same year, on the death of Bishop Edington of Winchester, he was made "general administrator of spiritual and temporal things pertaining to the bishopric." The Duke of Bourbon was at that time a prisoner in English hands; and, as the Pope was more easily approachable from France than from England, King Edward was induced to agree to an arrangement whereby the Duke went to Avignon, secured the nomination of Wykeham for Winchester, and so "earned his deliverance." By this transaction the King netted twenty thousand francs, and the pluralist became a bishop.
The story may have reached us in a distorted shape, and it must be accepted for what it may be worth. But Wyclif knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the heaping of benefices on rich men, whilst the poor clerks starved—or stole. And it may be mentioned, by the way, that Courtenay himself was a confirmed pluralist.
- ↑ One of the biographers of Wyclif, maintaining that the Canterbury Hall story must refer to him, is convinced that it could not refer to John Wycliffe of Mayfield because the latter held his living continuously from before 1365 until after 1372. He apparently forgot that the Reformer also was beneficed during the whole of that time. The notion of Wyclif as a pugnacious and baffled pluralist is too absurd to be accepted. It is impossible to think of him resigning the mastership of Balliol for a poor country living, then fighting for Canterbury Hall, and then again refusing the prebend of Aust, all within thirteen or fourteen years. Dr. Shirley has a note on "The Two John Wyclifs," in the Appendix to his edition of the Fasciculi.