Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/576

568 WYCLIFFE'S CANON BY AT LINCOLN October gift. If on the other hand Wycliffe had obtained possession, paid the first-fruits, and then been dispossessed, we should have heard much more about it, either here or in the De civili Dominio, i. 387, where as we have seen the first-fruits are not mentioned in direct connexion with the prebend, or, and especially, in Wycliffe's later works. It would not be Wycliffe's way to speak so moderately had he been treated quite like this. Here I note that Wycliffe's attitude in 1375 or 1376 towards such payments is by no means clear. No doubt in the De Mandatis, and in the De civili Dominio, i. 201, 202, there is a good deal about the first-fruits. Indeed, in the latter passage he denounces as simoniac those who covenant to pay the first-fruits, but a little later he condones such payment on occasions, and further on ^ complains of certain not inconsiderable charges {sumptus non modicos) to which he had been put in con- nexion, as I take it, with his two reservations. Anyhow, he paid these charges ; this does not admit of doubt, for he got the bulls ; the last of them was paid for late in 1373 or early in 1374, Wycliffe knowing when he made this payment that the Gist- fruits would be asked for later on. Moreover, in November 1375 he must have made some payment for the ratification of his prebend of Aust in Westbury and others also which would include the payment of the first-fruits thirteen years before at the date of his petition and provision to this prebend. It cannot therefore be assumed th^t, when it came to the point, he would not have paid the first-fruits for Lincoln had he had the chance. Nor does it at all follow from this passage that Wycliffe was the person troubled about first-fruits ; it may have been his successful rival . First-fruits, we know, wer»always in the air, and a gibe about them was a commonplace. We must accordingly not be unpre- pared to find that the passage means that the pope, after giving Wycliffe the reservation of a Lincoln prebend, passed him over when his turn came and gave it to Thornbury, from whom, Wycliffe adds, he took good care to collect the first-fruits. It is important to remember that while the papal court would have given up the first-fruits in order to secure a man on whom it could depend, readiness to pay would not help one who showed signs of turning out a traitor. Suspicion of Wycliffe's loyalty was the real cause of his disappointment. In the natural course of events, as Mr. Salter points out, Wycliffe after being passed over would have merely had to wait, and m a year or so would have been provided to another, though perhaps less valuable, prebend. His chances, however, •were never perhaps very good. Not long after he had been given the reservation (c. Dec. 1371), his enemies at Oxford were threaten- ing him with its loss, and about July 1373^ he expresses his ' p. 666 above. « Be Ente, ii. 6, end