Lollardy

At home there was at least a better prospect of harmony and union than had existed for many years.

The Lollards indeed still gave some trouble, but their favor with the people was not what it had been.

The war spirit which had seized the nation did not suffer it to think of the grievances which had seemed so urgent, and of the hopes of reform which had been so attractive a few years before.

As for the dynastic enemies who in the next generation were to overthrow the House of Lancaster, they were still feeble.

Meanwhile, till the time came for him to stand his trial, he must be kept a prisoner in the tower.

the trial of which a complete account has been preserved was held on september twenty third old castle was of course condemned and delivered over to punishment by the secular arm time however was given him to reconsider his opinions and he was again committed to the tower what followed it is impossible to say with any certainty old castle we know escaped from the tower but the insurrection which is said to have been made by some of his friends and followers is a matter involved in great mystery that the king apprehended some danger is manifest on december fourth we find him sending orders to certain magistrates enjoining them to arrest various persons whom he had otherwise named to them there is also record of a pardon granted to a person who had given intimation of the conspiracy and of a pension settled upon him for life in reward of his services early in the next month a proclamation was sent out offering large rewards for the arrest of sir john oldcastle who had escaped from the tower so much we know from documents of state to what overt acts the conspirators proceeded if conspirators they were is not so clear Walsingham gives a circumstantial account of the affair, which, omitting his reflections, is as follows.

The king kept Christmas duly at Eltham, and there the Lollards, making a conspiracy, resolved to take or slay the king unawares with his brothers.

But certain of the conspirators warned the king of his danger, so that the king quietly removed himself to Westminster, that place being safer and more populous.

And there's a copy, you can see a copy there of his 14th century Bible.

In fact, it was largely his, from what we can gather, it was largely his followers called the Lollards or the Mumblers that actually did most of the work.

But John Wickliffe was very passionate about promoting it.

But he translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate translation, which was a translation done in the fourth century.

Nor is this much to be lamented.

The sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards.

yet an enlightened and temperate protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubt whether the success either of the albigensians or of the lollards would on the whole have promoted the happiness and virtue of mankind corrupt as the church of rome was There is reason to believe that if the church had been overthrown in the 12th or even in the 14th century, the vacant space would have been occupied by some system more corrupt still.

There was then, throughout the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge, and that little was confined to the clergy.

Richard II at the end of his reign had made himself an absolute monarch and the propertied classes could not feel themselves safe from his power.

Through his first wife Anne of Bohemia who had been brought under the influence of John Hus he had been attracted by the new religious thought known in England as Lollardy.

The Lollards attacked the doctrine and the property of the church.

Their views on property seemed to have extended sometimes from disendowment of the church to disendowment of all the propertied classes.

The great landed corporations had suffered from the rise in wages and the decay of tillage which took place after the Black Death and Peasants' Revolt.

Intellectually, too, the Church had suffered from its very strength.

Aided by the secular arm under the Lancastrians, she had reduced Lollardy to feebleness and obscurity.

But in doing this the Church had herself suffered.

He's like, hey, oh, he gets tenure, right? It's like 1398 and he's got tenure.

So he's like, 1399, I love the Lollards, right? It's great stuff.

It's great stuff, right?

Yeah, so he's exposed to Wycliffe's thinking and teaching.

And if you're one of the princes of the church, you're not exactly going to want that to be taken away, right? Someone suddenly starts saying, so where do you get all your money from? Do you really need all of that? Exactly.

And so, like, obviously this goes down very badly.

And then meanwhile, here in England, Lollards, who were the followers of Wycliffe, because Wycliffe, RIP, he is dead, but his students are still at the University of Oxford and they are being burnt at the stake for heresy at this point in time.

So Alexander is like, well, we're not having any of that.