PART II. but finally CHAP. III. of the recognition thus obtained of his diocesan authority, that we find Arundel assuming the right of visitation when metropolitan, in the manner already described at the commencement of this chapter. The exercise of such right was however so rare that it invariably gave rise to criticism if not to actual resistance; so that we find Fuller in his History asking, with reference to Arundel's visitation, what became of the privileges of the university on that occasion1?' Whatever doubt existed respecting these privileges was now abolished by to be finally set at rest. In the year 1430 pope Martin v issued a bull reciting how that the doctors, masters, and scholars of the university of Cambridge had lately exhibited to him a petition, 'setting forth the bulls of Honorius and Sergius I, that by virtue thereof the chancellor of the university for the time being had been accustomed to exercise exclusive ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction; that the originals of these bulls had been lost for seventy years or more, but that there were ancient copies in the archives of the university, and praying that he would of his apostolic Pope Martín However, bishop Arundel and some 1 'Some will say, where were now great immunities): I mean, that the validity of them both, though not cancelled, was suspended for the present. If it be true, that the legate de latere hath in some cases equal power with the pope, which he represents; and if it be true, which some bold canonists aver, that none may say to the pope, cur ita facis? it was not safe for any in that age to dispute the power of Thomas Arundel. But possibly the universities willingly waved their papal privileges; and if so, injuria non fit volentibus. I find something sounding this way, how the scholars were aggrieved that, the supreme power being fixed in their chancellor, there lay no appeal from him (when injurious) save to the pope alone. Wherefore the students, that they might have a nearer and cheaper redress, desired to be eased of their burdensome immunities, and submitted themselves to archiepiscopal visitation.' Fuller, Hist. of the Univ. of Cambridge. PART II. benignity provide for the indemnity of them and the univer- CHAP. III sity in the premises'. He therefore delegated the prior of Bernewell and John Depyng, canon of Lincoln, or one of them, to hear and determine upon this claim. 'On the tenth of October, John Holbrooke, D.D., chancellor, and the masters, doctors, and scholars, by an instrument under the common seal of the university, constituted Masters Ralphe Duckworthe, John Athyle, William Wrawbye, and William Sull, clerks, or either of them, their proctors in this affair. 'On the fourteenth of October the pope's bull was exhibited by William Wrawbye, in the conventual church of Bernewell, to the prior of that house, who assigned the sixteenth of the same month in his chapter house, for proceeding in the business. At which time and place, William Wrawbye exhibited six articles, setting forth the claim of the chancellor of the university to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, exclusive of any archbishop, bishop, or their officials; and produced as witnesses, John Dynne, aged 79, John Thorp, aged 68, Walter Barley, aged 58, Thomas Marklande, aged 40, William Lavender, aged 48, John Thirkyll, aged 40, and William Sull, aged 26, who deposed to the use of ecclesiastical authority by the chancellor, as far as their respective memories extended. The proceedings were then adjourned to the same place on the 19th of that month, when there was produced an instrument attested by a notary and others, setting forth the bulls of John XXII and Boniface IX, and copies of the bulls of Honorius I and Sergius I, taken from a register belonging to the university; also various statutes of that body. On the 20th the prior in the chapterhouse 1 Being mislaid or lost through the negligence of their keepers or by other casualties,' is the further explanation offered. The whole process is an amusing combination of the strict observance of legal formalities with a complete indifference to the value of the evidence on which the whole of the assumption rested. The bull, it may be observed, implies that Honorius himself was a student CHAP. III. gave his definitive sentence in favour of the privileges claimed'.' PART IL Reginald of Chichester b. 1390. When we note that this bull was granted by a pontiff whose most vigorous efforts had been directed towards repressing the spirit of independence in England, and that it was confirmed three years later by pope Eugenius IV, who endeavoured to break up the Council of Basle, we shall be little likely to mistake this impatience of home jurisdiction for any real growth in the direction of intellectual freedom". In fact there appears to have been a decided tendency in both universities at this time towards Ultramontane doctrines, and of this tendency the celebrated Reginald Pecock, of Oriel College, Oxford, affords an interesting example. Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, the author of the Pecock be ablest English pamphlet of the fifteenth century, was, like Gerson, an eclectic; and an eclectic of a yet more puzzling description. By many he has been mistaken for a follower of Wyclif, and he is even described by Foxe as one of those 'who springing out of the same universitie, and raised up out of his ashes, were partakers of the same persecution;' while he appears in reality to have been as he is characterised by dean Hook, 'an ultra-papist, a supporter of that 1 Cooper, Annals, 1 282, 283; Heywood, Early Cambridge Statutes, 181 -211. Huber, judging from his language,would appear to have been ignorant of this document. See English Universities, 1 63. 2 Baker, in his History, seems to be the first writer who has grasped the fact that the Barnwell Process was an Ultramontanist movement. Speaking of the comparative indifference shewn by the two bishops of Ely, John Fordham (bp. 1388-1425) and Philip Morgan (bp. 1426--1435), to the affairs of the Hospital of St. John, he says, 'These two bishops had some reason to be out of humour with the religious as well as with the university, who seem to have conspired and joined in the same design of procuring exemptions from episcopal jurisdiction. For it was under this bishop that the great blow was given to the see of Ely by the university, by obtaining from Martin the Fifth, an. 1430, his bulls to this purpose, directed to the prior of Barnwell and John Deping canon of Lincoln: John Deping being a secular was not fond of such employment, but the prior of Barnwell was a man for the purpose, who sat and heard the process alone, and the bulls of Honorius and Sergius the First being produced (who had no more authority in England than they had at Japan) he very learnedly gave sentence for the university upon two as rank forgeries as ever were; for the whole stress of the controversy turned upon these bulls. But the present pope was willing to believe there had been such a power exercised in England by his predecessors so many years ago, and the honest prior was to follow his instructions. And so there was an end of ordinary jurisdiction." Baker-Mayor, 1 43, 44. PART IL Repressor. doctrine which would, in these days, be called Ultramon- CHAP. III. tane.' In some important respects, indeed, the views held by Reginald Pecock were identical with those of the great His reformer. Both strenuously contended for the right of private judgement and the necessity of approving to the reason whatever was accepted as doctrine. Under this aspect the English bishop, like his predecessor, offers a good example of the effects of the university training of his day. It was his great desire that every man, however humble his station, who accepted the teaching of Christianity, should have a rational faith, and the rational, at that period, it is hardly necessary to add, was regarded as almost a synonym for the formally logical. It was his belief that a large amount of capricious scepticism and unmeaning declamation might be done away with, if a knowledge of the method He looks unfolded in the Organon were to become general among the ledge of logic laity. The Ars Vetus was his panacea for all forms of g heresy, from Gnosticism to Lollardism, and he loudly lamented that it was shrouded from the apprehension of the common people by a Latin garb. 'Would God,' he exclaimed, 'that it were learned of them in their mother's language, for then they shoulden be put fro much rudeness and boistoseness which they have now in reasoning.' He even proposed himself to undertake the remedying of the deficiency, though he does not appear to have ever carried his purpose to its accomplishment'. upon a know as the best remedy against heresy. the rights of reason dogma. Assuming then that the Scriptures were true, and that He asserts all truth was capable of being approved to the logical faculty, ' against he repudiated the notion that men were, in any case, bound to an implicit acceptance of dogma. So far as his writings afford an indication, it may be doubted whether in his opinion, the reason could ever be called upon to abdicate its 1 and thanne schulden thei not be so obstinat agens clerkis and agens her prelatis, as summe of hem now ben, for defaut of perceuyng whanne an argument procedith into his conclusioun needis and whanne he not so dooth but semeth oonli so do. And miche good wolde come forth if a schort compendiose logik were de uysid for al the comown peple in her CHAP. III. function, and to veil its face before the ineffable and the PART II. divine. In respect to the moral law, he appears to have held almost precisely the same view as that which Clarke and Cudworth advocated so ably at a later period,—that the principles of morality are not derived from Revelation but are discoverable by the unaided reason,-if only that reason be rightly and honestly employed. Right and wrong are as patent to the reasoning faculty, as a proposition in geometry; and would be equally perceived if the Scriptures did not exist. As reason is sufficient to provide man with a law of moral action, so it is also the standard whereby he must decide upon the interpretation of Revelation. And if,' said Pecock, 'any seeming discord be betwixt the words written in the outward book of Holy Scripture, and the doom of reason writ in man's soul and heart, the words so written without forth oughten to be expowned and interpreted, and brought for to accord with the doom of reason in thilk matter; and the doom of reason ought not for to be expowned, glosed, interpreted, and brought for to accord with the said outward writing in Holy Scripture of the Bible, or anywhere else out of the Bible.' How he proposed to provide for that class whom Aquinas indicated, whom natural incapacity, or the cares, trials, and temptations of human life shut out from this high exercise of reason, does not appear: but it is evident, from various passages in his writings, that he was prepared to set aside both the Fathers and the Schoolmen if their conclusions of the Fathers appeared to him erroneous. Views like these are now Schoolmen. neither strange nor singular, but it must be admitted that such an adjustment of the respective provinces of faith and reason, could hardly fail to startle the ears of the men of the fifteenth century. He is not afraid to call in question the authority and the He notwithstanding ad The anomaly however which more particularly challenges vocates sub- the attention of the modern student, is, that with all this boldauthority of ness and independence of thought, Reginald Pecock should mission to the temporal the pope, have been as much the advocate of unconditional submission to the temporal authority of the pope, as Occam had been its antagonist; and that his 'Repressor' should be mainly occupied with a confutation of Wyclif's leading doctrines and a vindica |