They appear to have followed the trade of "weavers," partly for the sake of earning their living, but also to enable them to pass from country to country without provoking the suspicion of the authorities. Early in the thirteenth century they established an institution in Languedoc, in which young persons were educated for the ministry among them under the pretext of being brought up to that trade. The name "Publicans” seems to be a corruption of "Poplicani," which may mean "Men of the People." These heretics maintained that the Church" is a congregation of men and women"; they, therefore, denied" any house made with hands to be a Church," and "they preferred to worship in stables, in sitting-rooms, and even in bedrooms, rather than in churches." They rejected some of the superstitious practices of Rome, such as extreme unction and pilgrimages to the shrines of saints. They taught that salvation is by grace and faith-not by works. They claimed for all Christian people, men and women alike, the liberty to preach. They asserted that Holy Scripture is the one supreme rule of faith and duty, and maintained that every Christian man must interpret the Scriptures for himself. In fact, they anticipated some of the characteristic doctrines of the Reformation, and their secret assemblies were practically Congregational Churches.*

The chronicler who tells the story of their condemnation at Oxford and their death adds, with devout complacency, that "the pious firmness of this severity not only cleansed the realm of England from the pestilence which had now crept into it, but also prevented it from again creeping in, by means of the terror with which it struck the heretics." 5

But the success of the "pious" severity was not complete. The King was not satisfied that the heresy was crushed. At an Assize held at Clarendon soon after the Council of Oxford, the King's subjects are warned against receiving "any of the For an extremely interesting account of "Evangelical Nonconformity under the Plantagenets,' see an article bearing that title in The British Quarterly Review for April, 1870, 362-392, of which free use is made in this chapter. It is generally understood that the article was written by the late Rev. T. W. Davids, of Colchester.

The quotations are from Ebrard, a native of Flanders, who wrote in the thirteenth century. British Quarterly Review, l.c., 378-379. See Gretser, op., xii., Trias Scriptorum (Bibl. Pat. Lugd.), xxiv. 1525. 5 Guilielmus Neubrigensis [William Little, or Petyt, of Riveaux], in Wilkins, Concilia, i. 439.

sect of the renegades" which had just been excommunicated; if the warning is disregarded, the offender is to be at the King's mercy, and the house in which the heretics have been received is to be carried outside the town and burnt."

At the close of the reign of Henry II., heretics whose opinions had been drawn from continental sources are said to have been numerous in every part of England. During the reign of Richard I. there were Waldenses in Kent. Very many Albigenses were burnt during the reign of John. The order of the Preaching Friars became infected with the prevailing "heresy," and in 1246 Henry III. addressed a writ to the sheriffs, commanding them to apprehend all "minor friars who had apostatised from their order, and to commit them to the King's prison." 7

In 1263-a hundred years after the death of Gerhard— Henry III. wrote to the sheriff of Oxfordshire, charging him to suppress the meetings, conventicles, or contracts" of "certain vagrant persons-which call themselves Harlotsmaintaining idleness in divers parts of our Realm, most shamelessly making their meetings, assemblies, and unlawful matches against the honesty of the Church and good manners." "

These "meetings and conventicles" were evidently for purposes of religious worship. The "contracts" which the sheriffs are directed to suppress suggest that there were regularly organised secret societies, the members of which were bound together by mutual engagements and common vows. As they were exceptionally numerous in Oxfordshire, it seems probable that Gerhard's teaching had not been forgotten; and perhaps "Harlots was a name of bitter reproach suggested by "Publicans," which was the earlier name for the sect. Or did they call themselves "Harlots" in order to show that all their hope of salvation was in the infinite grace of Christ, that in themselves they were as worthless as the most worthless of the human race?

Early in the fourteenth century the Preaching Friars who had broken away from the Church seem to have been numerous. In the middle of the century John Ball, a priest of the diocese • Assize of Clarendon, § xxi., in Stubbs, Hoveden's Chronicles (Record Publications), ii. 252.

7 J. S. Brewer, Monumenta Franciscana (Record Publications), i. 614. Cf. ibid., 615, for a similar precept of Edward II.

8 Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1631), i. 435.

of Norwich, began to preach at "public fairs," at "meatmarkets," and in "burial grounds," the doctrines which, when preached a little later by John Wyclif, threatened to separate England from Rome.9

II

Two hundred years had passed since Gerhard first preached heresy on English soil, and since the "pious firmness" of the severity with which he was punished appeared for the moment to have confirmed the fidelity of the English people to the Catholic faith. Heresy had not been crushed, nor had there been any great and serious attempt to reform the corruptions of the English Church. At last there was a menacing revolt against the authority of the Pope and against some of the most sacred of Catholic traditions.

In 1365 Urban V. demanded of Edward III. payment of the annual tribute of 1,000 marks which King John, 150 years before, had engaged should be paid by himself and his successors as an acknowledgment that they held the crown of England under the Pope as their feudal superior. The claim was passionately resisted by the King, the Parliament, and nearly the whole nation. John Wyclif, who was already famous as a scholar and theologian, took a prominent part in the struggle; and from that time till his death on December 31, 1384, he held a great position in the political and religious life of the country.

His first attack was on the arrogance and covetousness of the Papacy, and its unscrupulous appropriation of the revenues of English benefices to enrich Italian priests who rendered no spiritual service to the English people. But in a few years the controversy widened. He assailed the mendicant orders. He condemned with vehemence the irreligion, the vices, and the ignorance of the clergy. He declared that the endowments of the clergy were not held of absolute right, but were liable to forfeiture for neglect of duty, and that secular princes were bound under peril of eternal

At the end of 1381 Ball was hung, drawn, and quartered at St. Albans as a traitor. Riley, Walsingham's Hist. Angl. (Record Publications), ii. 32-34. Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 14. For Ball as a forerunner of Wyclif, see Lumby, Knighton's Chronicle (Record Publications), ii. 151.

damnation to alienate church property and to devote it to secular uses if the Church fell into grave error, or if the property was persistently abused by the clergy. He maintained that the most solemn acts of excommunication are ineffective if they are pronounced with the intention of increasing or even protecting the revenues of the priesthood. He shook the very foundations of the Catholic system by denying the doctrine of Transubstantiation; for by this he impugned the infallibility of the Popes and Councils.

Wyclif does not appear to have discovered the great doctrine of Justification by Faith; but the earnestness, fulness, and fervour with which he taught that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Mediator between God and man, and the author of human redemption, must have produced an impression on the minds of those who heard him not unlike that which was produced by the preaching of Luther. He must have led men to put their faith in Christ for eternal salvation, even though he did not teach them that by their faith alone they were justified.

He also translated the Bible into English. A chronicler who wrote towards the end of the fourteenth century complained that whereas Christ gave the Gospel, not to the Church as a whole, but only to the clergy and doctors of the Church, to be by them communicated to the laity, Wyclif by his translation of the Bible had made it more accessible to the laity, including even the women who were able to read, than it used to be to the well-educated clergy. The pearl was now "thrown to the swine and trodden under feet." 10

This was the supreme service which Wyclif rendered to the religious life of England. He taught the common people to appeal from the authority of priests, bishops, and popes to the authority of Christ and His apostles. God-so Wyclif said-had spoken to the laity, not to the clergy merely; and it was the duty and therefore the right of the laity to listen for themselves to His voice. It was even their duty, and therefore their right, to compare the lives and the teaching of the clergy with the divine Word, and to judge whether those who claimed spiritual authority could be lawfully obeyed. It was in the same spirit that towards the close of his life Wyclif appointed laymen as well as priests as itinerant evangelists.

10 Knighton, in Twysden, Historia Anglicanæ Scriptores, ii. 2644 (A.D. 1382), and Lumby (Record Publications), ii. 151-152.

The impression which this daring policy must have made on the popular mind it is not easy to exaggerate. In every part of the country simple laymen preached the Gospel to wondering crowds; and they had been sent out to preach by a great theologian and a famous professor, who had been honoured with the confidence of the King. What was more, the common people found in the preaching of these laymen a light, a hope, and a joy, which they had not found in the teaching of the priests. Wyclif's translation of the Bible and Wyclif's lay evangelists must have given to the English nation quite new conceptions of the place of the common people in the Church of Christ.

III

666

In the judgment of a distinguished historian, Lollardry has a history of its own; but it forms no proper part of the history of the Reformation. It was a separate phenomenon, provoked by the same causes which produced their true fruit at a later period; but it formed no portion of the stem on which those fruits ultimately grew. It was a prelude which was played out, and sank into silence, answering for the time no other end than to make the name of heretic odious in the ears of the English nation." 11 But a struggle on so large a scale and extending over so many years must surely have left profound and enduring results. The fierce reaction which set in before the death of Wyclif against the movement for reformation, and which became more violent a few years later, intimidated those who shared his opinions; but the new spirit with which he inspired the religious life of the English people was not extinguished.

In 1395 the Lollards presented a petition to the House of Commons, maintaining that the possession of temporalities by the clergy is contrary to the law of Christ, and perilous to virtue; that the Roman priesthood is not the ministry that Christ established; that the celibacy of the clergy is the occasion of scandalous irregularities; that the pretended miracle of transubstantiation tends to make men idolaters; that exorcisms and benedictions pronounced over bread, wine, oil, salt, water, and other material things, have more of necromancy in them

11 Froude, History of England (1872), i. 481.