Chapter 37 - The Lollards

Summary

The tardy and crude beginnings of English heresy are clearly traced by Mr H. G. Richardson in The English Historical Review (Jan. 1936). He shows how, before Wyclif's trial in 1377, only 16 definite cases of heresy can be counted. Yet, in 1382 parliament complained that unlicensed preachers went about the country disseminating heresies and notorious errors, some of which were calculated to “cause discord and dissensions among the different estates of the realm”; errors for which they contrived to get the support of the populace. Here, as Mr Richardson points out, we have partly “the aftermath of the Peasants' Revolt” of 1381. This parliamentary complaint was met by a statute which gave sheriffs and other sufficient magistrates power to arrest and imprison such preachers and their supporters, if any prelate certified them to the chancellor as guilty. For, by this time, those heretical potentialities which had been fluid (so to speak) in the rapidly awaking England of Chaucer's day, had crystallized round one strong and commanding figure.

John Wyclif had risen to the front rank in Oxford philosophy before he was brought forward as a politician; and, even then, it was only by a further development that he became heretic and reformer. Both in himself and in the development of his teaching he may be called characteristically English. By nature he was severe and ascetic; in later life he confessed himself to have erred on the side of harsh judgment and bitterness in controversy.