Thus Pierce the Ploughmans Crede lauds Walter Brut, who has told the friars many home truths about how they have moved far away from Christ's ‘lore and his lawe’. He seems to have been quite a celebrity among the religious dissenters of his day, since he is the only contemporary figure named in this Lollard poem apart from John Wyclif himself. But there is no mention therein of Brut's most radical ideas, including the belief that ‘women have power and authority to preach and make the body of Christ, and they have the power of the keys of the church, of binding and loosing’.

Here I am quoting from the register of John Trefnant, bishop of Hereford, who tried Brut for heresy in 1391–3. It preserves a fascinating series of self-justifications written in Latin by this ‘sinner, layman, husbandman (agricola) and Christian’, as Brut styles himself, adding that he was a Welshman – a fact of which he seems to have been proud, since he explains that both his parents were Welsh.