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The Dissemination of Wyclif’s Ideas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Extract
Wyclif’s contemporaries saw him as a spider sitting at the centre of a web of intrigue and unrest. Our own contemporary Professor Wilks sees much the same thing: Wyclif headed an organised band of missionaries who aimed to convert England to his beliefs. Others have seen this view as alarmist and fanciful. Réville, working on the Peasants’ Revolt, investigated the contemporary charge that it was orchestrated by Wyclif and his supporters, but found no evidence to sustain the allegation. K. B. McFarlane looked for material about the ‘poor priests’ whom Wyclif is said to have dispatched over the land to carry his message. He found none. Like Réville, he concluded that contemporaries were so frightened by Wycliffite opinions that they tended, in their alarm, to see Lollards everywhere and at the root of every disaster.
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References
1 For example, Knighton, Henry, Chronicon, ed. Lumby, J. R., RS 92, 2 vols. (London 1889-95) II pp. 184–7Google Scholar; Walsingham, Thomas, Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, H. T., RS 28, 2 vols (London 1863-4) I p. 324, II pp. 53, 55.Google Scholar
2 Wilks, Michael, ‘ Reformatio Regni: Wyclif and Hus as Leaders of Religious Protest Movements’, SCH 9 (1972) pp. 109–30.Google Scholar
3 McFarlane, K. B., John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity, (London 1952) pp. 100–1Google Scholar; for the rebels of 1381 see Dyer, Christopher in The English Rising of1381, ed. Hilton, R. H. and Aston, T. H. (Cambridge 1984) pp. 9–42Google Scholar. For Wycliffe as persuader see McFarlane, Wycliffe p. 87.
4 Inhibition to the vicar of Odiham, 21 May 1382, Wykeham’s Register, ed. T. F. Kirby, Hampshire Record Society (1899) II pp. 337-8. Conditions in the parish of Odiham were apparendy sail unsatisfactory in 1386, ibid., pp. 388-9.
5 McFarlane, Wycliffe pp. 102-3.
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10 A. H. M. Jones in VCH [A History of the County ofOxford, (London 1954)] III p. 155.
11 For example, Emden (O) I pp. 17 (Robert de Alberwick), 82 (John de Aylesbury), and 321 (Walter de Burton).
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21 Ibid. I p. 70 and DNB article under ‘Ashwardby’.
22 McHardy loc. cit. pp. 133-4.
23 See the map inside the back cover of McFarlane, Wycliffe.
24 Fowler, David C., ‘John Trevisa and the English Bible’, Modern Philology 58 (1960), pp. 81–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; thanks are due to Mr. Henry Hargreaves for this reference.
25 Emden (O) III p. 1869.
26 Ibid. Ill pp. 2048-9.
27 See n. 23.
28 VCH Oxford vol. 6 (London 1959) p. 201.
29 Brocklesby, Fillingham and Riseholm (Balliol), Coleby (Oriel).
30 Owen, Dorothy M., ‘Bacon and Eggs: Bishop Buckingham and Superstition in Lincolnshire’, SCH 8 (1972) pp. 139–42Google Scholar describes the conservative and even eccentric practices to be found in Lincolnshire at this time.
31 Public Record Office, Clerical Subsidies, E179/3 5/5 m-2d, col. 1.
32 In 1364 a crowd of chaplains, of whom 53 were known by name, assaulted three commissaries of the bishop so that they retired in fear of their lives. The miscreants then took oaths to stand by each other, and wandered about lying in wait for the bishop and his commissaries so that no one dared to proceed against them. The chaplains were protesting at the statutory regulation of their salaries. Commission to proceed against the riotous chaplains 4 September 1364, CPR 1364-78 p. 67.
33 Emden (O) I p. 267.
34 The gaoler allowed the man to wander about the town as he pleased; he attended church services and infected the faithful sheep of the bishop’s flock with his own disease, which may well have been heresy, McHardy, loc. cit. p. 134.
35 McFarlane, Wycliffe p. 127.
36 Buckingham used his palace at Lincoln very rarely, prefering to use Nettleham, some two miles outside the ciry.
37 See McHardy, A. K., ‘The Crown and the Diocese of Lincoln during the episcopate of John Buckingham 1363-98’, (Oxford MS D.Phil., 1972)Google Scholar appendix F, for Buckingham’s itinerary.
38 The papal bull of 8 November 1367 said that chancellors of the university had no need to be confirmed by the bishop of Lincoln. The quarrel between the bishop of Lincoln and die university is set out in Snappe’s Formulary, ed. H. E. Salter, OHS 80 (1924), esp. p. 44.
39 Ibid. pp. 25-6 for the wide powers of the chancellor’s court. For intervention in university affairs, especially in disputes, see CPR 1374-7 pp. 248, 325; CPR 1381-8; p. 555; CPR 1.377-81 pp. 204, 420, 432; CCR 1377-81 pp. 310, 68.
40 Hudson, Anne, Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge 1978)Google Scholar, introduction. Mr. Henry Hargreaves of Aberdeen University English department has come to similar conclusions from his work on the Glossed Gospels.
41 McFarlane, Wycliffe p. 173, 175.