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Updated: June 4, 2025
Wycliffe and his "simple priests" were charged with fomenting the discontent and disorder which culminated in the Peasants' War. Whether this charge was true or not, it caused many of his more aristocratic followers to fall away from him. But in spite of this and the denunciations of the Church, Wycliffe was not seriously interfered with and died peaceably in 1384.
Fitzralph had the sympathy not only of the seculars, but of the "possessioners," or property-holding monks. See his De Pauperie Salvatoris, lib. i.-iv., printed by R.L. Poole, as appendix to Wycliffe, De Dominio Divino.
"On one side," said he himself, "are learning, genius, numbers, grandeur, rank, power, sanctity, miracles; on the other Wycliffe, Lorenzo Valla, Augustine, and Luther a poor creature, a man of yesterday, standing wellnigh alone with a few friends." Summoned by the Emperor to appear at Worms; to answer the charge made against him of heresy, he determined to answer in person.
See here, this is my mother's last gift to me before she died a letter, too, but it is God's letter to fallen man." With great care the young man unrolled the packet and displayed a well-worn manuscript copy of a portion of the Gospel of John. "This is copied," he said, "from the translation of God's Word by the great Wycliffe.
Lancaster met the opposition of convocation by calling to his aid the Oxford doctor whom the clergy had already begun to look upon as the enemy of the privileges of their order. Wycliffe was not as yet under suspicion of direct dogmatic heresy. He had not yet clothed himself in the armour of his Balliol predecessor, Fitzralph, to wage war against the mendicant orders.
The Universities continued to flourish during almost the whole of this period. It was from Oxford as a centre, under the influence of John Wycliffe, a lecturer there, that a great revival and reforming movement in the church emanated. From about 1370 Wycliffe and others began to agitate for a more earnest religious life.
"To-morrow make thou ready for me my widow's garb. I shall never wear any other again." "Ay, Lady," said Maude quietly. "And hast here any book of Sir John de Wycliffe?" "The Evangel after Lucas, Lady." "Wilt read me to sleep therewith?" "Surely, Lady mine." "Was it thence thou readst once unto me, of a woman that was sinful, which washed our Lord's feet?" "Ay so, Madam." "Read that again."
The notice of Wycliffe does seem a rather unreasonable expectation, and a history of England loses identity if it becomes a history of Europe. But Carlyle's principles, whether he always acted upon them himself or no, are excellent, and, though Froude's second chapter was not quite rewritten, the effect of them may be seen in the rest of the book.
They easily accepted the Trinity, the double procession, or the Holy Ghost itself, though no one had the slightest notion what the Holy Ghost might be. Thus by 1382 the eucharist had come to represent to the privileged classes power and wealth, and they would have repudiated Wycliffe even had they felt strong enough to support him.
But they were also responsible for the insanely logical pretensions which characterise the Church's policy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and it was with reason that Wycliffe, the greatest medieval critic of the sacerdotal theory, attacked the Mendicant Orders as typifying all that was worst in the hierarchy of his age.
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