§ 43. THE LOLLARDS. 355
It is a pleasant relief from these trials and puttings-to-death to tind the University of Oxford in 1406 bearing good testimony to the memory of its maligned yet distinguished dead, placing on record its high sense of his purity of life, power in preaching and diligence in studies. But fragrant as his memory was held in Oxford, at least secretly, parliament was fixed in its purpose to support the ecclesiastical authorities in stamping out his doctrine. In 1414, it ordered the civil officer to take the initiative in ferreting out heresy, and magistrates, from the Lord chancellor down, were called upon to use their power in extirpating "all manner of heresies, errors and lollardies." This oath continued to be administered for two centuries, until Sir Edward Coke, Lord High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, refused to take it, with the name Lollard included, insisting that the principles of Lollardy had been adopted by the Church of England.^
Archbishop Chichele seemed as much bent as his predecessor, Arundel, on clearing the realm of all stain of heresy. In 1416 he enjoined his suffragans to inquire diligently twice a year for persons under suspicion and, where they did not turn them over to the secular court, to commit them to perpetual or temporary imprisonment, as the nature of the case might require. It was about the same time that an Englishman, at the trial of Huss in Constance, after a parallel had been drawn between Wyclif's views and those of the Bohemian, said, " By my soul, if I were in your place I would abjure, for in England all the masters, one after another, albeit very good men, when suspected of Wicliffism, abjured at the command of the archbishop." 2
Heresy also penetrated into Scotland* James Resby, one of Wyclif's poor priests, being burnt at Perth, 1407, and another at Glasgow, 1422. In 1433, a Bohemian student at St. Andrews,
that he had been drawn. He was once and for all burnt up with fierce fire, paying justly the penalty of both swords." The Fasciculi give a protracted account of Sir John's opinions and trial. Judgments have been much divided about him. Fuller speaks of him " as a boon companion, jovial roysterer and yet a coward to boot." Shakespeare presents him in the character of Falstaff. See Gairdner, I. 97 sq.
1 Summers, p. 67. ^Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, p. 175.
356 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Paul Craw, suffered the same penalty for heresy. ^ The Scotch parliament of 1425 enjoined bishops to make search for heretics and Lollards, and in 1416 every master of arts at St. Andrews was obliged to take an oath to defend the Church against them.
Between 1450-1517,_Ix)llardy was almost wholly restricted to the rural districts, and little mejition js,made of it in contemporary recorjjs. At Amersham, one of its centres, four were tried in 1462, and some suffered death, as William Barlowe in 1466, and John Goose a few years later. In 1507, three were burnt there, including William Tylsworth, the leading man of the congregation. At the crucial moment he was deserted by the members, and sixty of them joined in carrying fagots for his burning. This time of recantation continued to be known in the district as the Great Abjuration. The first woman to suffer martyrdom in England, Joan Broughton, was burnt at Smithfield, 1494, as was also her daughter. Lady Young. Nine Lollards made public penance at Coventry, 1486, but, as late as 1519, six men and one woman suffered death there. Foxe also mentions William Sweeting and John Brewster as being burnt at Smithfield, 1511, and John Brown at Ashford the same year. How extensively Wyclif's views continued to be secretly held and his writings read is a matter of conjecture. Not till 1559 was the leg^isla.tinn directed Rprainst Lollardy repealed. _
Our knowledge of the tenets and practices of the Lollards is derived from their Twelve Conclusions and other Lollard documents, the records of their trials and from the Repressor for Oil r- III nch Blaming of the Clergy, an English treatise written by Dr. Pecock, bishop of Chichester, and finished 1455. Inclined to liberal thought. Bishop Pecock assumed a different attitude from Courtenay, Arundel and other prelates, and smight by^calm reasoning to win the Lollards from their mistakes. He mentioned the designation of Known oNIen — 1 Cor. fi : 38, 2 Tim. 2 : 19 — as being one of old standing for them, and he also calls them " the lay party " or "■ the Bible Men." He proposed to consider their objections against 11 customs and institutions, such as the worship of images, pilgrimages, 1 Mitchell : Scottish lipformation, p. 15.